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Books (Non-fiction)

Book Review: Fright Night On Channel 9

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Fright_night_on_channel_9

Zombos Says: Excellent

For me, and many like me, the impact of Fright Night has not lessened over time, but the generation that I am part of, the one that can truly appreciate this era, is rapidly aging. It's not difficult to imagine a point in the not too distant future where Fright Night, and all the programs like it, may be lost to fading memories and a society no longer interested in such antiquities. (James Arena)

I'm not as big a fan as James Arena is, but his passion for Fright Night, a horror-hostless, near midnight showcase of the good, the bad, and the ugly in fantastic cinema, that ran on New York's WOR-TV from 1973 to 1987, is well shared in Fright Night on Channel 9 from McFarland Press.

I don't often read McFarland titles because they're awfully expensive and not all of them are well-written or carefully researched. Being a Brooklyn boy growing up watching Channel 11 and Channel 9's sumptuous telecasts of horror and science fiction movies, both foreign and domestic, I couldn't resist Arena's book. If you're familiar with Fright Night, or just love to read about television in the days before anyone could see just about anything they fancied anytime they chose,  this book is a gem of interviews, anecdotal nostalgia, and glimpses into how the biz worked to bring packages of movies to affiliate stations on a regular basis. We're talking pre-video and pre-digital here, when stations ran 16 and 35mm prints, spliced up the film reels frame by frame for commercials, and did a little editing to run in allotted times and–more or less–to remove the occassional booby show, or overly nastiness, not fit for young eyes.

Within the two parts of Fright Night on Channel 9, Arena recalls the ritual of watching Fright Night regularly at the late-night hour as well as capturing that unique feeling of excitement of finally getting to see that movie you had heard was so awesome or so awful you just had to see it. Part One: The Story of Fright Night provides the history of the show, enriched by the interviews and the wheeling and dealing work involved to acquire "product" like Universal's horror pictures, Hemisphere's Block of Shock package of movies, and  Samuel M. Sherman's Independent-International Pictures Corp. and his Euro-horror movies for the show's run. Part Two: The Films of Fright Night lists all the movies that were shown with airdates. Arena goes further than simply regurgitating plot synopses by adding his personal observations to the various entries, making this part enjoyable reading as well as informative.

Hanging onto the movies once they were contracted for play wasn't always easy. The highlight of the book for me is  Samuel M. Sherman's  recounting of a run-in with a bankrupt processing lab holding his 16mm prints of his Exorcism at Midnight and House of Doom. The WOR contract stipulated delivery of a specified number of movies and couldn't be fulfilled while the lab held onto them. Elements of the shyster lawyer, the payola-or-kiss-your-prints-goodbye scenario, and the eventual showdown, to strong arm the prints from the lab, is a wild and wooly story. 

I read Fright Night on Channel 9 in one night. Half of my effort was made because I remembered the unique experience of watching the show, and others like it, which has shaped my horror habit of today, but the other half is because James Arena kept me up late with his vivid remembrance of a culturally significant "antiquity" that shouldn't be forgotten, nor the people who made it so.

Book Review: Mail-Order Mysteries

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mail-order mysteriesZombos Says: Excellent

Kirk Demarais is crazy; as a kid he becomes so enamored with all those wild and wacky mail-order items hyped in the pages of comic books that he has to seek them out, years later, to satisfy his curiosity. Years after his parents told him they were junk or cheap crap or not really what the ads said they were and he'd be disappointed and dollar-foolish if he bought any one of them. But Kirk Demarais is a crazy adult, and he goes ahead and hunts those mail-order mysteries down just to scratch his itch. And damn if it isn't a satisfying scratch.

Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff from Old Comic Book Ads! scratches my itch, too, especially because I bought a lot of these cool-looking-in-print mysteries, only to find out many of them weren't as advertised, and all those too good to be true descriptions were spot on: they were definitely TOO good to be true . 

Grouping stuff into chapters like Top Secret, Oddities, Better Living Through Mail-Order, War Zone, High Finance, Trickery, and House of Horrors, Demarais gives us the lowdown on how the ad copy and ambitious product illustration perked our young imaginations, then he reveals the real deal, describing what you actually did receive for your allowance money.

