BOOK REVIEWS: A Song Of Ice And Fire by George R. R. Martin

First off, *SPOILERS*.  Duh.
I won’t ruin your ability to enjoy reading the books but writing a review of the books without talking about what happens in them is hard to do.

A friend of mine made me watch an episode of the TV series.
It was the episode where the wildlings are attacking the wall.
I was definitely interested in watching the rest of the series, but I’m one of those “I have to read the book before I watch the film/show that is based on it.” kind of people.
I had downloaded a torrent with the 100 best Sci-Fi and Fantasy books and George R. R. Martin’s Song Of Ice And Fire series was in that torrent so I already had the books.
I work security third shift and it’s only a little bit busy the first and last hours of my shift so I get about six hours a night that I can do pretty much whatever I want as long as I’m where I’m supposed to be and in uniform.
I burned through the books at about 200-300 pages a night, which, due to the length of the books in this series is about a book a week.
I’ve read other books at work that have taken me longer to get through but the books in this series are captivating.
Usually I just read at work because there are a lot of other things I can do in my free time that I can do that don’t require me to be in one place for eight hours, although I usually just spend my time sitting in front of my laptop or TV anyway, but that’s not the point.
The point is that I’d be able to go home and do whatever I wanted to and I’d end up firing up my laptop and continuing reading whatever book in the series I was reading in bed until I fell asleep, because you have to sleep sometime.  But if I didn’t have to sleep I would have probably spent my time between work shifts voraciously consuming the contents of the books.
The books are easy to read.
I’m not qualified to determine what reading level a book is, but I’d say that the books are written at about a thirteen year old’s reading level.
I say this because aside from a few period specific vocabulary words like cuirass, G.R.R.M. uses plain words to weave his stories and that’s part of the beauty of reading his work.  He doesn’t try to over-verb and over-adjective his work into what most people think a literary book should look like.  Instead he describes scenes simply and beautifully.  There is a bit of stylistic wandering, but that’s integral to describing the world that the characters inhabit.  Sometimes you have to describe the mountains and the weather.
I remember trying to read the Lord Of The Rings books as a thirteen year old into playing Dungeons & Dragons and being unable to get into them.  The books were so dense with descriptions and legacy and lore that I had trouble figuring out what was happening to who and when.
I’d also say that the books are written at about a thirteen year old’s reading level because of the content.  There’s a lot of sex and violence.  There’s none of the chaste yearning impossibly chivalrous love between Aragorn and Arwen in Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings.  Martin’s characters are three-dimensional.  They are lusty, smelly, hungry, greedy, horny, brave, cowardly characters.  There is also real language.  Martin isn’t afraid to season his sentences with the occasional “fuck” and “cunt” which, as an adult, I appreciate.  I probably would have appreciated it as a thirteen year old too.  And if you’re a parent and the idea of your thirteen year old reading “dirty” words makes you feel faint with righteous indignation, just know that if your kids haven’t heard all of the dirty words and know what they mean by the time they’re thirteen they’re probably too sheltered and are going to get the shit bullied out of them in school and rightfully so.
Martin is famous for creating believable characters.  Creating characters that you come to know and love and care about what happens to them… then killing them.  The more graphically the better.
And he does.  Reading his books is like reading the comic book series The Walking Dead.  Better not get too attached to any of the characters because the world is a dangerous place and something bad has to happen to someone to move the plot forward and there’s only so many major characters so you should know better than to get upset when something horrible happens to one that you care about, but you get mad anyway because the author created their characters well enough that you care what happens to them.
The way that Martin writes the books, each one is, by necessity, a cliff-hanger.  Because if you tried to carry around the entire series in one big book, it would fuck up your spinal alignment.  Clocking in at over a thousand pages each and being five books in, reading the books as digital files is a small advantage.  You don’t have the sensory experience of reading a traditional book, but you also don’t have to carry around a brick of paper and just imagine the trees you’re saving.  Before reading the books I didn’t understand the memes I’d see about pushing Martin to write the next book in the series.  Now, like everyone else that has read his books I fantasize about him being ankle-chained to his writing desk with someone poking him with something sharp yelling “WRITE, MOTHERFUCKER, WRITE!” because at the end of the fifth book, which the TV show recently caught up with, one of the two best characters in the books ends up on the receiving end of the Julius Caesar routine and then the book JUST FUCKING ENDS.  Is he alive?  Is he dead?  Will he become a wight and descend upon the realm with a wight army?  We’ll just have to wait until Martin decides to finish and publish the next book to find out like everyone else sharpening the points of something to poke Martin with while ankle-chained to his writing desk.
