In 1985, I was 14 and at the peak of my obsessive love for Mad magazine. Late that summer, when I read a one-sentence mention in TV Guide that a syndicated show titled Mad Movies was among that fall’s new fare, I flipped. Finally, something to look forward to in my so-called life!

Imagine my disappointment when Mad Movies soon premiered, and under the full title of Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection. Not only did the program have zilch to do with my favorite “cheap” mag, but I didn’t find it all that funny, either, no matter how hard its rather desperate laugh track tried to convince me otherwise. (Don’t even get me started on FTV, the woeful MTV parody that shared the hour on my local station.)

The premise of Mad Movies was simple: The California-based improv troupe The L.A. Connection lip-synched a comical new storyline to heavily condensed versions of various films in the public domain, including comedies (The Little Princess), mysteries (Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon), thrillers (D.O.A.) and horror (Night of the Living Dead).

I share all that so I can say that even with my relationship with the show being brief and unsuccessful, I still looked forward to reading the world’s first — and likely only, ever — book on the short-lived series: the straightforward-titled Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection by Cashiers du Cinemart madman Mike White. After all, the show has its cult, and I admire its playfully anarchic, subversive spirit even without loving the final product. It’s possible that without it and similar experiments (see below), Mystery Science Theater 3000 would not exist.

From BearManor Media, the slim paperback details the show’s history, and it’s one that includes such players as Alan Thicke, Will Ferrell and — va-va-voom! — the Landers sisters. While not exactly sordid, the behind-the-scenes stories are candid enough to reveal a fair share of dueling egos at play, so perhaps it’s for the best the series lasted only one season. White includes an episode guide shortly after the halfway mark, and the book is illustrated with photos and old ads throughout.

It’s to White’s credit that the book would be interesting enough telling The L.A. Connection’s brush with nationwide mainstream television. Yet he doesn’t stop there; as readers of Cinemart’s most recent issue know (being treated to a preview excerpt), White discusses the comedic art form of “mock dubbing” as a whole, which has resulted in such niche features as What’s Up, Hideous Sun Demon (with Jay Leno among the voice cast), Blobermouth and Hercules Returns, all of which I now must see.

Love or loathe Mad Movies the TV show, any fan of that culture-spoofing style will enjoy Mad Movies the book. If there’s a bone to be picked from this chicken, it’s that White often quotes what should just be paraphrased, if not all but stricken, and yet his prose flows. (Allow me to pause and plug his outstanding collection of film criticism, 2013’s Cinema Detours.) At 132 pages, it can be read in less than two hours, which is roughly equal to the total time I spent watching the show in ’85 before deciding to stop tuning in; there were many Mads to be read and re-read, after all. —Rod Lott

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Overall, fans of cult cinema should enjoy Mark J. Banville’s Theme ’70: Tackling the Beast They Call Exploitation Cinema, yet it’s important to note what the trade paperback is and is not. First and foremost, UK publisher Headpress has blessed it with a subtitle that is not truly indicative of the actual contents. That’s because the book, largely reprinted from Banville’s Theme ’70 zine of the early 1990s, offers comparatively very little in the way of words; it works best as a collection of posters and ad mats straight from the kitsch-en sink. When the author does review a movie — most of the flicks covered herald from blaxploitation — it’s short and sweet and really more of a plot summary than actual opinion. That’s not a complaint, because the book is a ton of fun, but being more collage than criticism hardly qualifies as “tackling the beast”; in other words, expect images, not insight. I would have liked to have seen an introduction that told the history of the zine (one I had never heard of until now) and, thus, placed the material that follows in solid context. More telling is that I would like to see even more of this stuff. It’s a hoot.

