THE PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO GUIDE

THE PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO GUIDE Michael J. Weldon (St. Martin's, $29.95) Bad taste finds a home in an updated edition of this essential guide to the best of the ''worst'' horror, science fiction, fantasy, and exploitation films ever to grace a drive-in, grind house, or television screen. What films make the cut? Think Cul-De-Sac, Detour, or the remake of The Blob. Think Japanese soft porn, nudist-colony features, kickboxing and kung-fu blood-fests, women-in-prison films, '70s black action flicks, and you've covered a good portion of the contents. Sidebars on B-movie fanzines, Jackie Chan, Charlie Chan, burlesque features, and the Bowery Boys series are scattered throughout the book's 600-plus pages, as are numerous stills and movie-poster reproductions. Some might call these movies trash, but Weldon knows better. As he so eloquently states in one review -- and this could easily apply to all the movies described here -- ''Watch this after you get sick of It's a Wonderful Life.'' A