While slowly gaining ascendancy as the producers of the most useful guide to movies on tape, the people who bring you the annual VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever have begun branching out into more specialized guides. And while the indispensibility of guides to science-fiction films and vampire movies is debatable—those films' devotees seem to know their subjects by heart already—this guide to barely released and straight-to-video features fills a void. After all, somebody has to create a scale by which Animal Instincts, Night Eyes and the Body Chemistry series may be judged. Though straight-to-video B-movies—whose virtues author Mike Mayo defends—make up the bulk of Video Premieres' 1000+ entries, Mayo also covers art-house fare, directors' cuts, many overlooked gems, and interviews with various filmmakers whose work has in most cases never been seen on the big screen. What a reference book such as this cannot provide, although Mayo's introduction touches on such matters, is a history of the video netherworld and an examination of its workings. Nevertheless, this guide is essential as an introduction to the unplumbed depths of the video store, and as the only place where extended capsule reviews of titles as diverse as Brother's Keeper, Theodore Rex, The Brave Little Toaster, Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Gator Bait 2: Cajun Justice can be found.