I’m not sure whether to be proud or ashamed that I’ve seen so many of the movies covered in Brian Albright’s Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990, a state-by-state reference guide to fright flicks made independently of the studios, major and minor. I just assumed that the titles covered would be completely obscure.

To a majority of moviegoers, I’m sure they are. Yes, they include Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Troma’s The Toxic Avenger, but those are exceptions to the rule — one populated by the likes of Zaat, Terror at Tenkiller, Dungeon of Harrow, Don’t Go in the Woods and Mardi Gras Massacre. Home video may have extended their audience greatly, but rarely so far to have penetrated the mainstream.

But before Albright gets to those, he gives a great introduction in “I Hear America Screaming,” offering a quick overview as he establishes the definition and criteria for the films covered. Why stop at 1990? Because the explosion of digital video and iMovie would have necessitated something the size of the Yellow Pages for the greater Los Angeles area. That’s a smart decision, because in my view, the luster seems to have been lost when the technology is no longer something people had to work to get.

Blood, sweat and tears inform these films — not trust funds, iPhones and Kickstarter campaigns. That’s not to say the end results are all good — heavens, no; in fact, the opposite is often the case. And it’s refreshing to hear the filmmakers admit their own faults in the 13 Q-and-A-style interviews that compose roughly half the trade paperback’s 336 pages. Among the most notable are, in order of ascending talent, J.R. Bookwalter (The Dead Next Door), William Grefé (Stanley) and Lewis Jackson (Christmas Evil).

The back half contains the state-by-state rundown (ignoring California on purpose, save for one), with the flicks presented in capsule format, but not as reviews. To his credit, Albright doesn’t pretend to have seen all of them, especially when one considers how difficult many are to acquire. His entries make me want to see scads of them.

With poster art galore, this is a reference book that horror-film fans didn’t know they needed. —Rod Lott

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I can’t remember the first time I heard of the boys who made a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I do remember thinking, “Cute, but what’s the point? Perhaps there’s more to the story.”

Turns out, there is … but only technically. With writer Alan Eisenstock, the once-juvenile filmmakers Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala tell their seven-year tale of production in Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made. While certainly rife with details, it offers little in terms of meaty stuff that inquiring minds outta know.

For example, you’ll learn that Chris was a class clown, that Eric met him over the Marvel Comics adaptation, that Chris liked to lip-sync to Frank Zappa’s “Valley Girl,” that Eric’s home eventually was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and so on. You may think otherwise, but I don’t think they add up to a compelling behind-the-scenes story. That they made a movie in and of itself was not enough for me.

At the end of each chapter — and even sections within those chapters — Eisenstock tries his hardest to squeeze drama out of mundane situations, or create drama where there is none. Dialogue here in particular rings false, with lines carrying the same clichéd cinematic weight of “You ain’t seen nothing yet” or “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!”

Telling it from the kids’ viewpoint is what sinks it. Overall, the book has the feel of being the literary equivalent of re-enactments on America’s Most Wanted. —Rod Lott

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Limelight Editions has put out half a dozen If You Like … pop-culture guidebooks over the last year, using everything from The Beatles to The Sopranos as jumping-off points for recommended media, but Katherine Rife’s If You Like Quentin Tarantino … is the most logical of them yet.

Why? Because Tarantino is the perfect subject for such as series, for what are his movies but built-in recommendation lists? They wear their influences on their sleeves, right out in the open. Thus, Rife can feel safe in recommending, say, an Ennio Morricone album, because QT has drawn from that well many a time already.

A filmmaker herself, the Chicago-based Rife has structured the paperback into eight chapters, one for each of his directed features, from Reservoir Dogs 20 years ago (feel old yet?) to next month’s hotly anticipated Django Unchained. Moving chronologically through them, she delivers mini-essays and reviews on flicks and other media that directly match each; thus, she covers crime, noir, blaxploitation, martial arts, Italian horror, biker pics, war epics and spaghetti Westerns at large, with many subgenres peppered about.

She doesn’t always pick the obvious, too; although those are there — say, Sonny Chiba’s Street Fighter trilogy, the first part of which is practically a plot point of True Romance — she also digs down to the obscure, or obscure enough that you’ll curse her when you can’t find the film in print. The lady knows her stuff; depending on what her feet look like, she could be QT’s idea of a perfect woman.

Personally, I love her ain’t-screwin’-’round writing voice, as witnessed by such lines as “Dicks don’t get more dickish than Mike Hammer” or for pegging Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha as “hobosploitation.” That’s new.

Generously but not overly illustrated, the book swims in sidebars, too, in order to suggest some pulp fiction (as in novels, mind you), count down the seminal blaxploitation soundtrack albums, or sludge through the high (low?) points of rape-revenge movies. These shortened bits also serve as quick-fix 101s as such important topics as Wu-Tang Clan, Brian De Palma or Goblin. We all should be as schooled. —Rod Lott

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What makes Skyfall, the new James Bond film, all the more terrific is that its theme song is, too. That hasn’t happened in, what, decades?

