Why Restoring Cult Movies Is A Public Service, According To Legendary Horror Director Joe Dante [Exclusive]

There's a quiet yet disturbing shift happening in the streaming era — one that threatens not just the business of entertainment but its legacy as a whole. Entire films and series, sometimes years in the making, are being wiped off platforms overnight. Not because they're controversial or because they "failed," but because studios can write them off for a tax break or whatever other reason they provide to justify it. That's it. One executive decision and something that dozens or hundreds of people poured themselves into just ... vanishes.

What makes this worse is that sometimes these titles were never released on Blu-ray, DVD, or even made available for download. They lived exclusively on a server — and now they don't live anywhere. There's no dusty tape hiding in a video rental shop. No disc to stumble upon at a garage sale. Just silence, like it never existed at all. It's a bleak reminder of how fragile media becomes when it exists only in the cloud. When you don't own what you watch, someone else gets to decide whether it exists tomorrow. And if you care about the survival of weird, daring, offbeat stories — the kind that used to find new life as cult classics — this should scare the hell out of you.

Fortunately, a savior exists in the form of home media companies interested in the restoration, preservation, and distribution of cinema. Even the casual movie-lover is likely familiar with The Criterion Collection, but some of the greatest guardians are those that specialize in genre cinema, like the cult and horror sub-brand of Shout Factory, Scream Factory. To commemorate its 13th anniversary this year, Scream Factory held an event in Los Angeles featuring screenings of Joe Dante's "Piranha" and the world premiere of the new 4K restoration of George A. Romero's "Day of the Dead." I was privileged enough to speak with Dante about his relationship with the company that restored and distributed his films like "Piranha," "The 'Burbs," and "Explorers," and he called what they do at Scream Factory by keeping physical media alive "a public service."

I interviewed Joe Dante in front of the video store of Vidiots in Los Angeles, California, just to the right of their "Not on Streaming" shelf of movies that can only be seen if you can get your hands on a physical copy of them. Scream Factory had a pop-up table in the back, selling copies of their latest releases, and of course, Dante's work. "You've got to remember these boutique labels, as you call them, are the people who take up the things that The Criterion Collection isn't probably going to run," he told me. "Although [Criterion] has made some odd exceptions over the years, there are a lot of cultish movies that you used to only exist on Sinister Cinema's website."

For those unaware, Sinister Cinema (which Dante highly recommends) is an online catalog of B-movies, drive-in specials, horror, exploitation, sci-fi, and schlock cinema, with an extensive collection of titles that borders on definitive. The website looks exactly the same way it did when the internet was still in its infancy, but that's definitely part of its charm.

"But these new outfits, including Scream Factory, are not only bringing these pictures back from obscurity, but they're also restoring them, and they're giving us the best versions of these movies," Dante explained. "Many of us saw these movies in terrible prints or on TV all chopped up, with splices and scratches and all that kind of stuff, and now these things look pristine."

Especially now that the home video experience has gotten so advanced in its sound and picture quality, having physical media restorations to match is a godsend. There's certainly a charm to the crunchy, distressed quality of aged VHS tapes, but every film deserves to be seen the way it was always meant to be seen.

"Whenever they have a chance, they go back to as close to the original negatives as possible, and these pictures never looked any better," Dante said. "And now that we have the ability at home to screen these things and have them look as good or better than they did in the theater, like 'Piranha' now does, it's a public service." Having seen the Scream Factory restoration of "Piranha," Dante is not exaggerating here. You've never seen deadly fish puppets look so good. 

But the improved picture quality isn't the only benefit to these releases from companies like Scream Factory. For instance, the Collector's Edition release of "Piranha" is exciting because it includes the 2022 restoration of the 4K scan of the original camera negative, but it also features a new interview with Dante conducted specifically for the release, an audio commentary track with the legendary Roger Corman, a commentary track with Dante and producer Jon Davison, a "making of" mini-doc, behind the scenes footage, bloopers and outtakes, a gallery of still photos and behind the scenes photos (including pieces from creature designer/animator Phil Tippett's archives), additional scenes from the TV-edit of the film, TV commercial spots, radio spots, and multiple theatrical trailers. To love a film is to understand it truly, and with these releases, fans are given all of the necessary tools to do just that.

Happy 13th Anniversary, Scream Factory. Hordes of movie fans everywhere (including a legend like Joe Dante) thank you for your service.