We just received the latest e-newsletter from Something Weird Video, which reads in part:
January 2, 2024 marks the ten year anniversary of the death of SWV’s late great founder, Mike Vraney. He is missed by so many of us. With that said SWV has a major announcement to make. 2024 will be the LAST year for the SWV mail order, Downloads, and website. Mike Vraney never intended for Something Weird Video to continue after his passing. His wife and business partner, Lisa Petrucci, has been keeping things going since 2014 to honor her husband’s legacy. She is the only employee still working at SWV, and frankly, is exhausted and has decided it’s time to wind some parts of the business down. The current SWV website, downloads, and mail order just doesn’t bring in enough revenue for SWV to continue indefinitely and there are many expenses involved with keeping this website and company going. SWV basically brings in just enough money to cover the monthly business expenses, credit card fees, and overhead. So it’s been like running a not-for-profit company considering there isn’t enough income coming in to even pay the one employee who works there 24/7. …There are many other good reasons why this particular chapter needs to come to an end, but it would take a book to list them all.
So that said, November 1, 2024 will be the LAST day people can order from the SWV website (as it exists now). We will be keeping the BACK END of the SWV website active until December 31, 2024 so that Weirdos can still access their customer accounts and Download Orders. But after January 1, 2025 there will NOT be a way to get access to past Download Orders! So we strongly suggest that you go into your customer account and make sure that you’ve Downloaded and backed up all your video files and store them somewhere safe! (Prior to December 31, 2024 we can also still add more Download Attempts on existing Download Orders.)
Something Weird will continue, but as a leaner meaner version of itself. There will be a NEW Something Weird website starting in 2025. It will be a point of purchase for partner Blu-rays, the remaining deadstock of Image Entertainment DVDs, Modern Harmonic LPs and CDs, as well as old SWV catalogs, related paper ephemera, and anything else we feel like peddling and promoting on there. It will be a much simpler website that Lisa can maintain, manage and update herself.
The newsletter continues with a promise of further product in association with partner labels, including AGFA, Severin Films, Kino Cult (more Forbidden Fruit releases), Distribpix, Modern Harmonic (CDs and LPs), Pallbearer Press (T-shirts), and Cultpix (streaming). Additionally, once Lisa becomes more freed up, she plans to start book projects in the Something Weird Press imprint.
The newsletter signs off with:
Thanks for your support and understanding. This was a difficult decision, but necessary. We are looking forward to what’s next for Something Weird and will continue keep you up to date on New Releases in 2024 as they come out!
Readers of ESR will hardly need an introduction to the massive catalog of Something Weird Video. Mike Vraney had resurrected for the video age the works of vintage exploitation by David Friedman, Doris Wishman, H.G. Lewis and countless others. And then in partnership with Image Entertainment, SWV released DVDs crammed with feature films, short subjects and trailers. When the latter releases hit the shelves in the early 2000s, they were a boon to collectors who previously could only read about this stuff. Even today, they remain collectible, and no wonder!
This newsletter is saddening, but unsurprising in these changing times. Still, in the past ten years, Lisa has tirelessly kept alive the legacy of Mike Vraney and Something Weird Video. Out of tribue, ESR will begin a new feature, Something Weird Wednesdays, which samples vintage titles from Something Weird’s massive output.
In the meantime, do peruse the Something Weird website for downloads or (if you live in the US) mail orders.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.