I completely understand why a chunk of cult-film fandom loathes Mystery Science Theater 3000; to paraphrase singer and arrest magnet Bobby Brown, that’s their prerogative. Speaking for myself, however, I wouldn’t be here — as in, this site — without it, as the TV show introduced me to a netherworld of movies I was unaware of, and pushed me to discover more. (You can read more about that in the introduction to my book, Flick Attack Movie Arsenal.)

Needless to say, you know right away whether Dale Sherman’s The Worst We Can Find: MST3K, Rifftrax, and the History of Heckling at the Movies is for you. The paperback is new from Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, his frequent publisher (Armageddon Films FAQ, Quentin Tarantino FAQ, et al.).

Despite the subtitle, this is the history of Joel Hodgson’s long-running Peabody Award-winning series first and foremost, with everything else adjacent or tangential. In fact, skip the first chapter on the origins of heckling (if the phrase “According to Merriam-Webster” doesn’t make you do so already) and get right into the goods with a look at MST3K precursors, from Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily? to the syndicated TV show Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection. (Speaking of, Mike White’s 2014 book of the same name covers even more forerunners.)

From there, Sherman paints a full picture of the series’ evolution from local UHF sensation in Minneapolis to the national stage, where it was juggled among a couple of channels, revived for streaming and resurrected yet again for its current, crowdfunded home on the internet. You may know all of that already, but Sherman fills in the details of the writing process, the constant budget constraints, how films were selected, which ones they admit didn’t work, why each cast member left, the in-fighting behind the scenes, the battles with Hollywood to make Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie and all the members’ side projects, riff-related or otherwise (mostly the former).

Even if Sherman didn’t conduct the interviews that revealed these details, he certainly did his homework. The Worst We Can Find gives a thorough overview of the series, breezing by at a level firmly between a cursory flyover and a nails-dirty dig into the weeds. Really, going straight down the middle is the right call: It’s accessible without lacking substance, and comprehensive without veering into the arcane or anal-retentive. So what if the author’s lightly peppered stabs at humor fizz like a day-old Dr Pepper? He’s writing about a show he loves so much, it’s natural Sherman get caught in the enthusiasm. If his passion hadn’t come through is when we would worry. —Rod Lott

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We like what we like. No excuses necessary. So says Katharine Coldiron in her new book, Junk Film: Why Bad Movies Matter. One need not explain to others why your tastes lean toward X instead of Y, yet I’m glad she’s chosen to do so in the baker’s dozen of essays making up this Castle Bridge Media trade paperback. Pleasure lives on every page.

Whether discussing the merits of Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, the sweat of John Travolta or the litigiousness of Neil Breen, Coldiron’s writing is supremely intelligent. But don’t equate the I word to being an academic slog; the read is a delight. I could see myself having a conversation with her about these movies at a dinner party. And look, if there’s one thing I dread more than social gatherings, it’s talking.

With her wit is as strong as deeming Showgirls screenwriter Joe Eszterhas as “King Shit of Erotic Thriller Mountain,” I’d be more than happy to just listen. As she writes in the book’s introduction, “Without a sense of humor, bad art is unstudiable.”

While she puts that humor to good practice throughout, she takes her subject seriously. A film that fails is worth watching as much as one that succeeds, she argues with conviction. How else can one truly know what makes a movie good without knowing what doesn’t? It’s “an opportunity beyond the obligatory sex and bloodshed, to see something unique and valuable at the purported bottom of the barrel of American cinema.” If I already weren’t aboard that train of thought, her reasoning would win me over.

Many of the movies covered, like Jack Hill’s Switchblade Sisters (to which the quote above refers), Coldiron actually adores. Fewer pics repel her, and it’s comforting to find another smart person left baffled by Mark Region’s über-enigmatic After Last Season.

I enjoyed Junk Film so much, I don’t care that two chapters aren’t about movies at all. (They’re on Sean Penn’s atrocious novels and Steven Bochco’s short-lived Cop Rock TV show. Also, they’re hysterical.) Hell, I even learned about an entire eight-film franchise I didn’t know existed: Monogram’s “Teen Agers” films of the late 1940s; her play-by-play rundown of these disposable comedies alone is nearly worth the cover price. Plus, as with Castle Bridge’s Yesterday’s Tomorrows: The Golden Age of Science Fiction Movie Posters, the contents sport expert design from In Churl Yo.