Luckily, not all of these potentially awesome goodies turned out to be bad: the spooky Greedy Fingers Bank, originally made in tin-litho, was a screamer as the skeleton arm reached out to grab a coin; those 6-foot, full-color, Monster Size Monsters posters of Dracula and Frankenstein were freaking frightful; and my favorite, Grow Live Monsters, which came with a space astronorium (illustrated backdrop and stand)  and two colorfully creepy alien monstrosities for a buck,  was the cardboard and grass seed equivalent of the Chia Pet.

From experience I can tell you a bad one could be very disappointing, though, especially after waiting weeks for its mail delivery, all the while dreaming of the endless possibilities once you held it in your hands. The 100pc Toy Soldier Set flattened my hopes when those awfully flat plastic soldiers and armament arrived in their flimsy cardboard footlocker; I never got to see how the Venus Fly Trap plant captured and ate its insect prey because mine never blossomed; and the Magic Art Reproducer didn't produce for me at all. I'm still not sure why I even bought that one. While the Secret Agent Spy Camera didn't work out for me (I couldn't find anyone to develop the mini film), at least it was still cool to show and-tell at school and it made me feel like James Bond.  So at least that one wasn't a total loss.

For those who remember the thrill and empowerment felt when ordering golden junk like this from comic books, then waiting on pins and needles for it to arrive, and then winding up feeling either giddily satisfied, somewhat satisfied, or completely duped, this book will bring back lots of great memories (and maybe some depressing ones, too). For those who don't know anything about this pop-culture staple of early marketing, it's a gold mine of how gullible and desperate our young imaginations were.

And how much fun, and magical, and unbounded, too.

moon monster mail-order

spooky bank mail-order

Book Review: Know Your Enemy
War Against the Walking Dead

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WatwdZombos Says: Very Good

You and your fighters in the war against the walking dead need to be aware of these different stages of zombie—fresh, putrefied and desiccated. Know their capabilities and what helps to create or sustain them. Drier weather will lead to more desiccated zombies, humid more bloaters and a severe cold snap will arrest many ghouls at the ‘fresh’ phase, which can be particularly dangerous as your forces may mistake them for humans. Remember, no zombie can speak and their lumbering movements will always give them away but don’t assume anything—be sure and be safe.

 

I don’t quite get the fascination with zombies in meta-reality. All that shifting of supposition–the undead really, truly, exist or can or will exist–through dichotomous rationalizations from fiction to fact, and unreal to real, simply isn’t my cup of tea. Then again, I don’t get the zombie dress-up fad, either. Stumbling and drooling around on a weekend afternnon can be a drag. I rather keep my zombies on the page, in my head, and dead, dead, dead, as well as chomping at the bit every chance they get.

Sean T. Page prefers his zombies real and life-threatening. In his War Against the Walking Dead, he mixes pseudo-historical data with pseudo-science, adds tactical methodology and weaponry deployment (medieval to contemporary), and presumes the worst has happened: the world is overun, you’re on the run (only pausing long enough to read his self-help guide), and the fight is on. Here and there you’ll sense a bit of tongue in cheekiness, but it’s not too firmly planted, so I’m not all that sure if Page is truly fully bonkers or simply winking-crackers nutty over zombies stepping into the real world.

The armoured bank truck—transport troops in safety (no pin number required)

Much more common than military vehicles, this adaptation works just as well with delivery trucks etc. It involves fitting out these vehicles as mobile command posts and troop carriers. So we are talking about seating, a small table, improved communications and crucially, the installation of a trapdoor at the bottom or on top of the vehicle for emergencies. Something to watch out for here is that some trucks have doors that open outwards, making it easy for a pile of ghouls to trap troops inside if the vehicle breaks down or becomes stuck.

Stick figure drawings and simple pencil sketches illustrate important points or factoids here and there, and numerous historical references are cited. For instance, in the chapter on static defenses against the walking dead, Page discusses the proper way to build a zombie-proof wall using The Francis Formula. Captain Francis, a French captain in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, laid out a set of measurements for building anti-zombie fortifications that could withstand the destabilizing forces a zombie horde would exert on them. Particular note is made of the ghoul-step and how it can affect your height requirements, and of the horizontal pressures that will build up as more and more zombies claw their way forward. For defense sans fortifications, Page discusses the Roman Army’s infantry tactic of the triple line battle order, and the infantry square variation.

