In his wonderful new book, Mars in the Movies: A History, former NASA employee Thomas Kent Miller takes us on every cinematic journey to the red planet, film by film, from the silents to today. And now, for a Flick Attack Guest List, the author takes us on a cinematic journey of a different kind: through the photos and illustrations that you won’t find in the finished book! Its loss is our gain. Time to blast off!

A printed book is a most finite object. It has a beginning, middle and end not only in terms of its size, content and page count. It also has strict limitations in time; books have production schedules with merciless restrictions of all sorts, especially deadlines. I turned in 69 graphics with my manuscript, and 43 glorious images were used. Those that “didn’t make the cut” were rejected mainly due to resolution issues. I’m sharing here 13 pieces of art that I mourn didn’t get into the book. These are presented in chronological order.

1. From the 1918 Danish film A Trip to Mars (Das Himmelskibet), this is the spaceship Excelsior, in which adventurer Avanti Planetarios and his crew spend six months cruising to the Red Planet. As far as I can tell, this is the first Mars “rocketship” in the cinema.

Continue reading Guest List: Thomas Kent Miller’s Top 13 Graphics Left Out of Mars in the Movies →

In our book Death by Umbrella! The 100 Weirdest Horror Movie Weapons, we sought to chronicle some of the weirdest, wackiest, most creative, strangest and sometimes just plain silliest implements used in horror movies to snuff out a life. Writing and researching the book allowed us to revisit some of our favorite movies as well as to discover hidden gems in what we consider to be one of the most malleable and creatively fertile of all the genres. It also allowed us to luridly wallow in all those viscerally exciting deaths!

Continue reading Guest List: Jeff Kirschner’s Top 5 Kills Too Conventional to Make It into Our Book →

All hu-mans, rejoice! Perhaps due to an error in calculation, someone has acquired the temerity to write an entire book about 1953’s Robot Monster, one of cinema’s legendary creative calamities. That someone is Anders Runestad, and that book is I Cannot, Yet I Must: The True Story of the Best Bad Monster Movie of All Time, Robot Monster. At nearly 700 pages, it tells all there is to be told of the film’s production and legacy, and here, in his Guest List for Flick Attack, Runestad tells us about his favorite films that — believe it or not — have ties to his book’s Golden Turkey classic.

Robot Monster in my view is the greatest bad monster movie of all time, and thereby an essential cult film of any kind, but why should this be the case when there are so many other contenders? Well, the contenders sadly lack a gorilla wearing a diving helmet who speaks to himself about his conflicted emotions.

Continue reading Guest List: Anders Runestad’s Top 5 Movies Tangentially Tied to Robot Monster →

Since 1997, Canadian author Julie E. Czerneda has shared her love and curiosity about living things through her science fiction, writing about shapechanging semi-immortals, terraformed worlds, salmon researchers and the perils of power. Her latest sci-fi novel, This Gulf of Time and Stars, which kicks off her Reunification trilogy, is now available. What gets her going to put words on the page? Movies, of course — specifically these five, for her Flick Attack Guest List.

I love movies. My other half and I set Friday nights aside to watch something special together, be it new and anticipated, a hopeful discovery, or, often as not, an old favorite. What to watch is a fun and mutual decision.

Unless I’m in the midst of writing a new book.

Continue reading Guest List: Julie E. Czerneda’s Top 5 Movie Cravings That Inspire Creativity →