Finally, to address the book’s best-kept secret, Junk Film is actually two books in one, since the piece on Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space was published by UK-based Electric Dreamhouse in 2021 as part of its Midnight Movie Monographs series. Even if that weren’t the case, this remains a real score. —Rod Lott

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One thing the Amazing Criswell didn’t predict: the existence of Edwin Lee Canfield’s Fact, Fictions, and the Forbidden Predictions of the Amazing Criswell, the first biography of the “psychic,” “actor” and other professions you could put in ironic quotes. Published by the great Headpress, which makes perfect sense, the book is so exhaustively researched, it gives itself chronic fatigue syndrome.

If at all, older generations are most apt to know Jeron Charles Criswell King through multiple sits on the hallowed couch of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, from where he spouted outrageous prophecies. Younger generations, however, likely came to know him through the films of Ed Wood, most notably Plan 9 from Outer Space, in which he plays himself, and Orgy of the Dead, in which he doesn’t, but may as well be since his approach is unchanged.

Since the Ed Wood rediscovery — roughly from the Medveds’ The Golden Turkey Awards in 1980 to Tim Burton’s Oscar-winning biopic of 1994 — Criswell has become a semi-legend of outré cinema. As Canfield demonstrates in detail, Criswell’s corniness wasn’t confined to the screen; the Renaissance (or Rent-a-Sance, perhaps) man was an outré figure in real life itself.

While the Wood association-cum-collaboration is well-explored, so are the less visible aspects of Criswell’s nearly eight decades on this mortal plane. His close friendship with sex symbol Mae West — then so past her prime, she was practically a recluse — may be oddball, but appears to be the definition of normal compared to his relationship with one Halo Meadows: that of longtime spouse, despite almost certainly being homosexual. Although Criswell was no stranger to embellishment when he met his Meadows, the wannabe theater icon thoroughly schooled her husband in self-promotion and -delusion.

All too often, figures on the cultural fringe are dismissed as mere crackpots to be laughed at like obliviously masturbating zoo animal, but Canfield gives Criswell the bio he deserves. Not because Criswell wasn’t a crackpot; he totally was, but he also was human. His Walter Mitty-style life comes across as both blessed and miserable, because while he enjoyed a mild celebrity, he seemed unable to fully capitalize on it, with he and Meadows always scraping for the next buck, not always legally.

If you’ve never read a Criswell prediction — as bold and brazen as they are baffling — Fact, Fictions has plenty loaded in its chamber, from his newspaper columns and books. The samples reprinted number many — sometimes too many, as a little goes a long way. Readers definitely get a full sense of his soothsaying showmanship … and wonder not only how anyone could take it seriously, but if it were all an act. You’ll find the answers — and more! — in this thick ’n’ quick read. For close to 400 pages, Canfield cannily celebrates Criswell’s bullshit while pulverizing right through it. —Rod Lott

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After covering the filmographies of Herschell Gordon Lewis and Ted V. Mikels, Christopher Wayne Curry turns his completist’s eye to a more difficult subject with The Incredibly Strange Features of Ray Dennis Steckler. Certainly this is the only text to draw a dotted line between the director of Rat Pfink a Boo Boo and Luis Buñuel. After all, Steckler was the kind of low-low-budget filmmaker who thought nothing of ending a movie “with three characters the viewer knows and five they do not.”

Published by McFarland & Co., the book is a thorough examination of the man’s nearly 50-year outré oeuvre in — but mostly on the fringes of — Hollywood. As Curry puts it, “Hollywood was not answering and Steckler was tired of calling.”

Those aware of the psychotronic legend largely do so for his early pictures, including the Arch Hall Jr. vehicle Wild Guitar, the aforementioned accidental superhero spoof Rat Pfink a Boo Boo and the mouthful-titled, monster-musical madness from which Curry’s book takes the most opportune pun, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?

