First video and more recently the internet with its streaming videos and not strictly legal peer-to-peer capabilities. With so many sources available, today’s fan of horror and exploitation movies isn’t necessarily educated on paths well-trodden, such as Universal and Hammer. They may not even be born and bred on Dawn of the Dead. Anyone with a bit of technical savvy (quickly becoming second nature for the born-clicking generation) may be viewing Mystics in Bali and S.S. Experiment Camp long before ever hearing of Bela Lugosi or watching a movie directed by Dario Argento.

Spinegrinder is one man’s ambitious, exhaustive and utterly obsessive (1,100 pages!) attempt to make sense of over a century of exploitation and cult cinema, of a sort that most critics won’t care to write about. One opinion; 8,000 reviews (or thereabouts).