Tim Lucas subsequently spent most of his childhood in the homes of various relatives and caregivers, seeing his widowed mother only on weekends, when she took him to drive-in theaters.
[6] Though Lucas did not graduate high school,[7] he succeeded in placing an essay about Anthony Burgess in the Autumn 1981 issue Purdue University's literary quarterly Modern Fiction Studies.
The editors then hired him to edit and co-author a series of twelve paperback video guides published in the summer and winter of 1985 by Signet Books.
With the dissolution of Video Times in 1986, the column resurfaced as a shot-on-video featurette, hosted and narrated by Lucas, in Pacific Arts Corporation's one-shot video-magazine-on-video experiment Overview, produced by Michael Nesmith.
Director Quentin Tarantino praised Video Watchdog in the pages of the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano as "l'unica rivista di cinema autorevole al mondo" ("the only reliable film magazine in the world").
[10][11] Lucas's critical biography Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark (ISBN 0-9633756-1-X), a vast work thirty-two years in preparation, with an introduction by Martin Scorsese, was published in August 2007 by Video Watchdog.
[15] Lucas' Spirits of the Dead (Histoires Extraordinaires), is a 232-page monograph about the 1968 anthology film based on three Edgar Allan Poe tales, directed by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini.
[citation needed] He also makes frequent contributions of liner notes, audio commentaries and archival materials to DVD and Blu-ray releases.
In 2013, he penned an introduction to the first issue of Flesh and Blood, a horror graphic-novel serial co-written by Robert Tinnell and Todd Livingston and illustrated by Neil D. Vokes.
[26] In October 2016, the script was the subject of a live table reading at the Vista Theater in Los Angeles, promoted as "The Best Film Never Made."
[26] In November 2010, Lucas made his directorial debut at The Factory Digital Filmmaking School of the Douglas Education Center, with a promotional trailer and dialogue scene for a proposed feature film adaptation of his novel Throat Sprockets, executive produced by Robert Tinnell.
[citation needed] The short premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, Quebec on July 18, 2011, as a lead-in to the documentary Jean Rollin - Le Reveur Égare.
[27] In 2010, The Factory Digital Filmmaking School said director Irene Miracle would direct a short film, The Baggage Claim, based on a screenplay by Lucas.
[31] The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films recognized Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark with a Special Achievement Saturn Award,[32] and had actor John Saxon present it to Lucas and his wife Donna.
[47] Tim Lucas and his wife and business partner, Donna Lucas, were among the first class inducted into the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame in May 2011, along with historian Tom Weaver, fantasy artist William Stout, poster collector and historian Ron Borst, director George A. Romero; and the late Verne Langdon, from the Don Post mask studios.