In Essel Pratt’s new novel, Sharkantula, a genetically modified tarantula finds its way into the Great White exhibit at Shark World. Frightened, the arachnid digs its fangs deep into the shark, fast-tracking an evolutionary hybrid into existence that becomes hell-bent on taking over the park, and possibly the world. Sound like a Syfy movie? That’s not accidental! In his Guest List for Flick Attack, Pratt breaks down the movies — and one TV series — that informed his monster mash-up on the page.

Sharkantula was originally the product of a lighthearted brainstorming discussion between multiple indie authors, each jokingly contributing ridiculous ideas. At one point, while discussing the plethora of cheesy science-fiction movies on television, I chose to “claim” Sharkantula as my own. The joke became more serious as I thought the concept over, wondering if a novel written in the styling of those popular movies would be possible.

Continue reading Guest List: Essel Pratt’s Top 5 Inspirations for Sharkantula →

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 →

Author and film historian Roberto Curti is such an expert on Italian genre cinema, he literally wrote the books on them: 2013’s Italian Crime Filmography and 2015’s Italian Gothic Horror Films, both published by McFarland & Company. And he’s still writing them! In fact, Curti has two new books out this summer: Tonino Valerii: The Films for McFarland and, through Midnight Marquee, Diabolika: Supercriminals, Superheroes and the Comic Book Universe in Italian Cinema. It is the latter title — lavishly illustrated in full color with film stills, lobby cards, poster art and, yep, comic book panels — that inspires and informs his Guest List for Flick Attack.

1. Goldface (Goldface il fantastico Superman, 1967)
Born in the wake of the success of the El Santo series and conceived for the South American market, the eponymous protagonist of Bitto Albertini’s flick is not the kind of superhero one would often see, especially in this era of big-budget Hollywood adaptations. In the glorious tradition of Mexican luchadores films, Goldface is a meek scientist who moonlights as a popular and invincible masked wrestler. He has no superpowers, and his outfit (pale blue leotard, red cape and golden mask) is rather ugly-looking. He has a peanut-munching black sidekick named Kotar (!) who speaks exactly like the “poor negroes” in 1930s films, and together they ride a motorbike like a cut-rate version of Captain America and Falcon.

Continue reading Guest List: Roberto Curti’s Top 5 (Technically, 7) Unlikely Superheroes in Italian Cinema →

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 →