"Be Kind, Rewind" is a new feature here at DoomsdayDVD. Although this site is enthusiastic about the ever-developing format of digital video, there is also a great deal of nostalgia for the pioneering format in home video rentals, the videocassette.

"Be Kind, Rewind" revisits the horror VHS titles of yesteryear and their strong presence on the shelf at your local video store. You may notice that certain video labels will resurface several times since they specialized in genre films. Labels such as Thorn Emi, Wizard Video, Midnight Video (Select-A-Tape), Vestron Video (the old "V" logo), Continental/Comet Video, Paragon and Gorgon Video are among the few.

So read on, enjoy and experience the videotapes that were surrounded by posters, neon signs and were accompanied by high sale prices and high membership fees!

A huge rental favorite among gorehounds in the 1980s was the classic horror compilation. Slasher Mania, Filmgore, Terror on Tape, Terror in the Aisles, The Best of Sex & Violence, Horrible Horror.....the masses couldn't get enough of the all-you-can-eat (or digest) buffet and sample-platter variety that the compilation had to offer.

After the success of Filmgore (hosted by Elvira and containing clips from classic horror and gore films such as Blood Feast, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Drive-In Massacre), director Ken Dixon turned to the zombie subgenre. Zombiethon was more-or-less Wizard Video's feature-length sampler of their zombie library (not unlike Continental Video's Terror on Tape, hosted by Cameron Mitchell).

Aside from snippets from a selection of films (Lucio Fulci's Zombie (aka Zombi 2), Jean Rollin's Zombie Lake, Jesus Franco's Oasis of the Zombies, the "invisible gorilla-on-the-loose" weirdofest Invisible Dead, the non-zombie gore film Fear, Franco's Virgin Among the Living Dead and Ted V. Mikels' Astro Zombies (aka Space Zombies)), the film contains wraparound footage consisting of starlets being chased into a deserted movie theatre occupied by a horde of flesh-hungry zombies who are watching the clips (sound familiar? Zombies watching horror clips was the theme of the wraparound footage in Mad Ron's Prevues from Hell...).

The main wraparound footage appears to be relatively low-budget (rubber-mask zombies), and the films presented within range from highly respectable (Fulci's Zombie) to outright bewilderingly strange (Invisible Dead).

The ever-famous Wizard Video logo appears at the beginning of the tape. This logo has been associated with some of the most elaborate video artwork of all time, from the early slipsleeve days (the first release of Fulci's Zombie, Lommell's The Boogeyman, Equinox and The Driller Killer) to the height of the "big-box" era (1984-1986). A corpse rising beneath a shallow pile of leaves gives the backdrop to the video-generated title overlay for ZOMBIETHON! Video overlays were popular during the heyday of the home video age, and were most often used for alternate title cards for movies re-released to video (usually by the same company).

Clocking in at a feeble 70 minutes, this film only begins to entice old gorehounds. Unlike the 2+ hour Filmgore (also directed by Dixon), Zombiethon only features films from the Wizard Video library (with other worthy classics sorely missed). If Zombiethon had followed the Filmgore formula, films such as Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Zombies and The Gates of Hell would have probably made an appearance (and a huge difference in running time).

The artwork for Zombiethon features a scantily-clad woman is running up a movie-theater aisle with zombies seated on both sides. The front cover is a replica of the in-store promotional poster. There is a blob-ish copy burst proclaiming that this release is "especially for home video." At this point in time, movies intended for the home video market were starting to become the craze. Wizard was in the middle of their direct-to-video streak with releases of Breeders, The Headless Eyes and Dreamaniac (all featuring special video trailers on them).

The back cover is typical of a Wizard big-box release. One of the two pictures on the back cover comes from a film that isn't even featured in the movie (Franco's Revenge on the House of Usher, which isn't even a zombie film). The other is from Oasis of the Zombies. The synopsis underneath lists some movies that also do not make an appearance in Zombiethon - White Zombies and Revenge of the Zombies. The Lightning Video logo appears on the back cover.

Zombiethon may have its shortcomings, but it is definitely worth a look for just about any horror fan. It is not too hard to hunt down these days, and the $295.00 price tag for this out-of-print gem is a memory from the distant past. The fact that this film will probably never see the light of day again is a sad one, given its reputation among gorehounds and its historical rotten fingerprint on home video shelves from the 1980s. May we all hope that this one gets a DVD release.....