 

Where personal armament is concerned, aside from the usual firearms recommendations (AK 47, Heckler & Koch G3), the more basic edged weapons are recommended, including the halberd (wonderful for fighting werewolves, too, I use one all the time) and the common heavy sword for cleaving heads in two. I’d recommend staying away from the two-handed varieity as those are too heavy and you’ll tire quickly in combat slashing and thrashing with it, and double-edged works better than single–don’t forget, you’ll have zombies in back of you as well as in front.

I’m surprised Page doesn’t mention the mace as a suitable weapon. One with flanges or knobs to allow greater penetration of the cranium per blow would be aces in my bag of zombie survival gear. I also don’t fully agree with the inclusion of the crossbow as it’s arguably not more effective than a compound bow in certain respects . The weight of a crossbow is distributed unevenly, unlike a compound bow, making it hard to wield. While it’s easier to learn how to shoot with one (Page notes it was termed the peasant’s weapon because it was easy to master), arming one can be a vexingly fatal experience when confronted by a gang of anxious zombies. The compound bow is more supple and maneuverable in this respect.

Other weapons I’d recommend would be…Oh, crap, now he’s got me doing it.

Zombies are not real, zombies are not real, zombies are not…

Book Review: Chasing Ghosts Texas Style

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ChasingghostsZombos Says: Good 

There are two corrections I’ll note for Brad and Barry Klinge’s book about their nocturnal exploits with the supernatural, Chasing Ghosts Texas Style: On the Road With Everyday Paranormal. The first is Brad attributing  “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” to an old Mafia saying.  That’s wrong: the military strategist Sun-tzu said it first.  Brad, if you want a Mafia quote, I recommend this one: “I know nothing, I didn’t see anything, I wasn’t there, and if I was there, I was asleep.” Even if Michael Corleone says his father told him to keep his enemies closer in The Godfather, the Mob didn’t think of it first.

The second correction is more of a needed addition to the book. Brad and Barry describe their experiences with spectral phenomenon, often citing audio and photographic evidence gathered in their encounters, but there are no photographs. I can understand audio being a problem for the print edition (it would be great to hear EVPs in the ebook version, hint, hint), but to not include photographs  seems rather silly, don’t you think? Am I a skeptic? Sure, to an extent. But it’s more a case of me being tired of the endless hearsay descriptions given on every Ghost Hunters episode, Ghost Lab episode, and insert-your-own-favorite-here episode of any and every paranormal show.

You know the drill I’m referring to:  investigators start investigating by invariably doing a walk-through of the purportedly haunted premises first, guided by someone who describes how he or she, or a guest or co-worker, has seen a full body apparition, or heard a disembodied voice, or was tripped down the stairs by big spectral feet. The descriptions are always so much more juicy than the investigations (although, I confess,  both do jive enough for me, sometimes). Brad and Barrys’ very first investigation, the Harlequin Diner (they took photos), and Brad’s apparition sighting of Civil War soldiers (he said he filmed it), piqued my interest enough to want to see photographic evidence. But none is provided in the book. Ouch.

Now here’s what I really like about this book: the refreshingly skeptical stance both of them take when witches and feeling psychics are involved in investigations. Asterisks appear by certain names so I’ll assume those names have been changed. Whoever “Celeste” the psychic may be in real life, her effectively simple (but naughty) spook assist in the television studio investigation, as well as those white witches who conducted a questionable ceremony–with burning sage–in another, provide a much needed Everyday Normal against all the EVP, EMF, and K-2 meter gadgetizing.

The best chapter may be Everyday Nutsacks and Other Disasters, in which we meet tipsy “Meredith,” who dresses for the brothers’ investigation of her house  in a flowing white nightgown, and “Sharon,” who says the spirits levitated and rotated her.  At least she wasn’t tipsy.

In Chasing Ghosts Texas Style, Brad and Barry describe their roadtrip to everyday paranormal, potholes and all. A short glossary and essential list of ghost hunting tools will get you started, but you’ll just have to find–and avoid– the potholes for yourself. This book provides a good business primer to do that.

Book Review: Zombie Economics
Financial Survival Is Up To You

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Zombos Says: Very Good

Zombie_economicsThe premise of Zombie Economics: A Guide to Personal Finance is simple: "every skill required to survive an economic disaster mirrors a skill required to survive the zombie apocalypse." To authors Lisa Desjardins and Rick Emerson, those skills include knowing where the zombies are (your bills and other expenditures), and making sure you stock up on ammo (your savings) to keep them from putting the bite on you (your financial doom). This lively personal economics survival 101 course covers the essentials, with a continuing fictional storyline across chapters to remind you it's you against them at all times. No one's coming to your rescue (unless you live on Wall Street). 

