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

Buy it at Amazon.

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

Buy them at Amazon.