The author takes readers through each in an amazing amount of detail, essentially scene by scene. This would be frustrating if not for Curry using the opportunity to weave in behind-the-scenes stories and facts, historical context, interview quotes and related minutiae all the while; thus, the effect is akin to listening to a solid DVD commentary, both informative and lively. Naturally, his own opinions play a great part. While Curry sees many of Steckler’s deficiencies as a plus, it’s hilarious when he doesn’t, as in his coverage of the padded slasher Blood Shack (aka The Chooper): “Simply put, there should never be protracted conversations about irrigation and filtered water in a horror film.”

A shameless self-promoter, Steckler (who died in 2009) would no doubt be overjoyed with being the focus of an entire book. But no doubt he’d be livid over the chapter devoted to the roughly 75% of his directorial career he not merely disowned, but denied: the dozens and dozens of hardcore pornos. Curry covers them all, but only in brief, because they’re so bad, they don’t merit, er, probing. (And considering how bad Steckler’s legit pics could get, that says a lot.)

Curry’s all-encompassing description of the X-rated fare says it best: “These films contain the usual humping, bumping and pumping, all of this augmented by mounds of unkempt curlys, arcing ropes of reproductive fluids, pimples, cold sores, in-grown hairs and lots of sweat. … The viewer’s sense of smell is spared, but for the eyes and earls it is an all-out assault.”

The book would not be complete without looking at this sordid bulk of Steckler’s work. Same goes for his oft-leading lady, the beautiful Carolyn Brandt (Body Fever), detailing Steckler’s marriage-wrecking infidelities. Without venom, Brandt sheds a light on their personal life to a degree of candidness I’ve not seen reported (not to mention shares a curious tidbit about Ilsa star Dyanne Thorne’s nipples). Curry deserves commendation for telling the whole story, proving a writer can show reverence without being disingenuous.

The only knock against the book is one of unavoidable timing: Severin Films’ recent Steckler box set, in which Curry participated, renders some of the contents out of date, in that projects regarded as lost no longer are. However, these are few and minor.

If you’ve never experienced the uniqueness of a Steckler film, you’re not ready for Incredibly Strange Features. For everyone else, it’s fascinating and fun. —Rod Lott

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On Oct. 5, 1962, two titans of popular culture were unleashed to an unsuspecting public: Beatles records and James Bond movies, in the respective form of “Love Me Do” and Dr. No. Whether the result of kismet, fate, dumb luck or preordained from the heavens, this much is incontestable: Although born in Great Britain, these fraternal twins today belong to the world.

Brighton-based author John Higgs tracks how both were able to achieve the near-impossible — on often-perpendicular paths, no less — in the wonderful new book Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles, and the British Psyche.

From the acrimonious Phil Spector to the acronymous SPECTRE, the similarities along the way are mind-blowing. But this is hardly some Lincoln/Kennedy-style listicle. Rather than merely drawing parallels between his two subjects, the author seems more interested in examining their differences on such stances as class structure and racism.

Even topics that hardly shake the earth are considered — including sports, hairstyles, intoxicants and transcendental meditation — as Higgs chronologically mines history, showing how Bond and The Beatles influenced this ever-changing world in which we live in.

Although Love and Let Die is not a salacious book, sex plays a large part in the story. How could it not? It’s present from the start, revealing the BDSM proclivities of 007 creator/virulent racist Ian Fleming. Higgs even notes Fleming’s first novel, 1953’s Casino Royale, referring to a potential tryst of Bond’s as possessing “the sweet tang of rape.”

With that style of misogyny galore, George Lazenby’s final test for securing the Bond role in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service shouldn’t come as a shock, and yet it does: Producers watched him have sex with several hired hookers “to make sure that he wasn’t gay.”

On The Beatles’ side, I certainly knew each member had his womanizing ways. But I didn’t know — or need to know — about their early-days group masturbation sessions. (Fap Four, anyone?) If Paul McCartney’s candor there is outrageous, miserable asshole John Lennon later outdoes him by sharing regret in not balling his own mother after grabbing her breast as a teenager. (Imagine!)

With more than a little help from that story and others, Higgs succeeds in explaining why Lennon’s reputation as the “genius” Beatle wasn’t exactly well-earned, while restoring the luster of the others. He does several things right throughout Love and Let Die‘s pages, including not ignoring Operation Kid Brother (although many would) or 1967’s ill-fated all-star “comedy” version of Casino Royale (although many should). —Rod Lott

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