One of the things I enjoyed about the books was that no one is safe from being taken out at any point.  Martin sets the precedent early on.  You start off the series with Ned Stark out at Winterfell and Ned doesn’t even make it to the end of the first book.  You start off with six direwolf pups and before the end of the first book you’re down to five.  Most of the castles don’t even make it to the end of the series as it stands so how safe do you think any of the people are?  The answer is “not safe at all”.  Despite figuring that out when Sir Ilyn Paine takes off Ned’s head, despite the fact that he had been promised he would be pardoned and sent to the wall, Martin sets you up and knocks you down over and over again.  I think Ned’s decapitation was my first “jaw-drop” moment, but Martin tricked me again and again into thinking that there’s no way that he would kill off certain characters at certain points in the book, but then he does and you keep reading.  It’s like being in an abusive relationship.  Not literally.  Well, yeah “literally” as in “literature” as in books, but not “literally” as in exactly.  But Martin tricks you into caring about his characters and then kills them over and over again so that you feel cautious about caring about what happens to any of them and then you read a few hundred pages and forget and then he does it again.
Anyone who has read the books or watched the show far in enough that they have gotten to the “red wedding” knows what I mean.
Who are my favorite characters?  Tyrion Lannister and Jon Snow.  Obviously.
Who are my least favorite characters? Daenerys and Davos.
They both spend countless pages wandering around in circles accomplishing much of nothing.
I also don’t care about princesses and pirates or what happens to them.
Your boat sunk?  Good.  Now I won’t have to read any more chapters about you and the ocean and storms on the ocean and water and dark clouds on the horizon and wind and waves and rain.  You survived your boat sinking?  Fuck.  Fuck you and your missing fingers.
I do like dragons, in theory, but Daenerys’ dragons don’t really do much of anything for the better part of five books aside from exist and breathe fire, and every now and then they breathe fire onto someone to move the plot along.  I know it’s kind of hard to imagine dragons as boring but Daenerys’ dragons are boring.
I’m also not really into the whole knight thing with the jousting and swordplay and chivalry and coats of arms and all that.
I know that the whole series is a “Sword & Sorcery” kind of fantasy book, so whenever Martin burns a page describing coats of arms or family lineages or who is next in line to rule which castle because of who married who hundreds of years before the continuity of the book I just pushed through that stuff to get to the next part.
Would I recommend reading the Song Of Ice And Fire?
Definitely.
Would I recommend reading the books before watching the show?
Yeah.
When you’re reading the books, you get a different mental image of what the characters look like.  I don’t know about you, but when I watch the movie before I read the book, I imagine the characters look like the actors that played the characters and that really annoys me, especially when the descriptions of the characters are different than the actors.
In the books, Tyrion is supposed to be ugly, and Brienne is supposed to be a “plain” manly woman.
In the show, Tyrion is a handsome little man, and Brienne, aside from being taller than everyone else, is a tree I would happily climb.
Since I’ve finished reading the books, and a new book is not forthcoming and the show has caught up with the books, I’ve started to watch the show.
I did the same thing with The Walking Dead and find the experiences similar in that the source material and the television show are different and enjoyable in different ways.
It’s taking me a while to reconcile the characters as I imagined them in my head while reading the books with the actors playing those characters but I’m sure that after a season or two the show will irrevocably taint the way I imagined the characters and I will always think of Peter Dinklage as Tyrion the way I thought of Kit Harrington as Jon Snow because I had watched an episode that revolved around that actor/character before starting to read the books.
Will I stick to reading the books before watching the show?  I don’t know.
The books only come out one every three or five years and the show is a bit different from the books and looks like it’s planning on forging on past the books, so I think that once I get caught up on watching the show I might just carry on with that form of following the story and get caught up on the books as they come out, even though it will be a bit like reading the source material for a film after having already watched it, but I guess that’s what I’ll have to settle for since there’s no one poking Martin with something sharp to make him keep up with the expectations of the fans of the books.

