Videoscope: Good Mag, Annoying Omission

I've been subscribing to "Videoscope" magazine for years now, and I enjoy the interviews and the sci-fi/horror genre focus. The new issue, Winter 2007, features interviews with actors Irwin Keyes (Wheezy Joe from "Intolerable Cruelty") and Clancy Brown, reviews, a look at the first "Stepfather" movie and much more. In fact, with the death of "Psychotronic", "Videoscope" is probably the best mass-market mag covering obscure horror still going.

All good, right? So what annoys me? For some reason, the reviews do not include the name of the screenwriter in the brief header listing each film's credits. We get the director and the top few actors, but the writer? Nowhere to be found.

Now, the reviews occasionally-to-often mention the writer(s) in the body of the piece -- but not always. And so you can end up with something like their review of the new "Omen" remake which opens with the following: "How suspenseful can a horror film be when it's a scene for scene remake of an earlier, well known film -- especially when both have the same screenwriter and many scenes sport identical dialogue?" But nowhere in the review is that rather important crew member (David Seltzer) actually mentioned by name.

In a review of "Calvaire: The Ordeal", the director/co-writer is commended, but the other "co-writer" goes unnamed. "The Covenant: Brotherhood Of Evil" evidently wrote itself, along with "Desolation Sound", "Disorder"... okay, enough of the alphabetical rundown, now I'm officially depressed.

What IS it about not mentioning the writers? I mean, Videoscope is a magazine written by, *gasp*, writers. The writer of each review gets a credit at the bottom of his piece. The articles are carefully by-lined. So why not offer the same consideration to the folks who actually come up the ideas for the movies being reviewed?

I've written to Videoscope about this in the past, but this isn't a crusade and leaving the writing credits off the reviews isn't the end of the world. Hence this blog article's title reading "annoying" as opposed to "blight on humanity!" I fully intend to keep reading and supporting the magazine. But somehow, someday, it sure would be nice if they would rethink their review headers...