Worksheets abound to help you identify where all the weapons are (itemizing your cash flow and where it all goes), and why walking into a graveyard during a zombie apocalypse could be suicide (leaving your job when you cant' afford to).

But in case you are foolish enough to do so–or get unwillingly tossed into it by circumstance –they've included a chapter to help you "not eat your own brain" during unemployment. I was out of work for seven months during the lesser recession before this great recession, and I can tell you eating your own brain isn't tasty, but when you're out of work and getting desperate, you'll be sorely tempted to do so. If you're still out job hunting during this wonderful-for-Wall-Street rebound you know what I mean.

Any one of the chapters in Zombie Economics could be fleshed out more, but Desjardins and Emerson's goal is to provide a firm footing for your monetary survival, especially for the young person facing a future of potential terrors from voracious credit card debt and lumbering bills that refuse to die.  The zombie paradigm provides an entertaining way to get this important information across. 

Before it's too late.

Book Review: Dark Shadows
TV Milestones Series

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Darkshadows Zombos Says: Excellent

But whether naive or deliberate, pop or queer, Dark Shadows camp appeal is one of its strongest drawing points, one that many fans of the show appreciated immediately, while others "grew into it" as they got older (Harry M. Benshoff)

If words like diagesis (narrative), quotidian (commonplace), and metonymy (figure of speech and then some) give you frissons (chills) reading them, Harry M. Benshoff's academically-jargoned analytical look at Dark Shadows may not be for you. But I still recommend you give it a try: Benshoff keeps his usage of them to a minimum while the rest of his words, albeit quotidian, are well chosen, probing, and informative.

This pocket-sized book in the TV Milestones Series will initiate the merely interested reader and satisfy the devoted fan with its concise yet comprehensive coverage of this influencial, episodic Gothicmash of beasties and ghosties that originally aired from 1966 to 1971 on American television.

I was and still am one of those fans. As an impressionable kid, running home after school each day to watch the latest episode was an imperative. I was so hooked I even chose Barnabas as my Confirmation name. I blame actor Jonathan Frid for that; his memorable role of tormented vampire Barnabas Collins, with its romantically-tinged pathos overshadowed by his cursed sanguine darkness, propelled the series' unusual supernatural sashays into witchcraft, lycanthropy, Lovecraftian Mythos, hauntings, and vexing time travel well beyond 1960s soap opera pablum. Campy? Sure. Earnest in its low budget Gothic-noir intentions? Very much so. Groundbreaking in its use of the episodic soap dynamic to "sell" its spooky shenanigans to a wider audience of enamored housewives, counter-culture leaning teenagers, and easily seduced kids like me? Positively. Years after its initial run, Dark Shadows still thrives on DVD, through conventions and fan fiction, and in a planned movie reimagining courtesy of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton.  

Benshoff ably covers the cultural influences the show had (and still exerts), and details the daily business grind of producing it within budget and on time, which contributed to all those endearing flubbed line-readings, wobbly sets, and poorly chosen camera angles revealing smoke pots and fake trees. No other series on television has captured the giddy, slightly naughty fun radiating from the horror host pastiche of sly, self-referential cheekiness with horror as much as Dark Shadows. Not as blatantly campy as Adam West's Batman–the epitome of camp in the 1960s–but more subtle in its winking at the audience at a time when "there was a thriving "monster culture" in the United States."

From its generic story lines, full-throttle performances, cheap sets, and outlandish narrative events, Dark Shadows almost begs to be decoded as camp: what is meant to be frightening is also often ludicrously amusing.

But Dark Shadows was never played for laughs; whatever campiness emerged came from its stage actors and a serious approach to the "often ludicrously amusing" events. And to fans of the horreur fantastique like me, 'ludicrously amusing' is the bread and butter of our devotion to the genre.

In Chapter 4, Television Melodrama and Episodic Structure–my favorite section–Benshoff examines the series' daily format that maintained its "rigid narrative structure." His analysis of the voice-over during the opening credits, Robert Cobert's atmospheric music, the composition of shots, set design, thematic elements of episodes, and costuming is revealing and absorbing. In Chapter 7, Legacy, he rightly places Dark Shadows as the antecedent to the Gothic franchises of today, especially because of its "narrative importance of serialization." The two theatrical releases, House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows are also assessed here, along with the vagina dentata imagery to be found in Night's one-sheet poster.