Hey, speaking of zines, that DIY art form was huge in the 1990s, particularly in the realm of B movies, before the Internet all but killed them. Ironically, the print zine has been making a comeback where cult film is concerned, and one near-sterling example is the ad-free Evilspeak Horror Magazine. Now on its third issue, each one is impressively designed (by Justin Stubbs) and larger than the previous, to the point that the current edition is really a trade paperback. In its 134 pages, you get celebrations of horror, horror and — yep! — horror, with a deep focus on flicks that wallow in the gutter well below the mainstream. Issue 3 also features an article on the horror comics of Eerie Publications, plus an original comic of its own. If there’s a bone to pick with Evilspeak, it’s that a couple of the writers tend to summarize a film rather than discuss it, and co-founder/co-editor Vanessa Nocera (currently on display in the Hi-8 anthology) is most guilty of this across all issues, even giving away the movies’ endings! Good thing I get a reading buzz nonetheless.

Last fall, I ran a review of Danny Marianino’s The Mega Book of Revenge Films — Volume 1: The Big Payback, which read in part, “Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re going to write a book about movies in which the whole point is characters seeking vengeance, shouldn’t you be able to spell ‘vengeance’? … [It] is so every-page-riddled with typos, run-on sentences and other egregious errors that it’s obvious he didn’t select ‘Check Spelling’ on his self-published manuscript.” However, thanks to the technological magic of today’s print-on-demand world, newly purchased copies of the paperback reflect Marianino performing a little clean-up work, including reinstating a lost photograph that originally resulted in a big ol’ blank space. What’s important is that even with the errors that remain, the man’s passion for these movies stands front and center. His shoot-the-shit approach to discussing (vs. reviewing) the films fan-to-fan is infectious; you’ll emerge from it with a large list of titles to catch or revisit, not to mention a yearning for Mega’s promised 2016 follow-up, Volume 2: Gleaming the Cube. —Rod Lott

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Provocatively and perfectly titled, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands: On Classic Film Noir attempts to be, as editor Robert Miklitsch writes, “a collection that confines itself to the extraordinary scope and depth, the embarrassment of riches” of the genre. Now that film noir has bled over into, of all things, mainstream video games, perhaps it’s time for another where-we’ve-been / where-it-stands examination of this influential and invigorating type of Hollywood crime picture.

The University of Illinois Press paperback concludes with a four-page appendix of “Critical Literature” on the subject, and Kiss the Blood succeeds so well in meeting its stated goal, it deserves a spot on its own list.

While the text is academic in approach, it is hardly inaccessible to any self-taught cineaste, to any criminally minded movie watcher able to see something — anything — lurking beyond the bang-bang visual surface. From as many contributors, the 10 essays within admirably convey that preface-referenced “scope and depth.” Where else can one absorb quality criticism on the use of rear projection in Edgar G. Ulmer’s now-landmark Detour?

Amid selections devoted to heist films and notable producers, Miklitsch himself attempts to answer the age-old question of “What is noir?” by pinpointing the alpha and omega — that is, the beginning and end — of America’s so-called classic cycle. In doing so, he considers the work of Orson Welles and the two Roberts (Aldrich and Wise), not to mention Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of pornography.

The book begins with a pair of female-centric pieces, as Philippa Gates and Julie Grossman respectively examine women’s roles in screen detection and film noir overall. One supposes Krin Gabbard’s chapter immediately following, on the love song’s gradual but palpable vanishing act from noir, also will hold large appeal to women readers before Kiss the Blood’s focus shifts away from gender politics and into noir’s subgenres or elements thereof.

Of particular interest is the most unusual, as J.P. Telotte explores how cartoons and animated features, from Donald Duck to Roger Rabbit, filtered, mirrored, distilled, stole and just plain parodied film noir tropes, in “Disney Noir: ‘Just Drawn That Way.’” Its specificity in subject is reflective of this collection’s major strength: variety, with credibility closely tied. —Rod Lott

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Four years after publishing an academic essay collection on TV’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 2011’s In the Peanut Gallery, McFarland & Company dips back into Deep 13 territory with Chris Morgan’s The Comic Galaxy of Mystery Science Theater 3000: Twelve Classic Episodes and the Movies They Lampoon, a refreshingly accessible tour of the cult series’ 11-season run that works as both a history overview and greatest-hits tour.

