I wish I could say I’ve been eagerly waiting the release of Greg Sestero’s The Disaster Artist since he mentioned it on a 2011 episode of the How Did This Get Made? podcast, but really, I’ve been eagerly waiting it longer than that — in fact, mere minutes after I saw 2003’s The Room, this millennium’s arguably strongest candidate for Best Worst Movie.

Someone, I reasoned, just had to write a book to answer all my questions surrounding such a misbegotten production, not the least of which was simply, “What the hell?”

Sestero does not disappoint. As one point of The Room‘s wretched love triangle and inadvertent line producer, the actor had a front-row seat not just to the chaos of shooting of the $6 million vanity project, but the chaos that was (is?) the life of Tommy Wiseau, “mastermind” of the movie. Years before The Room said, “Oh, hi” to an unsuspecting world, Sestero was a friend and roommate of Wiseau.

The author’s recollections (undoubtedly goosed by Disaster co-writer Tom Bissell) are hysterical from the start. On page 2, I was already laughing out loud at Sestero’s descriptions of the … how you say, “unique” look of Wiseau: “Gene Simmons after three months in the Gobi Desert? The Hunchback of Notre Dame following corrective surgery? An escaped Muppet? The drummer from Ratt?”

A terrific sense of humor is the book’s greatest asset. Unlike The Room, the laughs are intentional. Laughter was something every poor soul who had the unfortunate experience of working on the picture struggled to stifle — everyone, of course, except Wiseau, who failed to see his acting/screenwriting/directing/producing debut as anything but life-altering brilliance.

So delusional is Wiseau that he paid for The Room to play a theatrical run (to empty houses, no less) for two whole weeks, because that time frame is required to qualify for Academy Awards consideration. That’s merely one baffling decision of a thousand that Wiseau makes over the course of The Disaster Artist’s pages. God bless Sestero for taking mental notes the whole time.

So harsh is he on Wiseau at times (“The only casting directors who’d be willing to call Tommy in on the basis of this headshot were the ones curious about what it was like to be murdered”) that I wonder if their friendship experienced a fatal falling-out after the film’s premiere. If so, it goes unaddressed, but that’s about the only thing readers will be left wanting to know. Sestero even sheds light on the enigmatic Wiseau’s past, to disturbing detail.

All of this might come off as an exercise in petty cruelty, if not for two things:
1. Sestero is quick to point out his own shortcomings, e.g., “It’s pretty obvious that I mailed in my performance throughout the entire production, but during this scene I didn’t even bother to lick the envelope.”
2. The Room deserves it. Anyone who’s seen it, knows it, and anyone who’s seen it needs to read this book on its making. Apologies to the word “making.” —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Anyone who writes off Roger Corman as just a schlockmeister is woefully ill-informed. Whether as producer, director, writer and/or distributor, the man is responsible for some god-awful movies … but he’s also responsible for some legitimately great ones. And even his god-awful ones can be terrific fun to watch.

Because he revolutionized the indie film biz and birthed many A-list careers, he deserves all the accolades he gets, including that honorary Academy Award from a couple years back. Let’s not forget the books, too; many have been written, but Chris Nashawaty’s Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses might be my favorite of them all. It’s definitely my favorite book of the year, fiction or non, for many reasons.

For starters, it’s an oral history of Corman’s career and legacy. Whether the subject is SNL, MTV or ESPN, oral histories on some aspect of the entertainment field are infinitely readable, and Crab Monsters is no exception, star-studded as it is with Corman grads Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, Gale Anne Hurd, James Cameron and a mind-boggling many more.

Sylvester Stallone puts its best on page 145: “Roger was a launching pad of unguided missiles to be launched into space. We were the seeds, and he owned the farm.”

For another reason, it’s also an art book, jam-packed with photos but more importantly, lobby cards and posters — oh, posters, glorious posters! That’s an area in which Corman always excelled; not only would they promise more than the product delivered, but he often commissioned a script after the one-sheet was made.

With coffee-table books, one often finds the text surrounding the visuals to be secondary, if not skipped altogether. That’s not the case here. So well-designed you might mistake it for the work of Chip Kidd at first, Crab Monsters can be enjoyed separately as text or visuals, but is deliciously sublime when consumed altogether as intended.

I fell in love with the book almost immediately; less than halfway in, that affection had blown up into obsession, and I devoured the entire thing in one incredibly enjoyable Saturday. I’ve admired Corman’s work for decades, and Nashawaty’s book sums it up even better than the joyous 2011 documentary Corman’s World.

For movie lovers, Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses not just gets, but earns my highest recommendation. For the Corman faithful, it’s simply an absolute must. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Understandably, Andrew J. Rausch just can’t seem to pull himself away from Herschell Gordon Lewis. Having co-authored a book with Lewis last year in the heartily recommended The Godfather of Gore Speaks, Rausch wrangles Lewis once more as a participant in Gods of Grindhouse, a collection of interviews with 16 notable filmmakers, almost all known best for their work as directors.

I’ll state my one caveat right upfront since it’s right there in the alliterative title: While synonymous, the term “grindhouse” is not always interchangeable with “cult movies.” That quibble aside, I had an absolute blast with this book from Bear Manor Media. I read it in one sitting, in roughly the time it takes it watch any given one of the guys’ most memorable flicks.