Hippie appeal, the actors , fandom, and the possible queer subtext to be found in all the male and female bonding going on around Collinwood round out Benshoff's more-than-a-mouthful's worth of thought-provoking reading available in handy monograph size.

Book Review: Gathering Horror
A Completist Collector’s Catalogue
and Index for Warren Publishing

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Gathering horror Zombos Says: Excellent

It's difficult as an adult to come up with words to describe what those magazines meant at the time to an adolescent youth in the pre-Internet years, to capture the warming glee of finding a new issue on the shelves, the urgent expectation and sense of discovery that came with turning the pages of each new issue, and the feeling that they inspired of belonging to some secret fellowship.
(David Horne, Gathering Horror)

My first impulse after reading and paging through the over 600 pages of listings and appendices was to wish I lived next to David Horne so I could ingratiate myself over, in order to roll around naked in his Warren magazine collection. Sure, I'd let him keep them bagged and boarded while I did that; I'm a collector, too, you know.

Gathering Horror: A Completist Collector's Catalogue and Index for Warren Publishing is one of those labor of love's you often hear about but seldom ever really see. The over 700 Warren-instigated magazines, and related materials, indexed with concise information, is a reference book fantasy come true for horror magazine collectors. Where McFarland's disappointing The Great Monster Magazines (by Robert Michael Cotter) whetted the appetite, Horne's reference work satiates it. It's the most inclusive and meticulously written catalog of its kind available.

Drawing on his publishing background, Horne has created a book that's as much fun paging through as it is to use simply as a reference for building a complete collection of magazine runs. Thumbnail cover shots identify issues, and content title information, along with important notes, accompany each entry. Selling and buying Warren magazines on eBay, scarcity and abundance of certain issues, and a common defects section provide a suitable and engaging introduction to this body of work, and important information to the collector.

I found the section on common defects invaluable since my knowledge of Warren publications is spotty at best. Horne's discussion of the Warren Order Form being on a magazine's last page, and the significance of this in relation to how Warren paginated their issues, points out an important potential gotcha: removal of the page from a magazine could be missed under casual scrutiny.

Horne also catalogs the Warren-related fanzines (they were blogs without the Internet, when you think of it), convention program booklets, adds a profiles and fan art index, non-comic and comic title indexes, editor index, writer index, artist index, Warren One of a Kinds listing, and foreign issues. There's even a Warren merchandise section.

The name "Captain Company" first appeared in Wildest Westerns 5, May 1961, and then in Famous Monsters 12, June 1961.

If you collect Famous Monsters of Filmland, Vampirella, Creepy, Eerie, Blazing Combat, and anything else Warrenesque, or aim to, Horne's Gathering Horror is essential as blood is to a vampire. He's printed only 300 copies at a ridiculously reasonable price of $34.95.

I wouldn't wait if I were you. You can find it under "Warren Catalog" on eBay.

Book Review: The Art of Hammer

/ Art/Animation, Books (Non-fiction) / 4 Comments

Zombos Says: Very Good

Blood_mummy02

Carreras was a charismatic salesman, and the only British producer to strike distribution deals with every major American studio. He was often able to do this without a script or the promise of major stars, but he rarely went into negotiations without provisional poster artwork and a title. (from the Introduction, The Art of Hammer)

 

Let’s be clear: the art in Hammer Studios’ movie posters is promulgated on crass commercialism and designed toward a preponderance of lurid, gamy imagery, and deplorable subject matter. Thank the lord all of this sordidness is captured in Titan Books The Art of Hammer, a necessary reference for that studio’s movie poster art, which was created when posters really mattered for whetting the appetites of production backers and selling theater seats.

With no Internet viral campaigns, no chit-chatty forum quorums, no message board hype, and certainly no social networking picky-pecking, blurby-wordies to sell a movie, Hammer’s artists combined bold imagery, screeching colors, and pow-zam-boom verbiage to titillate the vulgar interests of movie goers, stimulate the monetary interests of distributors, and annoy everyone else enough so they took offense and complained, providing even more word of mouth promotion.