BOOK REVIEWS: Regional Paranormal Books by Schiffer Books.

Reviews by Scott Lefebvre

Haunted Rhode Island & Haunted New Hampshire by Thomas D’Agostino (2006 Schiffer Books)

     I had the good fortune to meet the author of these two books at the 2006 Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival where the author was selling his book about the local legends of Rhode Island.

     I had recently been accepted to the staff of Scars Magazine to review books, and Thomas D’Agostino was the first author I spoke to about obtaining their book for review.   The author was regrettably unable to give me a copy of his book at the time, since the copies he had brought he bought himself to sell on commission and to raise awareness of the availability of his book.   And what better place than Rhode Island’s best horror film festival?

     The author provided me with the information to contact his publisher to request a copy of his book for review.   I sent an e-mail to the publisher, and although the e-mail did not obtain the book I sought, it did obtain for me the commission for my first book, but that’s a story for another time and place.

     Now, almost six months later, Schiffer Publishing has been kind enough to send me the book I requested and offered me another book by the author in addition as compensation.

     Although the wait has been long, Thomas D’Agastino’s book lived up to my expectations.   I have read many regional paranormal books, both for research for my own book, and for review.   D’Agastino selected for the style of his two regional paranormal books the organization of the miscellany of tales by alphabetical listing of the cities of the state in which they were alleged to have occurred.   Although this lends a referential feeling to the books, it also allows easy access to local readers eager to read about events that occurred in or near familiar locations.

     The tales themselves are presented in easily digestible portions, including a brief history of the unique locations, following closely with the supernatural events that allegedly occurred there.   The author follows up with succinct, but clear directions to public locations as well as information about the hours and availability of tours of those locations that cater to visitors offering tours and events open to the public on their premises.

     I have had the pleasure of visiting some, but far from all of the locations listed, and the author’s descriptions of the places I have been to I found to be both accurate and evocative.   The author’s research provides a valuable reference source for clarifying the oft-times muddy waters one wades into when one finds oneself discussing local legends.   The author also shed light upon some of the stranger places in Rhode Island where I had wandered into in my travels.   I eagerly look forward to visiting many of the locations I have not yet been to in my leisure.

     Lacking the spelling and grammatical errors of similar regional paranormal books, Thomas D’Agostino’s books are written solidly and consistently and I can recommend them for purchase either as gifts for fans of the paranormal living in the two territories covered by these books or for your own personal enjoyment.

The Ghosts of Austin: Who They Are and Where to Find Them by Fiona Broome  (2007 Schiffer Books)
     I was heading out to be a part of the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in Austin, Texas.
     When I plotted my course, I observed that my route would take me close to the home of Schiffer Books in Atglen, Pennsylvania.   I contacted the Schiffer Books offices through my editor, Dinah Roseberry and arranged to pick up a case of my book, ‘Spooky Creepy Long Island’ to bring along with me to the show.   I had prior authorization from my boss to sell copies of my book over the table of the Fearwerx booth.   When I told Pete and Dinah at Schiffer where I was going and what I was doing, they asked me if I was interested in taking any other books along with me.   Via e-mail I agreed to try out a case of ‘Keep Austin Weird: A Guide to the Odd Side of Town’ by Red Wassenich.

     I got to the home of Schiffer Books later than I had anticipated, but Pete Schiffer Jr. was still in the office and received me most hospitably.   During the course of our conversation, I received a tour of the facilities.   The warehouse was like the end scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.   Palette after palette stacked with boxes of books.   When it came time to leave, I checked out the ‘Keep Austin Weird’ book and seeing it, I decided that it probably wouldn’t go over that well with the Fangoria audience.   Pete offered ‘The Ghosts of Austin’ as a last-minute replacement and I quickly and easily agreed that it was a much better candidate for the convention I was attending.

     Twenty-seven hours later and I’m in Austin.   I decide to read ‘The Ghosts of Austin’ so I’d know a little bit about the book that I was selling.  

     The prose is light and engaging, making the book both easy and pleasant to read.

     The stories fulfilled my expectations.   I expected tales of ghosts from the free-wheeling wild west era of Texas frontier past, and this anthology of ghostly tales provides exactly that.

