November 5th, 2008
A while ago, I wrote about some of my favorite movie books — but I forgot to mention the single book that, more than anything else, shaped my tastes in film: Michael J. Weldon’s classic volumne on cult movies, THE PSYCHOTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM.
Thankfully, Rob Gonsalves didn’t forget, and he posted a nice write-up of this seminal volume here. As he says…
“Other movie books handled the mainstream stuff, the Mighty Films of Cinema, the ones you felt duty-bound to watch at least once. Weldon, with the help of Ballantine Books, legitimized the low, the weird, the obscure, the greasers and sluts and punks of celluloid. He made it okay for budding movie buffs to bundle in some Eurotrash sexploitation and teenagers-with-mutations flicks along with our Kurosawa and Bergman.”
I remember buying this one as a college freshman, way back in 1985, and actually felt a bit weird about doing so. Did I really want a volume extolling the virtues of INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS and A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD sitting on my bookshelf, so close to my pure-hearted copy of LEONARD MALTIN’S VIDEO GUIDE?
Yes, it turns out I did. Because without Weldon’s book, I never would’ve heard of most of the great, offbeat movies that frankly, make it worthwhile to be a die-hard movie fan. I never would’ve gone to all those midnight movies in college, and I never would’ve collected hundreds of videotapes (followed, of course, by hundreds of DVDs). I probably never would’ve started writing my own video reviews at his paper back in the mid 1990s, which means I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog right now.
Weldon’s book (and its even-bigger follow-up, THE PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO GUIDE) embrace all movies, from forgotten silents to modern straight-to-video shockers. Sure, he loves weird movies, but above all, Weldon loves movies — and that’s apparent on every page. If you’ve never seen THE PSYCHOTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM, I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy. It just might change your life.
Heck, it sure changed mine.
September 15th, 2008
This post about cult movies led to some reader comments about CULT MOVIES, the book by Danny Peary, and a few of Peary’s follow-up volumes. (All come highly recommended by this book and movie lover.) So, continuing in that spirit, here are a few more of my favorite movie books …
DARK CITY: THE LOST WORLD OF FILM NOIR by Eddie Muller — Muller’s a bonifide noir expert, and this book gives a compelling, fact-filled overview of the genre by dividing the films into categories that mirror the neighborhoods of a dark, drama-drenched city. There’s a ton of great images (including some posters in full color), but the real drawing card here is Muller’s punchy, well-informed prose. (Also great — Muller’s history of exploitation films, GRINDHOUSE.)
HOLLYWOOD HELLFIRE CLUB by William Gregory Mank, Charles Heard and Bill Nelson — A hilarious page-turner all about the wild and crazy times of John Barrymore, W.C. Fields, Errol Flynn, John Decker, William Fowler, John Carradine, Ben Hecht, Sadakichi Hartmann and others who formed the (extremely) loose knit collection of oddballs in the early years of the 20th century. As their lives get more out of the control, the book gets more entertaining. You think modern stars behave badly? You have no idea. (But at least these guys did it with a little panache.)
MENTAL HYGIENE by Ken Smith — Smith takes a genre everyone else ignores — those education films generations of students had to endure — and writes a fascinating film history. Tracing the history of the producers, from All-American Coronet to crazed Sid Davis, Smith illustrates how young minds were molded via social engineering cinema. He also reviews hundreds of these short films, pointing out their faults but never descending into a “so bad they’re good” outlook.
THE MONSTER SHOW by David Skal — Probably the best history of horror movies I’ve ever read, this compact tome traces the genre from its silent roots up through the modern day, always taking time to discuss the real-world event behind the imaginary horrors. Skal’s discussion of how the mangled bodies of World War I paralleled the popularity of Lon Chaney (who knew how to mangle his own body for maximum effect) is just one example of his perceptive writing.
More to come –Â and please, suggest some of your own in the comments!