Movie poster art became a passion of mine starting around 1968, when, in a small Hawaiian theater showing The Love Bug I saw a hand-painted poster for the movie in the lobby. Now, before you wonder why anyone would do a hand-painted poster for thatmovie (or whyI would go and see it), I’ll cut you short and tell you to focus instead on the word hand-painted. Maybe they didn’t have enough printed posters to go round, or maybe they couldn’t afford more than a few, but whoever did the painting knew exactly what a movie poster needs to do. That person copied the print poster but made it more fun, more vibrant, so Herbie jumped out at you as you walked past, exclaiming “you must see me in this movie!” That’s when I realized how important movie poster art really was, and still can be, once you look past the lenticular novelties and static photographic ensembles posturing for your attention in the theater lobby today.

Marcus Hearn (Hammer Glamour) returns to annotate an array of horror, comedy, potboiler, and exploitation posters that scream “you must see this Hammer movie!” beginning with 1950’s screen-printed The Dark Light, and continuing up to 1979’s The Lady Vanishes. Not all of Hammer’s movies are represented due to lost artwork, but what’s here is a grand sampling of styles and artifice. Hearn points out the prevalence of victimized and terrified women in posters that began in earnest with the Gothic Horror offerings. Up until then, men and women are shown together (usually embracing), or a dramatic depiction of action from the movie comprised the composition; afterward, it’s mostly women and monsters in various postures of terrified and terrorizing hawking the movie, with American poster versions usually rendered more sensationally. Indeed, much of the fun in viewing these posters comes from comparing the British, American, Spanish, German, and Belgian versions for the same movie, each doctored to the acceptable (or barely tolerable) limits allowed by that country’s standards.

Movie posters are arranged by decade and Hearn adds brief comments here and there explaining important changes in style and provides notes on the artist or artwork involved. My favorites are, of course, the mix of horror’s vampires, mummies, and Frankenstein Monsters. They fostered an artistic expression leading to interesting interpretations, such as The Mummy‘s title monster having a gaping hole in its chest through which a pursuing bobby’s flashlight shone through:

“The Mummy was still in production when Peter Cushing first saw Bill Wiggins’ painting. Concerned that it misrepresented the film, Cushing asked director Terence Fisher if he could add a scene where his character drove a harpoon through the mummy’s body.”

The influence of pop art can be seen in the 1970s as more psychedelic colors and groovier layouts kick in, eventually followed by more photographically oriented compositions to trim the budget. Surprisingly, I never noticed the phallic inferences Vic Fair drew into the British Vampire Circus poster until Hearn pointed them out. How that got passed through the stringent British Board of Film Classification is a wonder.

If I were pressed to find one fault in The Art of Hammer, it would lean toward a preference I have. All posters are oriented in portrait, which does make the book easier to browse through. Given its coffee table size I agree it would be a bit of a bother to swing the book from portrait to landscape orientation to view posters, but some posters that would easily fill a full page in landscape view are short-changed by presenting them in the smaller, portrait view. Nonetheless, I recommend this as a superb horror fan gift to give or to get. It’s naughty and nice and filled with spice.

Horrorofdraculamarquee
A courtesy copy of The Art of Hammer was provided by Titan Books for this review.

Book Review: Horror Movie Freak
You Are What You See

/ Books (Non-fiction) / 1 Comment

HorrormoviefreakcoverZombos Says: Very Good

What goes into making a horror movie freak? A modicum of passion for the genre, for sure, and certainly an appreciative knowledge of old and new fright flix. Don Sumner brings both together in his easy-reading and highly informative Horror Movie Freak.

I'm ocasionally asked why I've never written a horror movie book: my ready answer is "the shelves are chock full of tomes both wonderful and mediocre. What more can be said?" Sumner does something wonderful by not offering more to be said, but making sure what needs to be said is concisely and clearly done. His simple premise is that if you want to be a real horror movie fan, you can't hide behind a single genre, evade a decade or two, nor shriek away from the moldy oldies. You don't need to like everything, just make sure you know what you're talking about before you start pissing on Dracula's cape or tugging Freddy's sweater. The style is brisk, light, and appetite-wetting for newbies, while reassuring and comprehensive enough for seasoned fans to appreciate as a handy reference.

