To many, the Chateau Marmont is the hotel where John Belushi died from a drug overdose in 1982. While this tragic event is true, it is only one that define this Sunset Strip monument and the surrounding area.

Author Shawn Levy (Dolce Vita Confidential) recalls and details all these events in The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont, a chronicle of the hotel from its inception to the current day. It is a history as lively and engaging as that of any movie, TV or music celebrity.

In the late 1920s, Fred Horowitz, a downtown Los Angeles lawyer who had begun to speculate in property and construction, envisioned a structure at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and the road that led north into Laurel Canyon. Inspired by the Italian Chateau d’Amboise in the Loire valley, Horowitz built a castle-like building to serve as residential apartments. He named it Chateau Marmont after its official city address. Not long after completion, the structure changed to a hotel.

Individuals and couples from the growing movie industry and other creative arts were attracted to the locale, not only because it was close to Hollywood work locations, but also due to the quirky suites and bungalows different from one another. It also developed a reputation for tolerance – where, for example, gay performers could indulge in their sexual preference without fear of unwanted publicity.

Eventually, the location of the hotel became known the world over as the “Sunset Strip,” and the Marmont itself became the short- or long-term home for a seemingly endless array of actors, directors, screenwriters and other Hollywood employees.

At lease one classic movie was developed at the hotel. In his bungalow, director Nicholas Ray enlisted the then little-known actor named James Dean along with co-star Natalie Wood and, with script in hand, conducted readings for what would become Rebel Without a Cause.

Levy traces the Sunset Strip’s changing scene over the years, how the evolving crowd of youngsters who flocked there affected the surrounding area, and how the Chateau Marmont weathered these changes while maintaining its reputation for privacy and tolerance. He focuses on the various hotel owners, but enhances the history with numerous episodes of its residents and their sometimes-outrageous behavior.

Levy’s prose style is lively and engaging. The beginning of each section features a drawing or photograph of the hotel from that period, and includes a section of photos of the various owners, residents and the surrounding areas. Having previously written about such celebrities as Jerry Lewis, Paul Newman, Robert De Niro and the members of the Rat Pack, Levy makes the history of the hotel as dynamic and involving as any of his books’ earlier subjects.

Highly recommended. Not many hotels are worthy of their own biography. But, as The Castle on Sunset so aptly demonstrates, few in the world are like the Chateau Marmont. —Alan Cranis

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I’ve been a fan of Jason Bailey’s work for several years. To tie me over waiting for his next “real” book, I bought both of his self-published books — extended essays, really; physically thin, figuratively meaty — on Richard Pryor and private-eye pictures of the 1970s — sight unseen.

Now, Fun City Cinema: New York City and the Movies That Made It is finally here! Bailey’s such a terrific writer, the book’s magnificence is a foregone conclusion. But upon its arrival, when I opened the book to a random page, only to find my second-favorite film in history, Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, staring back from a dedicated spread, I have to acknowledge this may have been destined in the stars.

Hyperbole? Yes and no. This book couldn’t, wouldn’t exist if NYC were “just” a city; it’s an icon. As Frank Sinatra crooned, if you can make it there, you can make it practically anywhere. When it comes to capturing the city that never sleeps on celluloid, however, you must make it there. (Just ask Rumble in the Bronx, the Jackie Chan actioner actually shot in Vancouver, as the Canadian mountain skyline fails to disguise.)

The movies Fun City Cinema examines and celebrates employ New York City as not merely a setting, but a supporting character. Would Taxi Driver feel as threatening in Dallas? Would the grandeur of Gershwin translate if Manhattan were, say, Boston? Would the suspense of Dog Day Afternoon tick with such piercing intensity if the bank stood in Boise?

All three questions are rhetorical; you didn’t need to be told that. But maybe you don’t know how Bailey goes about managing about 100 years worth of material. Starting with the 1920s, he provides an alarmingly cogent essay of how each decade’s movies reflect the Big Apple at that moment in time — and in grime and in crime, economically, politically, sexually — weaving reality and fiction like an expert tailor.

