The latest edition of Nathaniel Thompson's exhaustive reference guide to cult movies on DVD emerges four years after the previous volume, and fans of the series will be relieved to know that little has changed - the book is still a DVD-sized, doorstop-weighted and densely packed look at what could be called 'off-mainstream' movies - or, to put it another way, the sort of thing we review here.

Thompson's book is an unashamedly personal selection - after all, even if he was sent every film released as a freebie, there still wouldn't be enough time for a single person to watch them all, even if they lay in their own filth and were fed through a drip. The meat and potatoes here are indie horror, science fiction, erotica, arthouse and oddities, but the odd very mainstream title slips through - one of the last titles featured here is The X-Files: I Want to Believe, presumably because Thompson is a fan of the series.

On the whole though, it's the 'weird and wonderful' (to quote the cover that dominates - picking a few titles at random, we have Home Sick, Murder-Rock, The Chilling, Terror Circus and Moonlighting Wives - and Thompson follows a sensible pattern in his reviews - cover the film first and the DVD (or Blu-Ray) second. He's a knowledgeable cult film fan (though perhaps a little unsure when it comes to adult movies) and a good writer; naturally, I don't agree with everything he says here, but the moments of spluttering outrage were few, and on the whole, he aims to make positive, reasoned arguments about the qualities (or otherwise) of a movie.

Likewise, his coverage of the DVD itself manages to generally avoid anally-retentive geekiness - the curse of so many DVD reviewers (I doubt that in the real world, where people have shown their preference by downloading AVIs, no one knows or cares what an interlaced disc is or why that's a bad thing) - while still managing to give a thorough rundown of extras, and a quick comparison (where necessary) with different versions around the world.

You might reasonably ask what the point of a book like this is in an age where a few clicks can take you to a dozen half-baked opinions about even the most obscure movie on IMDB . But that's missing the point. This is not simply a reference tool, but also an informer. It's a classic bathroom reader, designed to be dipped in and out of, allowing you to discover DVDs you didn't know were out, films you didn't know existed. For that reason alone, DVD Delirium is an essential book for any cult movie collector.

DAVID FLINT

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