It’s now been about three and a half years since Donna’s passing. As you can imagine, her loss hit me very hard - in certain ways, I am and always will be reeling from it - and you can see that impact in terms of what has happened to the VIDEO WATCHDOG website. I’ve never been able to engage with what she created here, and anything more is most unlikely to happen. Donna, who I always said was the heart and soul of our enterprise, ran the business while I provided the grist for our mill. She is now gone, so there is no more business (despite what the abandoned website may say), and I am still providing grist for the mill, but the mill has changed to the purveyors of books and audio commentaries, and my own Facebook and Ko-Fi pages have played host to the reviews and other writings I’ve continued to generate - which I am now carrying over to this resuscitation of VIDEO WATCHBLOG.
I tried for awhile to accept orders for back issues, but I’ll be turning 70 later this year and - not having Donna’s advantage as a tiny, energetic person - I don’t find the idea of going into the eaves of my attic to fetch single issues buried under boxes of other issues very attractive. So anyone who places an order will get an apology and an immediate refund, as I’ve been doing for the last couple of years. I don’t drive, so any trip to the Post Office would require an Uber, to and from, so there would go my profits.
Likewise, the technical workings of offering digital editions is simply beyond my understanding, so there is nothing I can do to offer or sustain such content. I will remind you that when VIDEO WATCHDOG file for bankruptcy in 2016, the courts eventually forgave our sizable debt (which we had incurred to continue publishing after advertising revenue failed to materialize) but it was on the condition that we close the business. We petitioned for the right to publish one final issue, for closure and to present our last main feature with the Part 2 necessary to its entirety, which was granted, along with the right to continue our modest back issues sales as these represented no continuance of publication.
It’s possible that the back issues - even the Bava book - may resurface at some point as print-on-demand. I am presently working with a few different publishers who have expressed an interest but there is the old conflict of creating new work versus maintaining the past. The past has had its moment, so I tend to favor putting my efforts into the present and there is a lot of that - my commentaries (I have four or five big ones lined up at the moment, the Joe Sarno books (yes, it looks like there will be two volumes, like it or not), and other books yet to be announced, including - if time and life allow - a revised and updated edition of my Mario Bava book.
While I cannot give you VIDEO WATCHDOG anymore, I can give you VIDEO WATCHBLOG, which is within my skills and which I think Donna would encourage me to do. She’s still the wind in my sails. this blog has never been very good at compensating me for my time and effort but it’s at least public and it’s visible. Alas, it’s been an untended ghost town for awhile. What used to attract 1000s of daily views is presently drawing less than 200, so if my work pleases you, please do what you can to spread the word.
VIDEO WATCHBLOG IS BACK! (As John and Yoko used to say, “if you want it.”)
(C) 2026 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
