SCREAMS AND NIGHTMARES: THE FILMS OF WES CRAVEN
Fans of Wes Craven can rejoice, as this hardcover overview of his life and films is about as good as can be expected, despite being over two decades out of date
HOLLYWOOD MONSTER
I’ll confess I wasn’t expecting much from this memoir by actor Robert Englund, a.k.a. Freddy Krueger, yet I wound up pleasantly surprised by this fun little book
GODS IN POLYESTER
One of the greatest (and most difficult to locate) film books of the ‘00s was this massive collection of first-person recollections by participants in the horror-exploitation movie scene of the 1970s
THE GHASTLY ONE
This book, one of the more fascinating and unorthodox moviemaker bios I’ve read, has already garnered praise from seemingly every media outlet in the universe. I’ll be adding to that praise.
ULTRAVIOLENT MOVIES
The subject of ultraviolet cinema is a compelling one, especially for horror fans, and this 1996 publication profiles many of the ultraviolent movies that have been released since the late 1960s. Yet the book ultimately falls far short for a variety of reasons
THEY CAME FROM WITHIN: A HISTORY OF CANADIAN HORROR CINEMA
This well researched and eminently readable overview is the closest thing there is to a bible on Canadian horror cinema, a subject that isn’t discussed much
POLANSKI
The fifth major biography of world-renowned filmmaker Roman Polanski, and, I feel, the best
BEYOND HORROR HOLOCAUST: A DEEPER SHADE OF RED
The final book by one of my favorite horror movie commentators
NOCTURNA
The set-up of this 1979 obscurity, about Dracula’s babe granddaughter loose in a disco milieu, is irresistible to a bad movie buff like myself
THE NOAH
This recently unearthed obscurity gives new meaning to the term minimal: it features just one character (actor Robert Strauss) on an island together with countless imaginary (hence unseen) companions