Looking for a New Book?

While I continue my quest to add more books to my personal library that I’ll ever be able to read in my lifetime, I thought I would give a little shout out to a few titles that are currently sitting in my Want List on Amazon. I don’t have any of these yet (key word…yet) so all I know about them is what I’ve read on the Amazon description. But they do sound pretty interesting, and I know that I intend to pick them up at some point. While I’m in the middle of reading 3 different books right now, and have a few piled up that I still need to find room in the bookshelves for, it might be a bit.

Who am I kidding, I’ll probably order them next payday!

I’ll list this these alphabetically so it doesn’t look like I’m playing any favoritism!

Ad Nauseam By Michael Gingold
Any horror fan worth their weight in magazines knows Gingold from his decades working for Fangoria magazine, but has been keeping himself quite busy since those days. His book The Frightfest Guide to Monster Movies is just awesome and is simply a must. But his new book is something that older fans will love paging through, as well as giving younger fans a look into the past. In his youth, Gingold would cut out the ads for horror films, the bigger named ones as well as the smaller titles that snuck out. This book is a walk through the 1980’s in a year-by-year guide to Gingold’s archive, featuring more than 450 ads. Remember folks, years before the internet, this is how we found out movies that were playing so these ads had the tough job of capturing the attention of the person paging through the newspaper and make them want to rush out to see this movie. And more times than not, at least for us horror fans, it worked.

Gingold gives us his personal recollections and commentary about the ads, as well as giving us vintage reviews of what the critics at the time thought about these titles. If that doesn’t sound entertaining enough, he also interviews the men behind some of these exploitation distributor Aquarius Releasing on how they built interests in films like Make Them Die Slowly and Doctor Butcher M.D.

This hardcover edition will be coming out on Oct. 9th from 1984 Publishing. It is 248 pages and priced at $34.95.

The Cinematic Art of Fantastic India Vol 1: The VCDs
I’m a sucker for poster art books. I have more than a dozen in my library and just love paging through them, seeing such incredible and talented artwork on movies posters. Back when talented artists were given the chance to create real pieces of art to help promote these movies. But in my collecting of posters over the years, I’ve been fascinated at the foreign market, with both the amazing artwork, as well as just how plain crazy some of them are. Especially the ones from Turkey and Pakistan. They would blatantly use images from other movies in their posters, even when some of the images had nothing to do with the movie they were advertising! Some of the images were drawn in, while others did the old fashion cut-and-paste method. But they were all unbelievable to look at. These wild images weren’t just used for posters but as well as the covers of the cheaply made VCD’s.

Thanks to Tim Paxton, Steven Fenton, and Brian Harris, we can now revel in these amazing covers that were used for the VCD market. With over 150 full color reproductions of VCD covers, as well as covers for VHS tapes, DVDs, pressbooks, posters, and lobby cards, you’re going to get not only an eye full, but be amazed at how some of the artwork was used, stolen, borrowed, or however you want to call it. I mean, when you see images from Fulci’s Gates of Hell on a poster for Hammer’s Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, it doesn’t get much crazier than that. Or does it? You’ll just have to pick this up to find out. But just by looking at some of the pages on the Amazon listing was more than enough for me to want to pick this up.

This 138 page paperback is priced at $24.95. Can’t wait to dig into this one!

The Films of Jess Franco
Edited by Antonio Lázaro-Reboll and Ian Olney, this title is a collection of twelve essays from a variety of film scholars that take a look at Franco and his films. Because Franco’s movies are very unique because of his obsessive desire and passion to make movies, no matter the budget, script, or anything else that was going to get in his way to make it, it leaves looking at his films very wide open for interpretation and critique.

According to the book’s description, it “opens up fresh avenues for academic inquiry by considering his oeuvre from a range of viewpoints, including transnational film studies, cinephilia studies, and star studies. The book effectively meets the challenge of Franco’s multidimensional cinema with multifaceted criticism-attentive to the shifting historical contexts, modes of production and consumption, and formats of Franco’s work-that supplements current Franco scholarship and suggests exciting new directions for its further development.”

Now how could this be not something to delve into and learn more about this amazing director? I know I will at some point. This title is being published by Wayne State University Press and should be out next month. It is in softcover format, 364 pages, priced at $29.99.

Harryhausen – The Movie Posters
It’s tough to be a lover of fantastic cinema and not know and appreciate the work of Ray Harryhausen, the genius behind some of the best stop-motion animation ever to hit the big screen. Harryhausen brought creatures to life in pictures like It Came From Beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Hammer’s One Million B.C., not to mention a Sinbad movie or two.

Thanks to Richard Holliss and Titan Books, we now get a book that showcases the poster art from all of Harryhausen’s movies from the Mighty Joe Young (1949) to Clash of the Titans (1981). This 192-page hardcover book will feature posters of Ray’s films from all over the world, as well as commentary from the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation. I can’t wait to add yet another poster collection book to my library. Priced at $39.95, these types of books are not only so much fun to browse though, but once again, give you a chance to see when poster and promotional art was in fact, real artwork!

Jaws 2: The Making of the Hollywood Sequel – Updated and Expanded Edition
Originally published in 2015, Michael A. Smith and Louis R. Pisano gave readers an in depth look at the sequel to the movie that started the summer blockbuster. They interviewed so many people behind the film, both ones that worked on the original version and those that were in the picture that was finally released. They give you one fascination story and sheds so much light on this film. We reviewed this version on our site when it came out and just loved it.

But now, they have a newer expanded edition, giving us even more information. The original release was 363 pages and this new edition is 530, giving us close to 200 more pages! We get more interviews, almost 200 new photos, many which have never been seen before. While we hate double-dipping for these kind of newer editions, I loved the first book so much that I think I’m going to have to go right back into the water for a second swim.

This is published by BearManor Media and is available in both softcover edition ($30) as well as a hardcover version ($40).

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and It’s Terrifying Times: A Cultural History
Because why do we need another book about Tobe Hooper’s masterpiece? It’s kind of funny that over the years, I’ve often asked that question and each time a book comes out about this film, I really enjoy them. Though honestly, not sure how any book could top Gunnar Hansen’s Chainsaw Confidential. But Joseph Lanza looks to be tackling this title not just about the film but about what was going on at the time the film came out.

According to the listing, the author “transports the reader back to the tumultuous era of the 1970s defined by political upheaval, cultural disillusionment, and the perceived decay of the nuclear family in the wake of Watergate, the onslaught of serial killers in the US, as well as mounting racial and sexual tensions. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Its Terrifying Times sets the themes of the film against the backdrop of the political and social American climate to understand why the brutal slasher flick connected with so many viewers. As much a book about the movie as the moment, Joseph Lanza has created an engaging and nuanced work that grapples with the complications of the American experience.”

Sounds like more of a commentary on society at the time, but it does sound interesting. This will be published by Skyhorse Publishing and is scheduled to come out on Nov. 13th. It is a 304 page hardcover edition is priced at only $24.00.