The perfunctory "why we love horror movies" section is one I usually speed through (really, why do you love horror movies? is a more important discussion), but one paragraph stands out and could easily be the basis for yet another book:

There are many ingredients to an effective and enjoyable horror stew: storyline, special effects, script, and scenery, but one of the most important is the star. Not the actors and actresses in the film, but the real stars–the heroes, villains, ghosts, and monsters.

I'll go a step further and say this is the most important ingredient. Sumner's assessment points out the major problem with today's remakes and reimagines and reboots: the real stars are missing. We get cardboard standees of monsters instead of the memorable performances that were so monstrously frightening and endearing in the first place. I love horror movies not so much because of the scares but because of who is scaring me.

The who and what of horror is covered all the way from the silents, the Universal Horror Golden Age, Hammer's bloody good reign of terror, and up to the chapter titled Remake Nation. Other chapters break down the major areas of terror onscreen: aberrations of nature, aliens, foreign horror, homicidal slashers, psychotics, supernatural, vampires, zombies, and ghost stories. Each movie receives a page or two of highlight coverage, with enough posters and photos to appropriately balance the visual dance between text and eye-candy, and it's a thorough selection of cinematic creeps to fill up a fan's must-see movie list.

Anyone still looking for a good movie to watch on Halloween will find ample choices in Sumner's Ten Days to Halloween. Each one is a worthy recommendation, but I'll second Darkness Falls. How can you pass up a murdering tooth fairy swooping in when the lights go out, especially on Halloween night?

Horror Movie Freak is that rare book that will spend as much time in your hands as it does on your shelf. After you read it, you will be a walking arsenal of lethal horror movie knowledge, ready to fend off anyone dumb enough to try and knock the Fedora off of Freddy's head.

Book Review: Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns

/ Books (Non-fiction), Wild West Weird / 2 Comments

Encyclopedia of weird westerns Zombos Says: Very Good

Westerns aren't dead: though pocked with bullet holes, they'll probably live on as long as we can keep them new and interesting with near-infinite variations on their central themes. I think that's better than good. (Mike Hoffman, foreword)

I became hooked on the outre Western tale after watching Gene Autry's The Phantom Empire (1935) serial. To see cowboys, ray weapons of mass destruction, a mysterious subterranean empire's technology being sought after by unscrupulous businessmen, and Gene Autry getting a snappy song or two sung in-between the cliff-hangers–left quite an impression on my young mind back then. I didn't consider myself a greenhorn when it came to the weird western genre until Green's book proved me wrong. There's a lot more in them thar hills then I realized.

Paul Green's Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns: Supernatural and Science Fiction Elements in Novels, Pulps, Comics, Films, Television and Games is a rich vein for prospectors mining those dusty hills of the Wild Weird West. It's the kind of book I like to dog-ear and write in, and carry along with me, in my urban saddle bag, to refer to often.

Arranged in A-Z listing format, Green identifies these sub-genres: Weird Western (horror, supernatural, fantasy); Weird Menace Western (horror and supernatural themes, but concluding with a rational explanation); Science Fiction Western (future technology, aliens, alternate histories); Space Western (space opera with Western elements); Steampunk Western (set in the Old West and incorporating Victorian sci-tech); and Weird Western Romance (traditional romance involving time travel or the supernatural).

Phantom empire robot The Western genre, whether old-timey or saddle soap new, provides a simple backdrop for quintessential themes of characterization, plotting, and rip-roaring action that is ripe for mixing with the bizarre, the steampunk, the techno-goth, and the traveling horror sideshow's worth of oddities. From aliens to zombies and the robotic to apocalyptic, Green does a good job of rounding up diverse material to explore further, especially in areas you may not have thought much about, like The Prisoner's Living In Harmony episode (p165), or the Beany and Cecil episodes Phantom of the Horse Opera (p30) and Dragon Train (p30). A short synopsis describes each entry. Here's an excerpt from the one for The Phantom Empire:

Twelve-part serial starring Gene Autry in a unique mix of singing-cowboy and science fiction genres. The ancient civilization of Mu, located beneath Autry's Radio Ranch, is threatened by speculators buying the Muranian supply of radium. Autry attempts to save the people of Mu and protect his Radio Ranch.

Hokum? Sure. Fun and imaginative? Yes, without a doubt. And that is what the weird western is all about. From the not so serious to the sublime, the frisky to the outlandish, Green provides a broad range to send your posse after. His bibliography will also point you to additional Internet and print resources. An appendix categorizes entries by genre, which I find the most useful for discovering new comics, movies, and other weird westerns I haven't read or seen yet. Illustrations are sprinkled throughout.

