“Kind of a byproduct of that is when people don’t invest in this product, you’re not going to be able to afford the business model of restoring them. “When it comes to the modern age, you’re trying to fight the idea that this stuff is totally free,” said Neurath. While streaming and digital media are taking the place of physical media as the main torchbearer of this age-old artform, the team behind Vinegar Syndrome believes that their investment into physical media not only leaves a bigger footprint for some of these lost movies, but it also creates a sense of community among horror fanatics and collectors. “With the exploitation and cult horror films, that as a genre, aside from silent films, are some of the most watched films in American film history,” added Upson. That’s why a lot of it was dumped onto lower grade media,” said Neurath. Lower budget films were never taken care of when it came to 35mm and 16mm film preservation and restoration. “Cult horror, and other exploitation films along this line, are very under-restored because of the market. The team behind Vinegar Syndrome chose the genres of cult horror and exploitation because of their nature of generally being some of the most under-restored movies on the market. It’s pretty rare to find real estate this big in Los Angeles where you can have this film archive,” said James Neurath, retail and streaming manager for Vinegar Syndrome and co-owner of The Archive. “We like Connecticut because we can utilize this big space. In some cases, obtaining a master copy alone could take months.Īccording to Upson, this process takes place in their Bridgeport warehouse, which has become their base of operations off of I-95. The process of restoring film, however, can take months, depending on the level of degradation in the master copies.
“We have this old school alcohol cleaner, a Lipsner Smith kind, and we get it from scanning.” From then on, I take it to the alcohol cleaner and clean up the reel,” said Brandon Upson, Manager of Scanning and Restoration for Vinegar Syndrome and Co-owner of The Archive, regarding the restoration process. “We would get the film, we would check it for degradation, vinegar, and anything like that.
According to their website, the term Vinegar Syndrome is “a chemical reaction that deteriorates motion picture film over time.” In 2012, Ryan Emerson and Joe Rubin started Vinegar Syndrome, working with various independent film houses hoping to restore films that have not seen the light of day in decades. The Archive opened its doors in 2017 as a storefront for Vinegar Syndrome, a film restoration and distribution company whose mission it is to restore cult and lost films from the latter half of the 20th century.
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