In the introduction of The Films of Mamie Van Doren, author Joseph Fusco connects the dots to draw a line from Hollywood’s old-school vamps (such as Jean Harlow and Mae West) to the 1950s starlets Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. With the latter two, Mamie Van Doren often is thought to form the third point of that era’s sex-bomb triangle.

As the title has it, this BearManor Media paperback pays tribute to the cinematic oeuvre of the lovely lady, who survived when her pulchritudinous peers did not, because, Fusco argues, of her powerful roles and sheer versatility. He may be overstating the case — after all, we’re talking about the likes of The Navy vs. the Night Monsters — but Van Doren, today a lively 82, is no doubt worth such fun, book-length honors.

Fusco devotes the book’s first 50 of 272 pages to a breezy overview of her entire career — not just the movies, but everything from dinner theater to disco albums. The rest goes film by film, a chapter apiece, full of photos and poster art.

Signed by Universal in 1953 as a purposeful rival to Monroe, Van Doren first was cast in a number of uncredited parts two years prior. Soon, the starlet found no shortage of work, arguably reaching an apex — by exploitation standards, at least — in her eight collaborations with producer Albert Zugsmith. While he stands dozens of rungs below D.W. Griffith or Josef von Sternberg on the filmmaker ladder, far more people remember the likes of High School Confidential today than the Griffith or von Sternberg films in which Van Doren briefly appeared.

Because of the brevity, we are unable to get a sense of what she did in her first few movies; how much of that fault is the author, I cannot tell. I can blame him for the irksome multiple spaces appearing at the end of each sentence, but that’s negligible. His book obviously does its job, as my Amazon orders of the sex comedy 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt and the crime drama Vice Raid now attest. (Sadly, Sex Kittens Go to College and Girls, Guns and Gangsters are unavailable for purchase.) —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon or BearManor Media.

Of the three collaborative volumes between Michael S. Price and John Wooley in the ongoing Forgotten Horrors series I’ve read thus far, Forgotten Horrors to the Nth Degree: Dispatches from a Collapsing Genre is the best.

It speaks directly to the film geek in me, saying, “Hey, read me, film geek.” It also is different from the others — Volume 6 just came out last month — in that instead of being a collection of reviews, it is a collection of columns that operate as both reviews and interviews. The contents are culled largely from the authors’ long-running, now-defunct, eponymous column in Fangoria magazine.

Roughly 40 films are examined in depth in such a manner, with Price-Wooley incorporating their opinions with the insights of at least one direct participant from the flick in question, no matter which side of the camera. The names include — but are by no means limited to — Donald Pleasence (Raw Meat), Rudy Ray Moore (Petey Wheatstraw), Ivan Reitman (Cannibal Girls), Chuck Connors (Tourist Trap), Marilyn Chambers (Rabid) and Jamie Lee Curtis (Terror Train).

Just about everyone seems thrilled to discuss the particular, peculiar CV entry in question, save for two examples: The Entity‘s Barbara Hershey and Barn of the Naked Dead director Alan Rudolph, who refuses to admit association with it, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Purposely, the pieces fall within the horror genre’s heyday, said by the authors to begin with H.G. Lewis’ invention of the gore picture with 1963’s Blood Feast and end with the shot-on-video Blood Cult, which changed everything in 1985 by being the first feature film expressly made for the home-video market.

Emblematic of its name, Nth Degree, the 304-page trade paperback ventures off its own beaten path to include plenty of extras, in the form of extended pieces on David F. Friedman, Larry Buchanan, Leo Fong and others. Comics great Stephen R. Bissette provides an “afterword” of capsule reviews of Vermont-set horror films, and hell, there’s even a multipage comic-book story that opens the volume.

