From 1987, Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell was one of those dime-a-dozen trailer collections from the VHS heyday I never expected to hit DVD, but in 2010, it finally did, and evidently was successful enough to merit a sequel in Celluloid Bloodbath: More Prevues from Hell. Once again, it’s hosted in part by Happy Goldsplatt, a Cryptkeeper-esque puppet who notes that, in the grindhouse age, the trailers often were more entertaining than the flicks they promoted.
Celluloid Bloodbath offers 62 examples, broken up into themed groups that range from your obvious vampires, psychos and cannibals to more clever categories like carnival horrors, promotional gimmicks and killer animals. Italian maestro Dario Argento gets his own short showcase to close out the collection.
Among the madness are the “weird, winged wonders” and “hideous, horned horrors” of the Philippines-lensed The Twilight People, the pantyhosed thrill-killers of Meat Cleaver Massacre, and the misbegotten Monster a-Go Go “with a genuine, 10-foot-tall monster to give you the whim-whams.” Sales lines like that often prove the highlights; the circus-set Berserk! offers a yes-or-no quiz to potential viewers, i.e. “I get stabbing pains when I see a victim fall on naked bayonets!”
While not as deep-digging as Synapse’s 42nd Street Forever series, Celluloid Bloodbath does sport a couple of real obscurities in its lineup, including Alabama’s Ghost. Yet what infuriates is that, unlike the original, “interview” segments break the flow after every pair or so. Some are relevant, such as Linnea Quigley introducing her film debut in Psycho from Texas (“Now, bitch, let’s dance!”), but most have nothing to do with anything, are shot at some dreary convention, and feature non-names who have nothing of value to contribute. —Rod Lott
Director George Ratliff’s 