     From the pioneering battles of the state’s first colonists in conflict against the Mexican Army and Native American tribes, through the early years of statehood and the strife of the civil war, the victims of the vicissitudes of fortune, often only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, continue to linger in the locations where the forces of earthly attraction tethered them to the physical plane.

     An interesting element of this book is the author’s dual service as an author and a medium who claims the ability to speak with the lingering spirits of the physically deceased.   This ability enabled the author to include at the end of many of her chapters her “conversations” with the paranormal presences which haunt Austin’s many historical locations.   The spirits are open about the reason for their persistent presence at their selected locations.   This is the first time I encountered this literary device, although I have been made aware of the popularity of this device in conversations following my encounter with and discussion of this book.    

     Of course, the gunslingers and whorehouse madams and Indian spirits are here, not as single spirits, but in battalions.   But the author presents a wider range of tales than I had anticipated.   The author presents her collection of stories covering the chronological and geographical history of Austin and its surrounding areas.   The book is also generously populated with photographs and illustrations to accompany its spine-tingling tales.

     I have to begrudgingly admit that although I spent the weekend in Austin, I learned much more about Austin and its environs from ‘The Ghosts of Austin’ than I learned from my infrequent visits to downtown Austin.   Austin is a ghost town in more ways than one.   For a celebrated party town, it has an early bedtime and I drove its silent streets at 3:00 a.m. at fifteen miles and hour, calmly acquainting myself with the unfamiliar area.

     Also begrudgingly I admit that I didn’t sell a whole lot of ‘The Ghosts of Austin’ at the convention.   Of the twenty-five copies I brought with me, I returned twenty-three.   One of which I retained to read and review, and the other copy, my display copy, was bought by a woman, a self-professed librarian, who said that her library just must have this book for its collection.

      I attribute this not as a reflection on the quality of the book, which I enjoyed as much as I have enjoyed any regional paranormal book.   Instead I attribute this to a general decline of literary interest in our culture.

     If you’d care to prove my pessimism fallacious, then, by all means, please go to the address provided below and acquire a copy of this informative and entertaining book.

Baltimore’s Harbor Haunts: True Ghost Stories by Melissa Rowell

     The first feature one notices is the cover illustration.   Although it’s not awe-inspiring, it is different than most of the covers of the regional paranormal books I’ve been reading lately.   The illustration is different than what readers have come to expect and this makes it striking and inspired me to select it from the stack of new books I received for review.

     By way of comparison, usually the covers of these books have a layout featuring a photo taken by the author or a friend or acquaintance of the author, who sometimes serves the photographer role to accompany the role of the author as paranormal researcher.   If not that, then there’s a digitally jazzed up image somewhat evocative of the theme of the book.

     As attractive as the cover is, the contents of the book are even more interesting.   The co-authors are co-owners of “The Original Fell’s Point Ghost Walk”, an award winning haunted walking tour of the neighborhood.   The authors have used their expertise to put together an enjoyable readable collection of the residual hauntings of Baltimore harbor.

     The authors present a variety of paranormal manifestations: “impressions”, “spirits”, “ghosts” & “time warps”.   In addition to presenting a variety of different manifestations, the locations encompass almost every conceivable location.   Restaurants, bars, taverns, private residences, boarding houses, brothels, graveyards, motels, antique stores and lighthouses are all given equal attention.   Also such famous personages as Edgar Allan Poe and Billie Holiday make guest appearances as paranormal manifestations.

     The stories are concise, sometimes almost abrupt, but the brevity does nothing to subtract from the quality of the stories.   It is with ease and no small amount of pleasure that I recommend this book, not only to residents of the Baltimore harbor area which the book’s chosen topic, but enthusiasts of paranormal books in general.

Ghosts of St. Louis: The Lemp Mansion And Other Eerie Tales by Bryan W. Alaspa (2007 Schiffer)
    I received this book as one of a stack of regional paranormal books I obtained from Schiffer Books when I stopped by the publisher’s home in Atglen, Pennsylvania.   And by home I mean their quaint offices next door to a warehouse that looks like the end scene from Raider’s of the Lost Ark inside.

