Vampire Week Day 5: VideoHound's Vampires on Video

Been an avid film fan I have several books on the subject, from biography of film series, actors and directors, and of course film guides. Though I'm young enough to have had the internet readily available to me most my life when I was younger my first port of call for film information was Halliwell's Film Guide, specifically the 2003 edition we still have on the bookshelf. Though Hallowell's seems to have ended, been replaced by the same in all but name Radio Times Film Guide I'll always have cherished memories of looking through the big green book and reading about my favoured film as well as discovering new one's I was yet to see.

It was a couple years ago I came across VideoHound's Vampires on Video, published in 1997 and written by J. Gordon Melton. an American religious scholar who's areas of research, among other things, include Vampireology, he had previously written the successful Vampire Book: An Encyclopedia of the Undead and is the president of the American chapter The Transylvanian Society of Dracula.

VideoHound's Vampires on Video is a sort of Hallowell's that's exclusively for vampire film's, boasting an impressive 600 plus films, giving you a brief synopsis, opinions, rating and a few facts including year released, director, awards, what home media formats it's available on (US only,) among others.

These bite sized reviews are easy to sink your fangs into but the book also has pages dedicated to actors and directors that help flesh out the already impressive book. There are also several pictures throughout, all black and white and the sheer number is great never going more than a couple pages without been treated to a poster or screenshot, though my copy always manages to fall open on the page with this heart-attack inducing image from 1985's Fright Night.

If you are a horror, vampire or just a movies fan this is a book worth tracking down, you can pick it up pretty cheep online. I only wish there had been more editions of the book so that we could have films covered from the rest of the 90's and the 21^st century. Though this is my only book from the VideoHound series I hope to track down a couple more, one advertised in the front of Vampires on Video sound particularly delicious; Cult Flicks and Trash Pics.