Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
The most comprehensive, all-inclusive look at the history and evolution of shot on video horror films. In 1982, "Boardinghouse" became the first shot on video feature-length horror film ever made. Totally lensed on videotape, the film was later transferred to 16mm and blown-up to 35mm for theatrical exhibition. In 1983, David A. Prior shot "Sledgehammer" on video and eventually released the film on videotape. For the first time, analog video became the format used in motion picture productions. It was smeary, messy and it wasn't film... but it was cheap. In 1985, United Home Video boldly released "Blood Cult" with the claim it was "the first movie made for the home video market." The booming popularity of video stores coupled with a never-satisfied demand for content ensured these films longevity. Soon hundreds of titles followed, all video-created features by independent unknowns. They weren't from Hollywood. They weren't trained. But they had a lot of heart and a love for horror. And they made their own movies against the odds. For the first time EVER - "ANALOG NIGHTMARES" has brought these films together. Everything from "Boardinghouse" to "Zombie Holocaust" individually reviewed, categorized and presented chronologically by production year. Over 260 films! Featuring in-depth interviews with the filmmakers themselves - some speaking for the very first time! TIM BOGGS! MARK POLONIA! DONALD FARMER! TIM RITTER! JOEL D. WYNKOOP! DOUG STONE! ANDREA ADAMS! GARY WHITSON! DAVE CASTIGLIONE! PHIL HERMAN! ERIC STANZE! JAMES L. EDWARDS! WALTER RUETHER! TODD JASON COOK! NICK MILLARD! DAVID "THE ROCK" NELSON! RON BONK!
MZS.Press is the online arts bookstore founded by author, critic, and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz and directed by Judith Carter. It offers new, used, signed, collectible, and rare books on film, TV, music, photography, and the visual arts. The store was launched in 2019 on a different platform and has expanded to incorporate arts books published by MZSPress's private imprint: titles currently include Seitz's The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon and Dreams of Deadwood, about the HBO Western, and Walter Chaw's A Walter Hill Film.
Our deepest wish is to promote, encourage, and distribute work by small presses, academic presses, and individuals. Extraordinary work tends to get swallowed up on giant platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The store's inventory of nearly 1000 volumes is currently in the process of being reconstructed after its relocation from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Dallas, Texas. The titles featured here are personally selected by a group of curators and advisors, including Seitz, Carter, and an array of critics, artists, journalists, educators, publishers, and arts mavens who are known for their ability to suss out what Seitz's jazz musician dad liked to call "the good sh*t."
"She thinks I'm a fascist? I don't control the railways or the flow of commerce!" —Margot Robbie as Barbie in Barbie (2023)
Matt Zoller Seitz
Critic, Author, Filmmaker, MZS Press Creator
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large and film critic of RogerEbert.com; Features Writer for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, Contributing Writer for D Magazine and Texas Highways as well as finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and TV has appeared in Sight and Sound, The New York Times, Salon.com, The New Republic and Rolling Stone. Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine.
Seitz has written, narrated, edited or produced over a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image, Salon.com and Vulture, among other outlets such as Texas Highways and AARP. His five-part 2009 video essay Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style was spun off into the hardcover book The Wes Anderson Collection. This book and its follow-up, The Wes Anderson Collection: Grand Budapest Hotel were New York Times bestsellers.
Other Seitz books include the New York Times bestellers The Sopranos Sessions and Mad Men Carousel; TV (The Book), The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon, and The Wes Anderson Collection: The French Dispatch. He is also an interviewer, moderator, and film programmer who has curated and hosted film and TV presentations for the Museum of the Moving Image, IFC Center, San Francisco's Roxie Cinema, and other venues. He is currently launching a Dallas extension of his MZS Film Series at the historic Texas Theater.
Judith is quoted as saying "his hobbies include exotic dancing, moonwalking, and affixing masking tape labels to every food item in the refrigerator, including eggs. Oh and he has the attention span of a gnat." MZS agreed to it all except the moonwalking.