My only complaints with the book are minor: an overuse of antiquated phrases such as “et. seq.” and an egregious use of some godawful Adobe Photoshop filter that noticeably mars so many of the photographs (thankfully, poster art escapes this mistreatment). Otherwise, Nth Degree is an infectious trip for the psychotronic-inclined; seat belts optional. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

As completely expected, the films of Ted V. Mikels are much more fun to read about than they are to watch. Unlike a chosen few directors, let’s just say the guy had his work end up featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for damned good reason.

Christopher Wayne Curry, author of Film Alchemy: The Independent Cinema of Ted V. Mikels, doesn’t quite see it that way; he worships the works, but he also considers Mikels a friend and heaps “love, respect and admiration” on the filmmaker. Also in his introduction, Curry calls Mikels the single most interesting figure in exploitation cinema, deserving of mention alongside Russ Meyer. I realize such things are subjective, but he’s obviously approached the book with a blinded bias. It’s enough to make you want to cry, “Get a room!”

That is its biggest downfall, but guess what? I still recommend it, because even with the absence of impartiality, the book remains a blast to read.

A much more affordable paperback reprint of McFarland original 2008 hardback release, the slim Film Alchemy takes readers on a detailed, chronological journey through Mikels’ complete CV as director (well, complete as of 2008), starting with the 1963 thriller Strike Me Deadly to the 2006 family drama (!) Heart of a Boy. Most cult cinephiles, however, know Mikels best for a few that land in between — namely, 1968’s The Astro-Zombies (to which he’s still cranking out unwanted sequels), 1971’s The Corpse Grinders and 1973’s The Doll Squad (ripped off by Aaron Spelling for the TV series Charlie’s Angels, if Ted is to be believed).

Ted’s quite a character (polygamists tend to be) and he has great stories to share about the making of these no-budget epics. But his story prowess does not extend to the screen; Ed Wood looks masterful by comparison. The four flicks of his I’ve seen have all been really tough sits, and Lord knows I’m more forgiving than most when it comes to B and Z cinema.

Yet Mikels seems unaware of all his limitations, to the point of delusion, and Curry is right along with him. Only when the book approaches the VHS age of Mikels’ career does Curry cede to admitting shortcomings. And as the movies get less interesting, so does the book; after all, Mission: Killfast, although a terrific title, has yet to resonate with any degree of pop-culture impact and likely never will.

Film Alchemy is highly recommend to Mikels’ fan base and just plain recommended to those with a love of bad movies. The book pops with a wealth of photos and poster art. One can see how easy it would have been at the time to get suckered in by such much-to-promise visuals. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Humility is hardly an attribute that comes to mind when considering director William Friedkin, by all accounts a talented man who let success go to his head in the worst way. Refreshingly, he’s the first to admit it — and all his other faults — in The Friedkin Connection, a dumb title for a smart memoir.

Having been born the year of The French Connection and all of 2 when he followed up that Oscar win with The Exorcist, I was oblivious to how meteoric his rise was. He had made only four films prior to French, beginning with the Sonny & Cher vehicle Good Times, none of them hits.

In this book, Friedkin fills in all those blanks. It is more an autobiography of Friedkin the moviemaker vs. Friedkin the man. Personal details from childhood on up are kept to a minimum, relayed to the reader seemingly only when they directly influenced his work. As someone who tires of celeb bios that assume the reader wants to know every flipping twig on the family tree, I welcomed the brevity.

After all, I came to The Friedkin Connection wanting to learn about the movies he’s made, not the sordid details of failed relationships, and that’s why it’s a winner. He ticks through them all with candor and regret, from his big-budget, post-Exorcist failures of Sorcerer and the controversial Cruising to his underseen creative comeback of 1985’s To Live and Die in L.A. and up to last year’s wonderfully crazed Killer Joe.

But it ignores — as in, never even mentions — 1983’s Deal of the Century or 1990’s The Guardian. I refuse to believe he didn’t have good stories to share with those projects, especially since the former starred legendary asshole Chevy Chase. It’s weird that his one episode of the mid-’80s Twilight Zone revival merits discussion, but these two films have been erased. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.