Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 234: Something Weird Video Catalog #1 (1995-1996)

If you needed some Ed Wood movies in the '90s, SWV could hook you up.

In the 1990s, there was a tremendous resurgence of interest in Edward D. Wood, Jr. and his films, spurred by the release of Rudolph Grey's oral history Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) and Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood (1994). Naturally, people wanted to see Eddie's infamous movies for themselves, but the films weren't always easily accessible for on-demand viewing—certainly not to the extent that they are today. This was still the golden age of physical media, so fans were reliant on VHS tapes and, later, DVDs. If you wanted to watch something, you had to own or rent a copy of it.

Wanna watch some weird movies?

Numerous companies stepped in to distribute Ed's movies on home video during this time. In the past, I've argued that Los Angeles' Rhino Home Video was the most significant of these companies. Their Ed Wood releases, complete with faux-retro "Ed Wood Collection" stickers, seemed to occupy the most shelf space at retail outlets like Suncoast, Best Buy, and Sam Goody. My personal Ed Wood indoctrination came through Rhino releases, and I'm positive that the first feature-length Wood documentary I ever saw was Rhino's charmingly kitschy Look Back in Angora (1994). So the company has a special place in my heart. This series of articles might not exist without it. 

But, through years of researching this column, I've learned that there was another quirky home video company in the '90s that played a significant role in finding and releasing Ed Wood's movies. I'm referring to Seattle's legendary Something Weird Video. 

If you're a cult movie fan of any caliber whatsoever, then it's a near-certainty that SWV has been an important part of your movie education. The company specializes in preserving movies that were previously considered worthless, bottom-of-the-barrel junk: low-budget horror, exploitation, and sexploitation films, mainly from the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. Thanks to SWV, the films of Doris Wishman, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Harry Novak, Barry Mahon, Coffin Joe, and more found a new audience among '90s film freaks. And the company has never given up on that mission, even after the death of founder Mike Vraney in 2014. In 2025, conceding to the times, SWV relaunched as a streaming service on the Cultpix website.

In the company's earliest days, long before its "Special Edition" DVDs were available in stores, Something Weird Video was basically a mail-order company. Recently, in the Ed Wood Jr. Facebook forum, Jordan Rapoza posted an excerpt from SWV's first-ever catalog from 1995. After a little digging, I found that the entire catalog had been uploaded to the Internet Archive. To say the least, it's a pretty incredible document, one that instantly transported me back to the days when I was scouring Usenet forums and fanzines for any information I could get about these bizarre, "forbidden" films. I wish I'd held onto more of the catalogs and advertising flyers from those days. Luckily, others did!