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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Oh hai! Ryan Finnigan’s The Room: The Definitive Guide tears me apart as I try to determine just whom it is for: virgins or sluts? On one hand, much of the Applause trade paperback is geared toward the newbie; on the other, the train wreck of a drama it celebrates is one of those flicks for which the phrase “must be seen to be believed” was coined. And unless you’ve seen Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, you cannot, will not “get it,” making guest Alan Jones’ beat-by-beat plot rehash superfluous on at least two levels. The Guide is most enjoyable in its Q-and-A interviews with the principal players, and most insufferable in its “how to” articles on audience participation and overall indoctrination. Special attention must be given to the colorful, dot-patterned infographics that appear throughout, encapsulating those unmistakable Wiseau vibes in a way that mere words fail.

Also from Applause is the latest in its crash-course FAQ series, Modern Sci-Fi Films FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About Time Travel, Alien, Robot, and Out-of-This-World Movies Since 1970. Better than James Bond FAQ, author Tom DeMichael’s previous contribution to the franchise, this book pays tribute to the genre’s literary greats (and, um, Stephenie Meyer?!?) before jumping into a thematic trip through contemporary flicks of future visions, galactic travels, ripples in time and robots amok. Readers are likely to have heard of all DeMichael’s choices, if not seen them all, too: Star Wars, Alien, Robocop, E.T., et al. Any disappointment stemming from the trade paperback is not that the contents are heavy with such megabudgeted crowd-pleasers, but that so much of said contents is spent summarizing those movies’ stories, from frame one to fade-out, spoilers be damned. The afterwords to each picture favor information of the trivial kind, whereas the critical might whet more appetites. Recommended to sci-minded kids who aren’t sure what titles to add their Netflix queue, but skippable for any moviegoer old enough to gain admission to R-rated fare.

Fresh off a book on Hammer Films’ Psychological Thrillers for McFarland & Company, David Huckvale keeps things eerie with Poe Evermore: The Legacy in Film, Music and Television. Hardly the publisher’s first foray into all things Poe, the paperback serves as proof — not that any was needed — that the works of ol’ Edgar Allan have worked their way into our collective pop-culture consciousness like vines to trees. Taking an alphabetical trip through the master’s complete works, Huckvale discusses both direct adaptations to screen and pervasive influences on other people’s works. While some of the latter could be considered a stretch — one could argue TV’s Six Million Dollar Man probably would have existed Poe or no —  Evermore works best as a reference guide to the continuing omnipresence of the horror and mystery forefather’s ghoulishly Gothic tales, characters and themes.

I learned much, much more about one of the filmdom’s most notorious B-movie producers from Dave Mann’s Harry Alan Towers: The Transnational Career of a Cinematic Contrarian than from Towers’ own autobiography, Mr. Towers of London, brought out last year by Bear Manor Media. For starters, Mann’s work — published by McFarland — works with nearly 100 more pages; for another, Mann’s all depth vs. Towers’ more surface-skidding approach. It also gives the subject his due in pioneering production methods; the man never met a tax threshold he could not, would not, did not exploit. In fact, it’s suggested that cult director Jess Franco’s now-trademark zooms are a result of Towers’ crank-’em-out insistence. From humble beginnings to Fu Manchu adventures to late-’80s Cannon fodder (including threequels of the mighty Delta Force and American Ninja franchises), each phase of Towers’ career is covered with a scholar’s eye for detail, yet also a willingness to call a spade a spade — and by that, I mean Towers’ shortcomings in quality control: “relentless stichomythia being interspersed with ripe morsels of thickly cut ham.” Cult cineasts will find much of the salty meat ready to carve.

Finally, McFarland casts the spotlight on another man whose name is treasured among lovers of B film, in Larry Cohen: The Radical Allegories of an Independent Filmmaker. Now available in a paperback edition updated since the 1996 hardcover, Tony Williams’ work casts a probing, critical eye at the entire career of the underrated underdog — a scrappy, sardonic auteur who brings class to what otherwise may be crap (It’s Alive, Q: The Winged Serpent, The Stuff and so on) and who, on occasional, simultaneously penetrates and tweaks the mainstream with a swift script (Cellular and Phone Booth) of admirable calculation. Containing interviews with the man himself and seemingly no stone unturned (as Cohen’s work in TV and the stage get equal time), the book is a must for the faithful. Ill-advised drinking game: Take a shot every time Williams describes Cohen’s technique as “comic-strip”; you will die. —Rod Lott

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