How We Got Here
Vinegar Syndrome started in 2012 with a pretty straightforward idea: find films that were being ignored, locate the best surviving materials, preserve them properly, and get them back in front of an audience.
That idea has taken us in a lot of different directions.
Today, Vinegar Syndrome controls worldwide rights to more than 250 feature films, ranging from genuine cult favorites to movies that, not too long ago, were barely hanging on to existence.
Our library includes films such as Tammy and the T-Rex, Demon Wind, Spookies, Mausoleum, Devil Times Five, Blood Harvest, Angel, The Lamp, Death Promise, The Candy Snatchers, and plenty of others that would make for an unnecessarily long list.
We also control or manage significant groups of films originally produced and distributed by companies including New York-based Cinevest, home to New York Ninja and Night Train to Terror; Dimension Pictures, including The Muthers and Terminal Island; Krypton Corp, including Carnival Magic and Russ Meyer’s Fanny Hill; Spectacular Trading, including Don’t Open Till Christmas and French Sex Murders; and IRMI Films, including Criminally Insane and the films of Nick Millard.
Our holdings have expanded internationally as well, including a growing catalog of French horror and cult cinema such as Night of Death and Revenge of the Living Dead Girls.
And, yes, theatrical erotic cinema is an important part of the archive too. We control and preserve significant catalogs including the films of Alex deRenzy and Caribbean Films and, in partnership with Distribpix, Inc., the Mitchell Brothers Film Group. Much of this material is released through our sister site, Mélusine.
One Label Wasn't Enough
As the company grew, the range of films we wanted to release got wider. Eventually, putting everything under the Vinegar Syndrome banner stopped making much sense, so we started creating sub-labels.
They all have different personalities, but the thinking behind them is basically the same: if a film interests us, we want to release it on home video in the best way possible.
Vinegar Syndrome Archive (VSA)
Focuses on the video store era: action, horror, martial arts, oddball obscurities, and plenty of things that probably looked great sitting on a rental shelf in 1991.
Vinegar Syndrome Ultra (VSU)
Where we go bigger, giving major studio and cult films elaborate 4K UHD + Blu-ray editions.
Vinegar Syndrome Labs (VSL)
Our testing ground for stranger genre material and films that don't necessarily fit anywhere else.
Not Everything Survives on Film
We obviously love film.
Unfortunately, not everything we care about survives that way.
In 2019, VS co-founder Ryan Emerson started Degausser Video to focus on movies shot on videotape, along with productions that were shot on film but edited and finished on video, leaving no complete film version behind. For many of these productions, the videotape master is the original surviving element.
Making New Films Too
After years of restoring older genre films, we eventually decided we should help make some new ones too.
Although our passions lie in restoration and preservation, starting in 2021, we launched Vinegar Syndrome Pictures (VSP), to present brand new, shot-on-film genre cinema, including legendary underground director Scooter McCrae’s return to feature filmmaking with Black Eyed Susan, Alex Phillips’ multi award winning Anything That Moves, and most recently in release, long time Vinegar Syndrome restoration artist Kurtis Speiler’s take on a homegrown horror film with Night of the Vamp-Friars.
Currently in post production are Kansas Bowling’s Little Miss Nobodies and Alex Phillips’ latest production Rough on Rats, starring Ginger Lynn Allen, Betsey Brown, and Tony Moran.
It's a slightly different direction for a company that started by saving old movies, but it really isn't that different.
We like films made by people with a point of view. Sometimes that means finding one that was made 45 years ago. Sometimes it means helping somebody make one now.
Still Vinegar Syndrome
Vinegar Syndrome is a much bigger and stranger company than it was in 2012. We restore films. We preserve archives. We acquire libraries. We release movies. We operate a growing group of labels. And now we help make new films as well.
The scope has changed.
The reason for doing it really hasn't.
We think film history is a lot bigger, messier, weirder, and more interesting than the handful of titles that have traditionally received most of the attention.
We want as much of that history to survive as possible.