So saddle up pardner and don't hit that winding trail without the Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns as your guide.

Books For Horror Movie Bloggers

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Einstein show Right off the bat I can tell you the one thing you don’t want to get that horror movie blogger on your holiday shopping list: movies. Yes, that’s what I said. Movies.

Sure, they seem like they would go together like bread and butter, Starsky and Hutch, and vampires and romance, but let’s face it, if a horror blogger is worth his or her salt, movies are already piled high all around within easy viewing reach. The last thing any horror movie blogger needs is another movie to add to the pile!

So how about giving that special someone—otherwise known as always difficult to get gifts for–something really useful: something they will really appreciate and actually use to hone their skills; something that will even benefit their readers: books on movies.

And not just horror movies, mind you, but books on all-around movies. Books to broaden knowledge of the cinema, its history, its craft, and its always present commercial side, which impinges on the history and craft sides, sometimes to wondrous result, many times not.

Here’s an essential bookshelf’s worth of reading and reference any smart horror movie blogger would appreciate having in his or her critique la arsenal before letting the slinging arrows of outrageous commentary fly:

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Book Review: Hammer Glamour
Classic Images From Hammer Films

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Martine Beswick

Zombos Says: Very Good

I am reminded of the line Frederick Frankenstein utters in Young Frankenstein after seeing the huge door knockers on the even bigger doors of the ancestral castle: "What knockers!" The comely Inga, poised in his arms as he helps her out of the hay wagon, thinks he is referring to her ample bosom and responds, "Oh, thank you doctor!" The female stars profiled in Hammer Glamour: Classic Images From the Archive of Hammer Films also have ample bosoms; but more than that, they defined Hammer's sensual, supernatural horror mystique, an artistic and commercial blend of Gothic and gore done on a budget, which embellished male stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing's good versus evil action.  I do not believe Lee or Cushing ever had to do bikini-clad pin-up sessions, though, or look alluringly into the camera while posing on a bed of furs.

The book highlights fifty Hammer female stars, including the sultry, self-assured, Martine Beswicke (my favorite), statuesque Ursula Andress, and the sultry and statuesque Raquel Welch. Clad in her doeskin bikini, Welch, helped make One Million Years B.C. the "most commercially successful film in Hammer history, and sealed the company's new reputation for 'discovering' glamorous stars."

Ursula Andress

In an appendix entitled Also Starring, Hearn includes dozens more who starred in Hammer movies but did not achieve much notoriety beyond that. Faces you will recognize include The Devil Rides Out Nike Arrighi (my favorite) and Twins of Evil's Isobel Black. While Hammer horror buffs are more familiar with actresses like Ingrid Pitt (The Vampire Lovers), Valerie Gaunt (Dracula), and Susan Denberg (Frankenstein Created Women) , it may come as a surprise that Stefanie Powers ('Jane Brown's Body'), Judy Geeson (Fear in the Night), and Nastassja Kinski (To the Devil a Daughter) also appeared in the studio's numerous offerings.

In-between the cheesecake photographs, Hearn does a succinct  job of running through the movies each actress appears in while providing background on their careers' trials, tribulations, and triumphs, and, where applicable, their current activities. His style is very British informal and filled with idioms that make reading very enjoyable–but keep a reference source handy, you may need to look up a few definitions. While writing about those naughty Twins of Evil, Mary and Madeleine Collinson (my favorites), he writes "It wasn't long before they were noticed. In the King's Road, Chelsea, two teenage boys came a cropper when they were distracted by the girls." I looked up came a cropper: it means to take a tumble. By the way, Mary and Madeleine get the naughtiest full-page in the book.

More important for the ardent movie buff are the anecdotes and snippets of interviews that Hearn includes. Not all was glamourous for Hazel Court, Hammer's first pin-up girl (The Curse of Frankenstein), as Hearn recounts the time a reporter visited her on the set of The Man Who Could Cheat Death, or for Susan Denberg (my favorite), whose career spiraled downhill after drugs and dissolution took their toll. It is this mixing of glamour with the realities of show biz, and Hearn's earnest, engaging style–and, okay, yes, the photographs–that make Hammer Glamour more than just skin deep reading.

Come to think of it, all the women of Hammer Horror are my favorites.