While he’s picked one film as the encapsulation of the city’s era to front each chapter (not always the title you’d expect), dozens upon dozens of others are recruited to complete the full picture: big and small, commercial and indie, beloved and unknown, Criterion and not Criterion — nary a one is shoehorned in to check a box or fulfill some fan obligations. Not even cult items like Maniac Cop, which other authors would dismiss outright; each serves a purpose.

Like the aforementioned placement of After Hours, a select few films earn end-of-chapter honors for dedicated two-page looks. While this is where you’ll find such top-of-minders as Ghostbusters and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, you’ll also be wowed by some real left-turn choices, from Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart and Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends to Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence. (While I’m slinging plaudits, let me point out if you haven’t heard The Projection Booth podcast’s interview with an irritated and irascible Baron on Blast of Silence, you simply must. It’s all kinds of awkward and hysterical.)

If Bailey’s words alone didn’t already make Fun City Cinema the essential book on New York Movies and the Movies That Made It, the exquisite design work of Eli Mock would push it over the edge. Abrams, the publisher, could have let this project be a “coffee table book,” where the text is secondary to imagery, included to be skimmed if read at all. That’s not the case here; they complement one another to form an irresistible whole. (Intentional or not, Mock’s choice to use sans-serif text for body copy reminds me of the signage for the arterial subway system.) This isn’t one you’ll want to leave on any coffee table, lest it encounters a spilled cup — greatest in the world or otherwise. —Rod Lott

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I was looking forward to reading Douglas Brode’s Midnight Matinees: Cult Cinema Classics (1896 to the Present Day so much, I didn’t realize until after reading that its main title is — like “jumbo shrimp” and “military intelligence” — a true oxymoron. Intended or not, this catchy term operates in the spirit of many of the movies featured, from absurdist to rebellious. I welcome that attitude of levity.

What the world doesn’t need now — or tomorrow — is yet another introduction on what makes a cult film. At least Douglas Brode frames his intro with his personal experiences growing up, so we get it from a specific POV vs. a one-size-fits-all overview. That’s one of the three things I like about the book from BearManor Media, which published his 2015 appreciation of the movies’ femme fatale, Deadlier than the Male. Before we get to the other positives, let’s get the negatives out of the way. They number a few.

As mentioned in my review of Deadlier, Brode has a chronic spelling problem with names; for example, witness “Caesar” Romero, Frank “Miler,” “Cybil” Shepherd, “Rickie” Lake and, as noted in his entry on The Cabin in the Woods, that star Chris Hemsworth soon joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the superhero “Thorn.”

It’s especially disheartening to see the errors spread to the headers for some of the featured films’ reviews. For example, the piece on Requiem for a Dream botches the first word as “Requium.” Meanwhile, Tangerine becomes “Tangarine” and Teaserama becomes “Teasearama.”

Maybe that’s why Brode chose to abbreviate titles after first mention? While not present in the two Brode books I’ve previously read, such a practice is perfectly understandable when those abbreviations are known and logical, like “ID4” or “T2” (neither of which are in Midnight Matinees, for the record). But, for example, has anyone ever referred to When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth as “W.D.R.T.E.”? And abbreviating single-world titles is just lazy, such as “F.” for Fitzcarraldo. Not even people are immune! Just ask “S.T.” (Oh, Shirley Temple.)

More baffling to me is the way each film is rated, which is to say multiple, complicated and overly specific ratings on the five-star scale. No description would better convey what I mean than just showing you. Here are his ratings for The Doors:

Val Kilmer Fan Rating: *****
Jim Morrison Fan Rating: ****
Doors (The Band) Fan Rating: ** 1/2
Oliver Stone directorial Rating: *

And for Hard Candy:

Ellen (now Elliot) Page Afficionado Rating: *****
General Cult Rating: *

In either case, I’m unsure what purpose the ratings serve. Since they’re rarely directly explained in the reviews, I started ignoring them. Or maybe I just became more distracted by several of Brode’s picks: a lot of Oscar bait. Marriage Story is a cult film? Little Miss Sunshine? Hugo? Roma? Crash? (Haggis, not Cronenberg.) Really?