Although all 16 interviews adhere to the Q-and-A format, not all of the Qs stem from Rausch’s mind. He interviews Lewis, Night of the Living Dead co-creator John A. Russo and multihyphenates Roger Corman and Larry Cohen; the rest of the talks come from a dozen others. Lengths vary and all but two have been published elsewhere previously. That turned out not to be a problem, as I had read only one previously: Mike White’s conversation with Wacko‘s Greydon Clark.

Kicking off Gods, Brian Layne speaks with Full Moon Pictures emperor Charles Band, which is nice to see because one rarely, if ever, finds Band in these sorts of things. Among the rest of the paperback’s contents, certain pieces stand out, including:
• Frank Henenlotter bemoaning his own job on Basket Case 3: The Progeny;
• Bill Rebane detailing how he started shooting The Giant Spider Invasion without the benefit of, y’know, money;
• and Ray Dennis Steckler decrying Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s episode of his Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up
Zombies as “just disgusting” and “anti-Semitic” (!).

Also grilled about their careers — although not always in full — are David F. Friedman, Jack Hill, Lloyd Kaufman, William Lustig, Russ Meyer, Ted V. Mikels (of course he’s pictured with that god-awful boar’s-tooth necklace) and, the odd man out of the group, Alejandro Jodorowsky. Posters and photos pepper the pages.

After reading Gods of Grindhouse, you may find yourself filling your free time with viewings of some of the films mentioned. This should be listed on the back cover as a possible side effect. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon or Bear Manor Media.

Recently I read Stefan Jaworzyn’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion, which sets out to cover the entire franchise (up to its 2004 publication date, at least), yet does it in a way that’s lazy, shoddy and unfriendly to the reader. By contrast, Paul Kane’s The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy shows how a retrospective on a horror-film franchise — or on any genre, really — should be done. It’s not difficult.

Jaworzyn’s book is not new, and neither is Kane’s, but the latter is now available in a reprint — and in a much more affordable paperback edition, at that — from McFarland & Company. Needless to say, any Hellraiser fan worth his or her satanic salt should own it.

Benefitting from a wealth of interviews, Kane recounts Clive Barker’s creation of the world of the Cenobites in The Hellbound Heart and his aim to bring that novel to the big screen himself, having been less-than-enthused about what filmmakers had done with adapting his work prior (see: Transmutations or Rawhead Rex — or don’t, as Barker would prefer).

We now know he succeeded, but in real life, conclusions aren’t so foregone. Turns out, there’s a real story to be told of the 1987 hit’s making, including battles over the budget and its rating. Hollywood’s response was not to give Barker creative freedom on his next project … but to offer him Alien 3.

Kane could’ve stopped there, but instead continues giving the same thorough, behind-the-scenes treatment for each and every sequel (except 2011’s Hellraiser: Revelations, made after the book’s original 2006 publication), whether released theatrically or straight to home video. Among them, the greatest tale of production belongs to the tortured one of the series’ fourth, 1996’s Hellraiser: Bloodlines, the one that sent Pinhead into space and took three directors to complete, if you count the infamous Alan Smithee disowning pseudonym to whom it’s credited.

Smartly avoiding start-to-finish, beat-for-beat synopses, Kane instead follows each film’s story of conception with an exploration into the themes it presents and probes. Luckily, the author does a damn good job of it. Rounding out the book is a brief look at Hellraiser‘s entry into other media, most notably comics.

Jesus wept … for joy! —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Fans of outré horror cinema are urged to order Zombi Mexicano right freakin’ now — not just because it’s an excellent publication, but because author/designer Keith J. Rainville has printed only 250 of these babies, with no plans for a wider run.

In other words: You snooze, you lose, and the trade paperback represents 20 of my dollars that were as hard-earned as they were well-spent.

¿Comprende?

Zombi Mexicano is not a definitive text on Mexican zombie flicks, nor is it intended to be (although now I’m convinced he should embark on that project immediately). It is an overview on a franchise that Rainville believes has been ignored, and he’s right; even a cult-film enthusiast such as myself hadn’t heard of the “Guanajuato mummies” movies, not to mention their producer, Rogelio Agrasánchez Linaje.

As Rainville writes, “Ever see a zombie use karate, then try to stomp a baby, all to the tune of a circus pipe organ?” I can’t say that I have, but I can say that I must.

Numbering roughly seven or so films, the series began with 1970’s The Mummies of Guanajuato, starring the “holy trinity of lucha-heroes: Santo, Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras.” Following in quick succession over the next five years were such sequels as Castle of the Mummies of Guanajuato, Mansion of the Seven Mummies and Macabre Legends of the Colonial Era.

I now need to see all of them.

Rainville runs through each with a spirited discussion that’s supplemented with scads and scads of crazy screen grabs, vintage posters and garish lobby cards. It’s laid out like a magazine, professionally and in eye-popping full color (except those instances where the source material was not).

The jam-packed 64-pager also contains an introductory essay that touches upon the movies you likely have heard of (i.e. the Aztec Mummy trilogy) and Mexico’s yesteryear comics featuring zombies and/or mummies.

So you don’t just have to take my near-worthless word for it, you can get a peek at Zombi Mexicano‘s insides here. Now go buy it, funky film fan, before that right is taken from you. I accept your thanks in advance. De nada. —Rod Lott

Buy it at From Parts Unknown.