     Whenever I read a book, I always read the back cover blurbs, read the jacket flap blurbs, (if there are any) and check out the chapter listing.   I noticed that the author included a Guideline for Urban Exploration.   I had written one for my book, ‘Spooky Creepy Long Island’, so I decided to see how my guidelines weighed up against his guidelines.   And by written, I mean I discovered a set of guidelines during my research for the Long Island book and thought it was pretty good, but it could be better, so, using the one I found as its inspiration, I cleaned it up and rewrote it in my own style, which I think made it read a little clearer and gave it a better flow.   If I didn’t think I could have improved it, I would have just sent the original creator an e-mail and asked to use their version.   But thankfully I haven’t yet found someone who executed something that I set out to do perfectly.   There’s always room for improvement.

     So I decided to check out this author’s Guidelines and when I got a few sentences in they seemed really familiar.   I liked the style the guy used.   Then it hit me.   I flipped to the end of the Guidelines.   There it was.   My samurai sword joke.   They were my Guidelines.   I forgot that I had given the okay for Dinah Roseberry, my editor at Schiffer Books to offer my Guidelines as supplementary material for other authors submitting books to the Schiffer Books ghost line.   It was the first time I had seen the Guidelines used in this manner, and it was just really cool to have that experience.

     Not that Brian Alaspa’s original material is any less enjoyable.   The author presents an engaging account of the Lemp family, complete with success, scandal, suicide and marital strife.   The mansion which was a silent witness of the unfolding events supposedly continues to manifest the supernatural record of the rise and fall of the first family of St. Louis.   Although the Lemp’s and their family home make up the bulk of the book, it is not the only example of the regional paranormal offerings of the St. Louis area.   The author present eight additional chapters, addressing the regional paranormal offerings of the St. Louis area.

     One might wonder what the appeal is of reading a regional paranormal book about a region that you’re not from and have no plans to visit in the foreseeable future.   The appeal to me is whenever I read a regional paranormal book I like to think about the people I know from that area and imagine that I’m reading about their stomping grounds.   Plus, since I’m not from the region and I have no plans to visit it in the foreseeable future, it’s pleasant to read about places and things that I may never get a chance to get around to seeing.

     This book is sincerely recommended for not only St. Louis residents, but also any enthusiasts of all things paranormal. 

Ghosts: Minnesota’s Other Natural Resource by Brian Leffler (2007 Schiffer Books)
     I usually don’t pay much attention to the design of the cover of the books I read.   Some are designed better or worse than others, but the difference isn’t usually that significant.   The design for the cover of this book is actually exceptional in that it was part of what attracted me to the book.   I received this book as one of many regional paranormal books published by Schiffer Books that I picked up for review when I stopped by the publisher’s facility in Atglen, Pennsylvania.   The cover, a full-color reproduction of one of the author’s photographs is nicely rendered with the title in white letters across the relative darkness of the photo.   So when I was leafing through the stack of regional paranormal books, I selected this one before another possible selection.

     I was prepared for an anthology of Minnesota’s regional paranormal stories of haunted houses and urban legends.   Instead I was pleased to discover the book refreshingly different than the miscellany of regional paranormal books I have been reading.   The author is a member of the Northern Minnesota Paranormal Investigators.   So instead of presenting a collection of stories broken down by location, the author’s material reads more like the case-files of the Northern Minnesota Paranormal Investigators.   That the author participated in the investigation of the phenomenon adds a personal intimacy to the tales which I found engaging while reading.

     More than your usual collection of stories about derelict hospitals and historical buildings with lingering residents, the author provides a refreshing variety of stories including many private residences, although there are three cemeteries covered in the collection.  

     The author and I seem to have different approaches to our interest in the paranormal.   I’m more of a midnight creeper, going out to abandoned buildings under the cover of night with a small group of friends and touring the places by flashlight.   The author seems to prefer visiting locations when his paranormal investigation group is called in to perform an investigation.   Despite this minor philosophical difference I was able to enjoy this book as an excellent example of its type.

Cape May Haunts: Elaine’s Haunted Mansion and Other Eerie Beach Tales by D. P. Roseberry with Psychic Lauren Hull (2007 Schiffer Publishing)

      I’ve had the fortunate accident of being acquainted with the author.   Dinah is the editor of the Schiffer Books “ghost books” department, through which Schiffer releases a wide variety of regional paranormal books.   I rescued a short stack of these paranormal books from their appointment with the pulper, in exchange for which I promised to read and review the books I received.