As the subtitle says, Morgan ticks through a dozen key episodes, one per season except the final, which earns two chapters. (The author also throws 1994’s Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie in for good measure, as well as a 12-page discussion of shorts.) In doing so, he’s able to relay the show’s entire lifespan, from a scrappy, local TV time-filler to a pair of national major-cable networks, and detail how things evolved as the years passed, on both sides of the screen.

The approach also allows Morgan to dive deep into what he feels are representative eps, to examine not only the movies skewered and screwed, but the riffs doing the skewering and screwing. Because the book is written for total accessibility, his commentary can be a joy to read; take, for example, this observation of second-season gem Catalina Caper: “Two different women lose their tops in this movie, which is either one too many or 20 too few. Either do that bit once or be completely morally and intellectually bankrupt. There is no room for middle ground.”

Refreshingly, while he clearly is a hardcore MST3K fan, he’s not a blinded fanboy; in fact, he tasks the creators to task for mean-spirited jokes on actors’ weight and/or appearance. On the other hand, readers may be left questioning Morgan’s own judgment over what classifies as a classic episode. Most notably, while he acknowledges season-four closer Manos: The Hands of Fate as being synonymous with the show, he writes, “That is not to say this episode is the favorite of most people. It’s a strong episode, sure, but … the riffing isn’t top of the line” — and this opinion stands in stark contrast to decades’ worth of fan-favorite lists.

There are other eyebrow-raisers, from him doubting the MST3K creators would ever take on Syfy dreck like Sharknado (which they did last July), to calling Star Wars’ special effects as “somewhat poor.” But to each his own, right? Less forgivable are an overuse-to-point-of-abuse of “as stated previously” and factual errors (Roger Corman didn’t make a Captain America movie), but at least the latter arrives in very short supply.

Bottom line: Comic Galaxy comes strongly recommended to all membership levels of MSTies. While it’s not the definitive history of the revolutionary series, it’s a good one. —Rod Lott

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Truth is, every hopeless film addict has a story like comedian/actor Patton Oswalt shares in Silver Screen Fiend. The difference is we’re not famous, so who wants to hear it?

Okay, okay, so Oswalt’s knack for making an anecdote as compelling as it comedic may have something to do with it, too.

Because of this, anyone who has experienced the near-orgasmic, adrenaline rush (don’t deny it) of a movie projector flickering to life as the lights fade away — along with your disbelief — will find themselves in lockstep with a kindred spirit …

… who’s way funnier than you or I.

Although Oswalt indeed presents himself more than worthy of the title, the slim volume is really only half about the movies. This is a memoir of a four-year span in his life in the late 1990s, when he worked as hard honing his stand-up skills on the stage as he did at catching whatever double features L.A.’s storied New Beverly Cinema revival house had programmed.

What Oswalt admittedly didn’t work so hard at? Churning out sketches for his actual day job as part of the MADtv writing team. Why do that when he harbored big, shiny dreams of becoming a director? Mainlining movies — new and old, classic or crap — was, he reasoned, the most direct path to calling “Action!”

Chapters of Silver Screen Fiend open with visual evidence of this, reprinting calendar grids of Oswalt’s filmgoing exploits, from Billy Wilder and William Castle to Hammer horror marathons and whatever big-budget blockbuster happened to open at the multiplex that week. The anal-retentive cineasts among us can and will relate; same goes with his devotion to the sacred texts of Danny Peary and Michael Weldon, whose pages Oswalt not only pored over, but decorated with checkmarks as he saw the movies they celebrated.

This book is not like those books, meaning you will not find reviews per se, although the pages are rife with the author’s blessedly unfiltered opinions. Yet it rightfully earns shelf space next to those works of reference, as Oswalt’s sprocket-holed memoir is often hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking and always, always of immense interest. —Rod Lott

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