It’s Christmas Day so it’s as good a time as any to wish everyone a happy holiday season and a bright New Year. We all hope that everyone has enjoyed our recent Christmas themed reviews and all of the work that we’ve put out over the year. At this point Menagerie Video has published over 1,040 blog posts. We have all enjoyed bringing our unique take on cinephile culture to you and hope that you’ve enjoyed it as well. 2023 has been an insane year for the movie obsessed. There have been strikes aplenty, an unfathomable number of great new films and dozens of amazing home video releases.
In addition to scooping up the latest discs, we here at the Menagerie have been going to the movies, collecting vinyl, and playing with the latest NECA action figures all year round. Of these various adventures in movie fandom few have been as enjoyable as seeing Halloween I-III on 35mm at the Mahoning Drive-In Theatre or unboxing NECA’s Elvira’s Very Scary Xmas figure. We love all things movies and are forever grateful to our community for making cinephilia such a total blast.
As far as we’re concerned no one in the industry of physical media is doing more important work than the folks over at Vinegar Syndrome. The people at Vinegar Syndrome save films every day from deteriorating into nothing. They also release an impressive cross section of obscure genre titles that are essential to a well-rounded and all inclusive film education.
In a close second behind Vinegar Syndrome is the Indicator label. Their editions of Jean Rollins’ films this year have been gorgeous and absolute collector’s essentials. More importantly they have issued scholarly and exhaustive boxed sets for Michael J. Murphy, Tod Slaughter and the Ormond family. These boxed sets have made the works of these outsider auteurs easily accessible for the first time and will likely help to shape a shift in discourse in popular culture surrounding these underrated artists.
Third place in our ranking of the best boutique labels is Arrow Video. Arrow Video has been putting out consistently high quality releases of cherished favorites for years and have more than earned their reputation in the industry. Kino-Lorber has likewise been keeping us cinephiles both happy and busy with all of their releases. Although Kino-Lorber doesn’t boast the same deluxe packaging as Arrow Video, Indicator, or Vinegar Syndrome, they hare arguably brought more films onto the home video market than any other label this year.
Despite all of the terrors in the world today we are lucky to be living through a new golden age of physical media. Streaming is a failed experiment for cinephiles and it is time for us collectors to jive and thrive. 2024 looks to be an even bigger year for us media junkies and we here at Menagerie Video are going to be here for it. We hope that you will be too. See you all in the New Year.
Happy Holidays!