     Dinah invited me to visit her office at Schiffer Books, she asked me if I had a copy of her book in the stack.   When I checked, I said, “No. But I’d love to read your book.”.    Dinah gave me a new copy from the book-case in her office, and asked me, half-jokingly if I was going to give her a good review.

     Herein lies a frequent problem for the impartial reviewer.   Sometimes you meet someone that’s a really great person and they provide you with the fruits of their creative labors.   As an impartial reviewer, I have to put aside my personal opinion of the creator and allow the work to make its aesthetic impression on me.

     Thankfully in this case, I really did enjoy reading her book.   It’s always nice to be able to provide a positive review to someone that you have a positive personal opinion of.

     The book is loosely separated into two parts.

     In the first part, occupying until page one-hundred and one of the two-hundred and twenty-four page book, the author relates her long-term acquaintance with Elaine’s Haunted Mansion (Restaurant, Bed and Breakfast, Dinner Theater, and Walking Ghost Tour).   The author visited the multifunctional location on her engagement and returned with a small team of paranormal investigators.   The author documents, in no small detail, their investigation.   Many tales of paranormal investigations rely on a single method of describing an investigation, either a highly personalized account of their reactions to the phenomenon, or a dry presentation of the observations of the investigator.   Unlike many monostylistic accounts, Dinah delivers an engaging mix of personal reflection and documentation.   It’s not often that investigators share their thrill at experiencing paranormal phenomenon with their readers.   Dinah’s openness is truly absorbing and engaging.   Her sincerity is preferable to the common practice where authors practice puns, trying to forcibly infuse their work with humor in an attempt to disarm their readers.   More often than not, this is done awkwardly and is transparent and just not funny.   Dinah avoids this by relating the humorous events as they naturally occur during a paranormal investigation.   Although paranormal investigations are truly frightening at times, more often than not, discovery alternates with the self-conscious awareness of the seeming absurdity of creeping around playing ghost hunter.   Dinah has a unique talent in her ability to integrate both sensibilities without lessening the impact of either.

     The second part of the book is more representative of what one would expect from a regional paranormal book.   A collection of brief stories about the miscellany of locations which have allegedly exhibited paranormal phenomenon.   Dinah has had the opportunity to visit most of the locations documented in the second half of her book, and her anecdotes, derived from her personal experiences, help to bring to life this collection of ghostly tales harvested from the paranormally pregnant Cape May coast.

Available from Schiffer Books at www.SchifferBooks.com

BOOK REVIEW: Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema by Jamie Russell (2005 Fab Press / 319pgs.)

Review by Scott Lefebvre

     I was given a couple of Fab Press books to read by a friend of mine from college.
     For those of you that don’t know yet, Fab Press pretty much is and has been THE premiere publisher and distributor of well-researched, well-written genre-specific books about film.
     In addition to publishing over-arching genre readers, they publish books on the body of work of specific directors and actors.
     I’ve read many of their books and none of them have been a disappointment and Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema is no exception.
     Let’s get the minor issues out of the way first.

     As with any book that claims to be “complete” or “comprehensive”, it’s not.   Unless you’re writing about a genre or actor or director that is deceased you can only do your best job to represent the topic to the best of one’s ability and it is understandably difficult when attempting to write a comprehensive guide to a genre as proliferate as the genre of “Zombie Cinema”.
     So the book isn’t “complete” or “comprehensive” but it’s damn close, and you can see “complete” or “comprehensive” from where it’s standing if you look real close and squint real hard which is good enough for me.   As a frequent reader of this type of book I can attest that part of the secret pleasure in reading these books for genre film fans is to notice omissions.   As an author I have to say to anyone that has a problem with a few minor omissions to go out and try to write a better book and see how many omissions you make.