Enough complaining. Now for the rest of Midnight Matinees’ positives. As I already knew from Deadlier than the Male (as well as Brode’s Fantastic Planets, Forbidden Zones, and Lost Continents: The 100 Greatest Science-Fiction Films, not from BearManor), Brode is fun to read. Although he’s taught film at the collegiate level, his writing doesn’t reflect hallowed halls — meaning it’s neither pompous nor stodgy; in fact, it may not curry favor in the academic world, especially when it’s as zero-fucks-given as his recounting of Andy Warhol’s Bad: “Hideous looking females slowly stab adorable dogs to death and toss innocent babies from rooftops.”

Speaking of Warhol, the artist’s eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building, Empire, is among the 500-plus titles chosen for inclusion. Yes, so are the usual suspects — basically almost everything on the cover — but he also tosses in the unexpected, such as the 1945 musical Ziegfeld Follies, the Spanish snuff thriller Tesis and the 1901 short What Happened on 23rd Street, New York. Those types of picks are the discoveries one hopes to get from such books. He also throws a couple of curveballs in the form of the critically reviled box-office bombs The Dark Tower and Welcome to Marwen. He may be before the curve there, but at least he’s taking a risk. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon or BearManor Media.

While the rest of the country meme-watches its way through the Friends reunion special, the true ’90s nostalgia awaits in the Fantagraphics-published Bleeding Skull! A 1990s Trash-Horror Odyssey.

The long-awaited, much-anticipated sequel to Joseph A. Ziemba and Dan Budnik’s Bleeding Skull! A 1980s Trash-Horror Odyssey, unleashed to molten minds by Headpress in 2013, this sophomore (and proudly sophomoric) follow-up gives ink to the absolute oddest of no-budget obscurities video stores had to offer, most shot on VHS camcorders. With jackers, crystal forces, death metal zombies, psycho sisters, killer clowns, killer nerds and mad scientists named Dr. Kill, the contents are every bit worth the brand’s fractured exclamation point.

This time, Budnik is nowhere to be found, replaced by Annie Choi and Zack Carlson, whose styles meld better with Ziemba’s. (Please note that’s not a slam on Budnik, whose 2017 book, ’80s Action Movies on the Cheap: 284 Low Budget, High Impact Pictures, is a howlingly funny must-have for every B-movie enthusiast’s library.) The trio’s tag-teamed intro states these virtually unseen movies are deserving of cheers, not sneers … even if the 250 reviews don’t quite carry out this credo, as many flicks are most decidedly mocked — with exuberant affection, but mocked nonetheless.

After all, it’s not until the 10th entry (Asylum of Terror) that readers will arrive at anything resembling a “good” review, albeit one in which Ziemba writes, “no one appearing on-screen seems to understand that they’re being filmed.”

Of course, Bleeding Skull! wouldn’t be the tremendously fun read it is without the writers’ often brutal — and brutally hilarious — observations:
• Bad Karma: “The design is one part Etsy, three parts Dollar General.”
• Bloodscent: “The music is the finest junior varsity jock rock that western Pennsylvania has to offer.”
• Blood Slaves: “Looks like it was cast at a baseball card shop.”
• The Laughing Dead: “If a pair of slit wrists got together to make a movie, it would be this one.”
• Psycho Pike: “If you like to watch people drive around in a Jeep Wrangler, Psycho Pike is your movie.”
• The Witching: “The Witching is a saxophone kicking in for 64 minutes straight.”

More or less escaping ire are the DIY directors whose filmographies number beyond “1.” For example, the authors’ collective championing of the Polonia brothers (one of whom provides the foreword) nears idolatry. Fervent enthusiasm also falls to the Jesus-influenced gore of Todd Sheets, the “monstah” movies of David “The Rock” Nelson and the infidelity-themed slashers of Tim Ritter. Not so much for Todd Cook, whose prolificness is overshadowed by his stream-of-semiconsciousness works’ puerility. No matter where the opinions fall, however, the book is never not informative or entertaining; never before has so much thought been placed on explaining why choking is the laziest of murder methods.

