Edited by Kier-La Janisse, Warped & Faded is a love letter to cult cinema

We are currently living through a golden age for genre cinema lovers. Affordable streaming services like Shudder, Arrow, and The Criterion Channel regularly showcase previously hard-to-find or under-seen horror and action films from around the world, while labels like Arrow Video, Vinegar Syndrome, Severin Films, and AGFA are releasing new restorations and beautiful box sets of films that had often only been available via terrible-looking bootlegs (if at all).

It must be making physical film collectors crazy. For years, the only way to see many of these ‘60s and ‘70s regional releases or drive-in curios was by screening an actual film print. Considering owning a film print was illegal (they were technically the property of the studio or distributor), print collecting was an underground hobby mostly made up of elderly men across the U.S. who were extremely guarded about their holdings. The story of how a collection of neglected film prints ended up sparking renewed interest in grindhouse cinema while leading to the creation of AGFA (The American Genre Film Archive) is now lovingly detailed in Warped & Faded (Mondo), a massive new oral history/film review book edited by Kier-La Janisse (director of the acclaimed new documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror).

Weird Wednesday & the birth of AGFA

Warped & Faded begins with an oral history on Weird Wednesday, a long-running weekly free screening series at Alamo Drafthouse that began back when the Alamo was a single-screen theatre in Austin, Texas. Founded by Tim and Karrie League, the Alamo became home to the series after Tim picked up a massive set of moldy film prints from an old warehouse and needed a home for the collection. What initially started out as a weekly random dip into the archives eventually took on a more curatorial aspect with Lars Nilsen’s involvement, who helped program the series and would also passionately introduce the films, priming the audience for what they were about to witness.

That contagious sense of fun and discovery allowed audiences to check out a wildly diverse collection of films from 1977’s Shock Waves (featuring rampaging underwater Nazi zombies) to  sex comedies like 1972’s Swinging Coeds (“no job is too big, too hard, or too wild!”)

The growing success of the Weird Wednesday screenings eventually led to the creation of AFGA in 2009, an association dedicated to preserving genre films, including League’s beaten-up reels. AGFA now counts over 6,000 films in its collection and has restored and distributed a number of incredible titles including 1989’s found footage film The McPherson Tape and the rare ‘90s DIY punk films of Sarah Jacobson (I Was a Teenage Serial Killer).

Bulk up your Letterboxd list

In addition to the informative and breezy oral history of Weird Wednesday, Warped & Faded features The Weird Wednesday Compendium, a huge section of capsule reviews of the titles that screened at the weekly series that will seriously bulk up your Letterboxd watch list. Featuring full-size colour posters of films and tons of photos, this reference section could easily be a book unto itself, and the enthusiastic and very honest reviews make even the iffiest films sound pretty appealing.

Alongside the reviews, the book includes The Weird Wednesday Hall of Fame, breakout essays on specific influential directors and actors that emerged from the drive-in scene including Al Adamson and Andy Milligan (both of whom recently received deluxe Blu-ray box set collections via Severin Films), Jess Franco, John Carradine, Susan Tyrell, and more from genre experts like Stephen Thrower and Kat Ellinger.

A visually striking celebration

More than just a treasure trove of information on countless underground films waiting to be discovered by modern audiences, Warped & Faded is also a knockout on the design front. With numerous color movie posters from the era, stills, early flyers, and behind-the-scenes imagery, there is a memorable visual on every single page, often with a washed-out or distressed aesthetic to match the look of the vintage prints the book is celebrating.

There have been a number of books on underground genre films in recent years, but Warped & Faded is one of the most informative and easily the most visually striking. The book chronicles the rise of popularity of these under-seen films through a dedicated network of film buffs and preservationists and offers up easily digestible recommendations that should keep adventurous viewers occupied for years to come.

Warped & Faded is available through Mondo now.