The Kickstarter campaign for The Film Threat Compendium and Digital Archive hit its $25,000 goal in just 24 hours. With weeks still to go, the campaign is now at more than 180% of that goal, about $45,000, and the focus has shifted to a new set of stretch goals. The biggest of them is a party for backers.
Launched in 1985 as a Xerox ‘zine in Detroit, Film Threat became one of the loudest voices in cult, underground, and independent cinema. It covered the movies Hollywood ignored and poked fun at the ones it didn’t. The Film Threat Compendium is a 300-plus-page collectible book that tells that story through the filmmakers who lived it. It includes new interviews and issue-by-issue profiles commented on by major names in indie film.
The book covers a wide range of filmmakers, including Sam Raimi, Russ Meyer, Clive Barker, John Waters, Richard Linklater, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton, Kevin Smith and David Lynch. It also looks back at some of the magazine’s most notorious stories, including the chaos behind Ren & Stimpy, Roger Corman‘s never-released 1994 The Fantastic Four, the drama around Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, and the making of Ed Wood. Readers also get the behind-the-scenes story of the magazine itself: the late nights on deadline, the move from Detroit to Los Angeles, crashing film festivals, and outmaneuvering studio publicists. Longtime Film Threat contributor Glenn Barr is creating an original cover illustration, which has yet to be revealed.
The book comes with a fully remastered Digital Archive of the magazine’s entire print run. That includes the early Xerox issues and the complete run of the Film Threat Video Guide, home to underground renegades like Nick Zedd and Richard Kern. You can read every issue in its original form and search by keyword, issue number, or month and year. That matters to collectors because some rare issues had print runs as small as 500 copies and now sell for around $200 each.
The original $25,000 goal pays for archival scanning, photo restoration, and book design. Because that goal is already met, the campaign has announced its first wave of stretch goals:
- $50,000: Every backer of a physical reward (a pin or a Compendium book) gets a limited-edition Film Threat bookmark.
- $75,000: An audiobook version of the Compendium with additional stories. The voice talent is still to be announced.
- $100,000: A release party where backers can pick up their books and have drinks with the project team. The date and location are TBD, and the party will happen after the book is published.
More stretch goals will be unlocked if the campaign keeps climbing.
Rewards include the hardcover and paperback editions, printed in full color on premium paper. There is also a deluxe autographed edition with a slipcase, the Complete Digital Archive, and exclusive Film Threat collector pins. Every print backer also gets a digital edition of the book at no extra charge. A rough draft of the Compendium is already complete, and books are scheduled to reach backers in the fourth quarter of 2027.
The campaign runs through November 11. To back The Film Threat Compendium and Digital Archive, visit Kickstarter.
