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 →

Tom Lisanti’s affection for cult-movie starlet Pamela Tiffin runs deeper than most. Heck, he’s even written a book about her brief career in film, the newly available Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974, released by McFarland. Lisanti has penned eight books total centered on Sixties Cinema (also the name of his website), including Drive-In Dream Girls, Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood, Film Fatales and Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies. Here, to commemorate his Tiffin title, the author contributes a Guest List to Flick Attack, counting down a solid half-dozen of her silver-screen appearances. So without further ado and in chronological order …

1. One, Two, Three (1961)
Pamela Tiffin’s second motion picture contains her most memorable performance (she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress) and catapulted her to the top of the sixties starlet heap destined for stardom. A fast-paced, hilarious satire set in Berlin and poking fun at Communism and Capitalism, it was directed by Billy Wilder and written by him and I.A.L. Diamond fresh off their Academy Award wins for The Apartment. Tiffin plays impetuous Southern belle Scarlett Hazeltine who, while under the care of Coca-Cola’s man in West Berlin C.R. MacNamara (James Cagney delivering a brilliant rapid-fire performance), sneaks across the border into East Berlin and marries Communist Otto Ludwig Piffl (Horst Buchholz) causing all sorts of comedic trouble for MacNamara. He first undoes the marriage only to have to turn Otto into a capitalist son-in-law in good standing once the boss’ daughter’s pregnancy (“Scarlett is going to have puppies,” his daughter announces) is discovered.

Continue reading Guest List: Tom Lisanti’s Top 6 Essential Pamela Tiffin Movies →

Few know horror quite like Stephen Jones. Therefore, he’s a natural to compile The Art of Horror: An Illustrated History for Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, just in time for Halloween! Also just in time for Halloween: this list of five screen-adapted terror tales, which we’ve whittled down from the renowned anthologist’s full list of 10 favorite spooky short stories of all time on our sister site, Bookgasm.

1. “A Warning to the Curious” by M.R. James
adapted as A Warning to the Curious (1972)
No horror anthology would be complete without a contribution by M. (Montague) R. (Rhodes) James (1862-1936), that English master of supernatural fiction. The Cambridge Provost invented the modern ghost story as we know it, replacing the Gothic horrors of the previous century with more contemporary settings and subtle terrors. Although his tales have been much imitated, they have never been surpassed, and amongst the very best is “A Warning to the Curious,” which, with its cursed object and doomed protagonist, perfectly exemplifies everything that is memorable about the author’s fiction. I was proud to compile Curious Warnings: The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James, a definitive collection of James’ fiction beautifully illustrated by Les Edwards, for Jo Fletcher Books a couple of years ago.
 
Continue reading Guest List: Stephen Jones’ Top 5 Horror Stories That Also Have Been Adapted for the Screen →

Known to cult-film buffs as the man behind 2008’s amazing grindhouse tribute book, Shock Festival (and its accompanying gotta-get DVD companion set), Stephen Romano recently made the move into novelist with such well-received works as the thriller Resurrection Express, the supernatural Black Light and now, Metro.

My new novel, Metro, is about a group of young pop-culture bloggers and film nerds who find out that someone among them is actually a ruthless hitman, trained from birth to blend into his environment, ready to be activated at any moment. And when that person finally goes rogue to protect his friends in a night of bloody horror, nothing will ever be the same for any of them. It’s a story that asks the loaded questions: Are your friends who they seem to be? How many endemic spies and assassins walk among us? And when the cloak reveals the dagger, what would it take to break the conditioning of such an assassin?

Continue reading Guest List: Stephen Romano’s Top 10 Films of Obsession, Deception and Survival →

Eric Red, author of the new truck-thriller novel White Knuckle, has written such vehicular-minded movies as Near Dark, The Hitcher and Cohen and Tate (the last of which he also directed). Now he takes the wheel of Flick Attack’s first-ever Guest List!

Big rigs, the tractor-trailer 18-wheelers we see rolling along the American highways, belong in movies. There’s something bigger-than-life about the huge, rumbling, mythic diesels driven by those modern day cowboys, The Men Behind the Wheel. It was a lifelong fascination with these giant trucks and the colorful world of truckers that inspired my new high-octane thriller novel, White Knuckle, a mystery tale about an FBI agent on a cross-country hunt for a prolific serial killer/interstate truck driver. It’s surprising more films aren’t made about the epic world of the long hauler, but several truck movies have delivered on the exciting cinematic dimensions of big rigs. Here are my personal top-five favorites:

Continue reading Guest List: Eric Red’s Top 5 Truck Movies →