No rave for this book is complete without praise for who may be considered its fourth author: designer Keeli McCarthy. With an aesthetic heavy on Magic Markers, highlighters and the purposeful cut-and-paste sloppiness of zines, her design is more aligned with Carlson’s seminal (and sadly out-of-print) Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film than Bleeding Skull!’s aforementioned ’80s edition. Either way, it’s now in glorious, garish full color. —Rod Lott

Like shot-on-video movies themselves, taking in A 1990s Trash-Horror Odyssey all at once could be overkill — or simply unfortunate, since we’re eight years away from A 2000s Trash-Horror Odyssey if the current between-books gap between holds. If Camp Blood of all things can get 10 installments, I hold out hope Bleeding Skull! at least merits a third. —Rod Lott

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If you can’t look at a bottle of vanilla extract without thinking of Tom Hanks, I get it. Same. And have I got a book for you!

Every book bearing Lee Gambin’s name on the cover is worth purchasing, but Tonight, on a Very Special Episode: When TV Sitcoms Sometimes Got Serious — Volume 1: 1957-1985 is the only one whose mere introduction gave me goose bumps. Those initial pages aim to define what constitutes a “Very Special Episode” (hereafter abbreviated as “VSE”), but also weave a big, warm blanket of nostalgia for members of a certain generation or two: those weaned on afternoon reruns of sitcoms older than we were, and whose evenings were determined — if not outright dictated — by the grids in that week’s TV Guide.

As Gambin (We Can Be Who We Are: Movie Musicals from the 1970s) explains, the VSE represented a break from the show’s norm to present something different, whether a backdoor pilot, a series finale or a character’s life milestone, from the birth of the baby to a wedding or funeral. But more often than not, the VSE saw a seismic shift in tonality, however temporary, to tackle a Big Social Issue; the laugh track was given seven days’ rest so the creative powers could address not-funny situations of real life, like getting cancer, hating minorities, contracting the herp — you know, that sort of thing.

Nowadays, an entire network series can be built upon such a single hot-button issue (yes, you, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), but in more sheltered times, devoting a half-hour to STDs or ICBMs was considered a risky movie best left for parents, schools and churches to handle quietly … if handled at all, which may account for why the boob tube — increasingly the nation’s babysitter — stopped every now and again to take up the cause, to face reality with bravery, to stand up for what’s right, to fight the good fight, to give Barney Miller a werewolf.

Gambin’s overview ticks through some of the greatest hits, conjuring memories of treasured shows and particular VSEs I must have seen four or more times growing up. I remember learning about child molestation from Diff’rent Strokes, cerebral palsy from The Facts of Life, blackface from Gimme a Break!, speed (and the alcoholic properties of the aforementioned vanilla extract) from Family Ties and media manipulation from The Brady Bunch. (That Jesse James was one bad hombre. Who knew? Mike and Carol, of course.)

All those and more are here — many, many more: 124, if I counted correctly. Each episode in Tonight, on a Very Special Episode merits a stand-alone essay from Gambin or one of his contributors. (Bittersweetly, one is the recently departed and much-loved Mike McPadden, author of Teen Movie Hell, who takes the good and takes the bad of a couple Facts of Life episodes.)

The contents — which, honestly, could really use a detailed table of just that — include an expected surfeit of Norman Lear creations, namely All in the Family and Maude, both giants in the VSE field. As enlightening as the pieces on those VSEs are, I found the best to be about half-hours I somehow missed or forgot.

Four of these essays stand out as tops in terms of being informative, critical and passionate, all while detailing and deconstructing scenes that make one think, “This actually aired?!?“:
• the Beav palling around with a booze-soaked hobo (Leave It to Beaver);
• Tabitha and a Black playmate switching races, much to the chagrin of Darren’s racist client (Bewitched);
• Fred and the boys unknowingly auditioning for a porno movie (Sanford and Son);
• and Monroe being repeatedly raped by two obese women (Too Close for Comfort).

The Bewitched one won awards; Comfort, yanked from syndication.

From examinations of M*A*S*H to transmissions on WKRP, Gambin and friends pour their hearts into their work, because these shows mean as much to them as they mean to you. If Tonight, on a Very Special Episode leaves you wishing it didn’t end in 1985, great news: BearManor Media has simultaneously published Volume 2: 1986-1998, so The Golden Girls can co-exist beside your Good Times. Ain’t we lucky we got ’em? —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon or BearManor Media.