     Now that we’ve got that minor complaint out of the way…

     The book begins with an introduction/overview of the history of and the evolution of the concept of the zombie.   The introduction is thoroughly if not over-researched and if you ever wanted to know about the history of where the idea of the zombie came from, the introduction alone is worth the price of admission.
     The rest of the book is structured loosely chronologically with subchapters focusing on different sub-classifications such as directors or national movements in zombie cinema.   As one would expect there’s extensive coverage of the zombie films of George Romero and Lucio Fulci and the other Italian zombie movie makers, but the real interest for enthusiasts of zombie cinema are the comprehensive write-ups of the relatively obscure areas of zombie cinema like the early black & white “Poverty Row” features and the loose minutia of Asian zombie movie knock-offs.   Although I was sort of surprised there wasn’t any mention of the “Romero Re-kill Squad” in Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies despite the author mentioning the “Bruce Campbell’s Right Hand” commercial.   But remember what I said about omissions?
     One of my favorite features of a book of this type is the Filmography at the end of the book.   I know that in these modern times of the internet it’s all too easy to search the Internet Move Database and search for “Zombie Movies” and be served up a dozen lists of recommendations, but if you think that this book was subjective and prone to omissions, then wait till you’ve checked out a few IMDB lists.
     What I like to do with these back-of-the-book filmographies is to use them as a checklist and in these modern times of global connectivity and rampant digital media sharing it’s easier than ever for fans of any given genre to be able to watch every film from that given genre if they have the internet, the time, the intestinal fortitude, and the determination to do so.
     So although there are plenty of websites and books that may offer what is, in their opinion, a definitive list of zombie-films worth watching, this book, obviously up until its publication date in 2005, is the real deal.   I don’t usually do a number scale recommendation but if I did, this would be a solid 8 out of 10 and definitely a must-have for the bookshelf of any zombie film enthusiast both entry-level and hardcore fans.

     You can find this book and many other Quality Cinema Publications, DVDs, Blu-rays, Soundtracks and T-Shirts at: http://www.fabpress.com/

BOOK REVIEW: Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and Its Critics edited by Xavier Mendik and Graham Harper (2000 Fab Press / 255 pages.)