I’ve long thought that the 007 franchise producers have grown to be behind the times in selecting artists to do the theme, grabbing them well after their flame has burned brightest. As a result, the songs simply don’t chart anymore. This time, with Adele fresh off two arms full of Grammys, the tide will have reversed.

That’s a story I’m sure we’ll see covered in the next edition of Jon Burlingame’s The Music of James Bond. Until then, this does just fine as is.

Coming from Oxford University Press, the handsome hardback tells not only how each and every 007 main theme came to be, but how its overall soundtracks — and accompanying albums — were assembled and shaped. Broken into chapters movie by movie, logically enough, the renowned music critic Burlingame covers the entire canon, both official and not; therefore, the stories behind Michel Legand’s Never Say Never Again score nor Burt Bacharach’s wonderful Casino Royale ’67 melodies don’t go untold.

Who knew there was anything to reveal? While the “true authorship” debate between Monte Norman and John Barry over the series iconic, indelible, immortal main theme has been covered elsewhere, I don’t recall it being done so at this depth, this lively, and with something that at least approaches a modicum of suspense. Same goes for the tale of Barry’s battles in studio with Duran Duran for the A View to a Kill theme, which turned out to be the biggest Billboard hit of all.

While it’s interesting to read how the likes of Paul McCartney and Carly Simon came aboard, Burlingame also reveals stories of the Bond themes that never were. Among others, you’ll learn about Kate Bush almost breathed her way through Moonraker‘s credits, and how Eric Clapton jammed in a Licence to Kill track that was scrapped.

The author also briefly discusses David Arnold’s excellent Shaken and Stirred electronica tribute album of 1997, which helped him become Barry’s heir apparent to the franchise, and notes other 007 collections of interest. Sidebars in each chapter review the score highlights, time-coded to their appearance in the films.

Illustrated with a wealth of archival photos and original album covers, The Music of James Bond is as much fun to look at as it is to read. If that Skyfall isn’t covered is the only negative I can find — OK, second, because I wished Moby’s remix of the 007 main theme for Tomorrow Never Dies merited more than a mention — I can recommend it strongly to the series’ legion of fanatics. Dare I say it? Nobody does it better. —Rod Lott

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Asks venerated critic David Denby in the ’78 Superman-styled title of his new book, Do the Movies Have a Future? (Spoiler alert: Yes. Yes, they certainly do.)

Don’t be misled by the title, as this is not a near-400-page examination of the arguably rhetorical question. He deals with cinema’s place — and the criticism of cinema — in the Internet age only in his introduction and first few chapters, which then give way to an unthemed collection of essays and reviews, most previously published in the pages of The New Yorker. Whether you’re new to Denby or not, it’s a pleasurable, first-rate read of film criticism.

Among the features and profiles on stars, directors and genres, he delivers the single-best summations of “mumblecore” and “chick flicks” I’ve ever read. He’s sharp in both brain and barbs, able to break apart a genre with wit without being entirely dismissive — for example, “In romantic comedies as well as in chick flicks, Hollywood has been throwing women against the wall of Matthew McConaughey’s stupidity to see what sticks (the answer: Kate Hudson).”

In another piece, he gives director Victor Fleming his due and wonders, as I have, how the man responsible for helming two bona fide classics in The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind — both from the same year, mind you — isn’t often top-of-mind among discussions of finest filmmakers. He even examines two film critics, notably Pauline Kael, which backs up the entirety of Brian Kellow’s recommended bio, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark: namely, that friendship with her was often one-sided and doomed to be temporary, and that she could be quite the rhymes-with-stunt.

Now, Denby is not the type of film critic who second-guesses his use of a word like “exegesis.” If you don’t know what it means and don’t bother to look it up, that’s your loss. The man definitely has his own language, which I’d argue is part of why he’s been able to carve a career out of talking about the language of movies themselves. Phrases like “a bounder” and “learned boobies” abound — and with the latter, he’s not talking about the breasts of a hot teacher.

Speaking of the body, I was amused at how often Denby describes his subjects in physical terms, and in the inimitable way he does it. For example, he notes Julia Roberts “for her big easy carriage” and “with her loose, shambling, cowhand’s walk”; Seth Rogen, meanwhile, sports “the round face and sottish grin of a Jewish Bacchus.” Whereas some may find these observations off-putting, I chalk them up to part of the book’s overall wide appeal.

Show me one online-only, fanboy “critic” who can turn such a phrase. You can’t; it’s as futile as viewing a film on a iPod screen — the subject of an early chapter. Do the Movies Have a Future? is a strong antidote to the ill-informed, online fanboy poison that sadly passes for film criticism these days. —Rod Lott

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