The AGFA Horror Trailer Show Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

The AGFA Horror Trailer Show Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 29, 2021

Oregonians (like myself) tend to pride themselves on being rugged individualists, creative innovators and all around forward thinkers, but I hate to tell my fellow state residents that the oft repeated mantra “Keep Portland weird” actually originated somewhere else: in Austin, Texas. For those who may be wondering why Austin would want to “keep Portland weird”, it might be helpful to add that the original version was actually “Keep Austin weird”. If anyone needs proof of just how weird Austin can be, my personal advice, at least for lovers of cult movies, is to look no further than the American Genre Film Archive, which hails from the Texas city. AGFA has been releasing a bevy of, well, weird offerings for the past several years, with a number of truly outré titles that, frankly, most people have probably never heard of. As several of the AGFA staff mention in an appealing commentary included on this Blu-ray disc as a supplement, The AGFA Horror Trailer Show is their first release of self-produced “entertainment”, and they actually went to the trouble of creating an actual 35mm film print for release from which this release was transferred. This is a compilation of often bizarre and just as frequently laugh out loud hilarious trailers for various films that, again, most people have probably never heard of, combined with the sort of interstitial fare, a la “let’s all go to the lobby”, that viewers might have seen at drive-ins in particular back in the day. The result is a kind of bizarro world time capsule that suggests that the above mentioned phrase might be better “enlarged” to “Keep America weird”.

There are so many bizarre delights available in this compilation that any budding "cultural historians" will find this a cornucopia of not just exploitation marketing, but also sidebars like midcentury modern aesthetics in various offerings. There are some curiosities like The Flamer (see screenshot 7) and often hilarious "warnings" like one seen in the trailer for Massage Parlor Murders that this kind of nefarious activity might be happening "right here in your town", to paraphrase a term of art from a famous exploitation film of yesteryear, Reefer Madness.

The AGFA Horror Trailer Show Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The AGFA Horror Trailer show is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. As should be expected, the wide variety of source elements, many in radically different conditions, contribute to a pretty heterogeneous appearance here. Some of the trailers and other interstitial material is rather ragged looking, with lots of scratches, nicks and splotchiness, while other moments looks relatively unaffected by the ravages of time. The palette is widely variant as well, with some supposedly color sequences looking washed out and others retaining a good deal of their original luster. I'm assuming that despite this being struck from a 35mm print, the source elements themselves may have come from different formats, and so grain can also ebb and flow at times, but for the most part resolves naturally.

The AGFA Horror Trailer Show Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The AGFA Horror Trailer Show offers a decent sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono mix which is again subject to the audio vagaries of the original soundtracks. While there's nothing really problematic here, especially for those who are going to love the cult aspects of this release, there are certainly boxy moments, spikes and valleys in amplitude, and the occasional pop and crack. Kind of amazingly, optional English subtitles are available.

The AGFA Horror Trailer Show Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary Track: Hang Out with the AGFA Team features Joe Ziemba, Alicia Coombs, Bret Berg, Ivan Peycheff, and Sebastian del Castillo.


• The AGFA Horror Trailer Show: Videorage (1080p; 1:10:42) is another compilation of completely insane trailers and other accoutrements.


• Say Goodbye to Your Brain (1080p; 6:50) is advertised as a found footage experiment.

The AGFA Horror Trailer Show Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

While the agreeable commentary on this disc gets into other "trailer compilation releases", including some evidently put out by AGFA itself, I personally had never really experienced anything like this until I reviewed both Kung Fu Trailers of Fury and Return of Kung Fu Trailers of Fury. The AGFA Horror Trailer Show may putatively offer its own take on a genre based compilation, but while this release is about as goofy as either of the Kung Fu outings, it may in fact be a bit more eclectic, in that there are wide variety of exploitation films in a number of horror subgenres offered here, as well as some of the fun and funny "interstitial" things like The Flamer or snack bar advertisements. Video and audio are both a bit variable, as should be expected from the wide variety of source elements, but on the whole are more than watchable and listenable. The supplementary material is a typically gonzo assortment of goodies from the, yep, weird folks at AGFA. Recommended.