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Very thorough, with an admirable range of interviews and sources. I didn't care for the neutral tone in relating some of the treatment of the women in these movies (such as the anecdote about the actor threatening to actually rape an actress if she didn't "behave"). It's noted very early on that all of the "eccentric outsiders" are men, and maybe this book wasn't the place for it, but that did seem to raise the question as to how the lack of a female perspective in the creative process carries over into the movies. I did like learning just how close many of the directors/writers were and how much they tossed ideas back and forth before they cohered into movies like Alien.
This is one of my rare forays into nonfiction. It's about horror movies in the 1970s (Psycho, The Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead---which is actually from 1968, but whatever---Alien and Halloween, to name a few) and hence the exception was made. :)
To paraphrase a line from Bull Durham, I believe in the church of movies. If you define church as the thing that gets you back to yourself, your BEST self, and revitalizes you for the week ahead? Yes, it's movies. (And I fully concede that I have never felt God in a church, so we're taking religion out of it.) And while I love most genres of movies, horror movies are my absolute favorites.
Of those, my favorite horror movies are probably from the 1980s (as they are what I grew up with) but the best ones? All from the 1970s. After reading this book, I am really excited to have a marathon of the movies prominently featured here. I have all of them except for the original Last House on the Left, but I can sub that out for The Hills Have Eyes, I think. But anyway, these movies are AMAZING, regardless of how you feel about scary movies.
The only mistakes I found were a mention that Russ Streiner played a policeman in Night of the Living Dead (he didn't. He played Johnny, the one who said the iconic line, "They're coming to get you, Barbara.") and Wes Craven leaving the Nightmare on Elm Street series in the late eighties (nope. He left after the first one and then came back in the 1990s to do Wes Craven's New Nightmare). But two silly mistakes are nowhere near enough to dampen my enjoyment of this book.
I hope that he does a follow up of movies from the 1980s. I think that would be incredibly fun. :) (And I think it'd be interesting to discuss how the 1980s saw the rebirth of the idea of a franchise, which horror had gotten away from since the really old-school horror movies with their 300 Dracula sequels.)
Recommended for any fan of the genre. :)
To paraphrase a line from Bull Durham, I believe in the church of movies. If you define church as the thing that gets you back to yourself, your BEST self, and revitalizes you for the week ahead? Yes, it's movies. (And I fully concede that I have never felt God in a church, so we're taking religion out of it.) And while I love most genres of movies, horror movies are my absolute favorites.
Of those, my favorite horror movies are probably from the 1980s (as they are what I grew up with) but the best ones? All from the 1970s. After reading this book, I am really excited to have a marathon of the movies prominently featured here. I have all of them except for the original Last House on the Left, but I can sub that out for The Hills Have Eyes, I think. But anyway, these movies are AMAZING, regardless of how you feel about scary movies.
The only mistakes I found were a mention that Russ Streiner played a policeman in Night of the Living Dead (he didn't. He played Johnny, the one who said the iconic line, "They're coming to get you, Barbara.") and Wes Craven leaving the Nightmare on Elm Street series in the late eighties (nope. He left after the first one and then came back in the 1990s to do Wes Craven's New Nightmare). But two silly mistakes are nowhere near enough to dampen my enjoyment of this book.
I hope that he does a follow up of movies from the 1980s. I think that would be incredibly fun. :) (And I think it'd be interesting to discuss how the 1980s saw the rebirth of the idea of a franchise, which horror had gotten away from since the really old-school horror movies with their 300 Dracula sequels.)
Recommended for any fan of the genre. :)