Review by Scott Lefebvre

     I was given a couple of genre readers by a friend from college that majored in Film and, of course, now works as an insurance salesman.
     I didn’t anticipate reading Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and Its Critics for review purposes so I knocked it out a few pages at a time whilst sequestered in my fortress of solitude.
     Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and Its Critics is a collection of essays on cult films and is by no means comprehensive.   The inverse is true.   Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and Its Critics is rather exclusive in its selections.   If you’re looking for a comprehensive overview of cult films, locate, acquire and read Midnight Movies by J. Hoberman & Jonathan Rosenbaum.   I’ll wait here while you do.
     Alright, now that you’ve read pretty much the best book about cult films ever written, maybe you want to read more about cult films.   If so, then Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and Its Critics is probably a great place for you to continue your readings.   This collection of essays contains essays written by extensively published professors of film and media who have all written several books on film criticism and film theory both genre specific and general, so the critical terminology used can be a bit challenging unless you’ve familiarized yourself with film theory by taking a college-level “Introduction to Film Studies” or at least read the textbook for one of those classes so, again, I’ll wait patiently while you track one down and absorb the contents.
     Alright, now that you’ve got a foundation in cult film and a foundation in film theory, and you know the difference between “diegetic” and “non-diegetic” we can proceed.
     The essays in the book at first glance don’t seem to have any kind of cohesive relationship, and even after reading the book, the essays seem to only share the common qualities of addressing cult films and their enthusiasts using advanced critical theories by professors with advanced degrees and teaching positions in film studies, which may have been the intention of the editors, but from personal experience it makes for a bumpy read.   Jumping from “The Dynamics of Squirting: Female Ejaculation and Lactation in Hardcore Film” to an essay about the interpolative inter-relationship between violence and the cult of individuality in reality television and violence and the cult of individuality as used critically and for entertainment purposes in the film Rollerball (1975) is a bit of a jump if you’re trying to read the book straight through.   The same can be said about the cognitive distance between the essay on fandom for The Exorcist (1975) and the essay about objectification, depersonalization, and the commodification of women and the reclamation of the selfhood of women through assertive action through the medium of exotic dancing in Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls (1995).   Both are examples of a pretty wide gap to bridge in referential frames if you read them one after the other.
     Another problem with the essays is that they focus almost exclusively on critical film theory which is excellent if that’s the kind of thing that you’re into.   It’s not that I don’t understand critical film theory.   I have a degree in psychology with course study in film theory, philosophy, literature and a minor in theater.   I can talk film, film theory and psychological underpinnings with the best of them.   I’ve read Eisenstein, Barthes, Barthelme, Freud, Lacan, Erikson, Campbell, Artaud, Ionesco, Brecht, and McLuhan and I’ve understood them all as well as anyone other than that authors can hope to understand their body of work.    It’s not that I don’t understand critical film theory.   I just don’t agree with it.   A train entering a tunnel doesn’t always imply intercourse.   Sometimes it does.   But sometimes a train just enters a tunnel to further the plot.   And if two men are fighting on top of a train and the train enters a tunnel and one of them gets decapitated by the lip of the tunnel it doesn’t necessarily symbolize castration anxiety when encountering the female sexual orifice and the fear of the vagina dentata.   Sometimes it just makes sense because how else are you going to decapitate your villain and resolve the conflict?
    That being said, the essays within these covers are excellent examples of film theory in practice being used to attempt to peel back the layers of meaning contained within a film.   Unless a film is completely abstract it is intended to use film as a media combining images and texts in the form of dialogue to communicate a message and the message must necessarily have a viewpoint from which it being projected and the intentions and psyche of the creators of the film can often be extrapolated by reverse-engineering the message(s) communicated through the film both explicitly and implicitly.
     The problem is that if you’re looking hard enough for something you’ll find it.   If you see every object longer than it is wide as a penis and every opening as a vagina then you could easily draw an analogy between any episode of Thomas the Train and the filthiest hardcore pornography you can imagine.   If your world-view is really that hyper-sexualized you’re either a teenager overwhelmed by the hormones coursing through their bloodstream or you’re an adult and you should probably seek counseling.   Although some of the critical analysis is dead-on, as in the aforementioned essay on Rollerball (1975), some of the essays are aiming far from the mark and the critical interpretations they project upon the films they address are forced at best.   Yes, it’s obvious that Chesty Morgan’s disproportionately large breasts are presented as spectacular examples of male desire gone awry, but the implanting of cameras in them in Double Agent 73 (1974) doesn’t necessarily mean that the director intended this to be interpreted as a reclamation of the female apparatus and to invert the function of the male gaze as a weapon as a subversive feminist act.   Chesty Morgan has amazing tits and the producers didn’t hire her because she’s an amazing actress.   Customers going to her films aren’t going for the acting, they’re going because of her 73-inch bustline.   The story has to have some excuse for Miss Morgan to walk around with her tits out and you can’t take pictures through an opaque material, so there you go.   She’s a super-spy who takes pictures with her tits.   To try to force a critical interpretation of the inversion of the male gaze and the perversion of the commoditization of the female body onto what is essentially grist for masturbation is forced at best and like trying to compare The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) with King Lear.   Sure it can be done, but not easily, and to be honest that dog won’t hunt and the shoe doesn’t fit.
   Perhaps I’ve spent too much time focusing on the flaws of this collection of essays.   I think it’s because as a whole I really enjoyed this little refresher course in film criticism by way of critical film theory which is a welcome respite from any of the many uncritically disciplined film reviewers offering their opinions in a miscellany of blogs and forums.   The majority of the articles, if not critically sound are enjoyable to read and the book as a whole read rapidly despite the density of the critical content.
     Particularly enjoyable personally were the essays on the films of Russ Myers, Rollerball (1975), Enter the Dragon (1973), and “Star Cults/Cult Stars: Cinema, Psychosis, Celebrity, Death” by Mikita Brottman.   I was really looking forward to the essay on Snuff Films, but, although relatively well-researched, the construction of the article was disjointed and clunky and from the perspective of a resident of the UK familiar with the “Video Nasties” era of strict British film censorship, so unless you share this rather selective perspective you’re likely to be similarly disappointed.
   Do I regret reading the book?   Not at all.   It was a fun read, but mostly because I had already viewed and was familiar with all of the films addressed in the essays.   Will you enjoy this book?   If this is the kind of thing you’re into and by “this” I mean the specific films addressed in the collection if you’re already well familiar with them.   If you’re looking for an entry-level book on cult films with a comprehensive filmography to use as a “Films to watch” list or a pleasant well-written review of cult films for enthusiasts, I would recommend Midnight Movies by J. Hoberman & Jonathan Rosenbaum instead.

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