Jamie Lee Curtis: Scream Queen: Curtis and Donald Pleasence in Halloween II (1981).
by “small press” I’m talking about BearManor Media, a small but well-established American publishing house with dozens of non-fiction tomes on film, television and pop culture on its roster. As the title suggests, the book’s focus is on Jamie Lee Curtis’ horror movie roles, consisting of five
films from her early years in the business and two latter-day cash cows – sorry, I mean Halloween se- quels. To this end, one could hardly accuse David Grove (Making Friday the 13th) of skimping; he man- ages to milk this subject for nearly 500 pages while paying only lip service to the star’s non-genre hits (A Fish Called Wanda, True Lies, sundry mid-’80s fluff and critically lauded indie fare). Aside from multiple quotes culled from his interviews with Curtis herself, Grove has assembled a
staggering array of anecdotes from industry figures, from John Carpenter and the late Debra Hill to Stacy Keach, P.J. Soles and a parade of all-but-forgotten supporting players from Prom Night and Terror Train. He contrasts her Hollywood royalty lineage (parents Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis) with her steadfast refusal to play that card recklessly, and chronicles her rise as an enduring yet highly unconventional sex symbol. He points out – quite rightly – that unlike most of her peers, JLC initially managed to make a name for herself in horror films but ultimately escaped being typed, going on to enjoy considerable mainstream success via an uncanny combination of talent, beauty, career savvy and plain old luck. Then he does it again. And again. And again. One can’t help but wonder if this guy ever reads over what he’s just written; redundancies,
grammar flails and stylistic groaners pile up faster than corpses in any given Halloween film, and yet Grove trundles on, seemingly oblivious to the trail of carnage he’s left in his wake. This is bad enough, but the publisher’s apparent indifference to it all is unconscionable, especially at $32.95 US. There’s a wealth of goodies lurking here, but the delivery may make it a very hard slog for even the most obsessed Curtis fan.
JOHN W. BOWEN TESSERACTS 14 The Tesseracts anthology series has been collecting Canadian speculative fiction for nearly a quarter
century, tapping some of the most well-known talent this country has to offer. Now back with a fourteenth installment, editors John Robert Colombo and Brett Alexander Savory offer up a dark and fantastical
DRACULA IN VISUAL MEDIA: FILM, TELEVISION, COMIC BOOK AND ELECTRONIC GAME APPEARANCES, 1921-2010 John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan Picart McFarland Since it debuted in 1897, Bram Stoker’s classic has tra- versed all forms of entertainment, inspiring hundreds of stage plays, films (both mainstream and adult), animated programs, graphic novels and video games worldwide. This in-depth, nicely illustrated catalogue of all known visual Draculinian works is an interesting read that will have you nostalgically digging out your Hammer box sets and Tomb of Dracula comics collection. JAMES BURRELL
THE CREATURE’S CURSE Paul Braus
River East Press Paul Braus’ ambitious debut novel, while brandishing a great deal of lit- erary potential, loses its momentum in a tangle of unruly plot lines. The book combines a domestic drama about mental illness with a historical fictionalization of a Salem witch family and a mysterious creature tale – all independently intriguing, but when mashed together none of the story’s monsters get the face time they de- serve.
NINA C. OWENS
DESTROY ALL MOVIES!!!: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO PUNKS ON FILM Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly, eds. Fantagraphics This beautifully designed, exhaustive anthology pretentiously traces punk’s origins by rounding up every appearance of a punk in over 1100 movies released between 1974 and 1999. Though there’s an expected abundance of horror films reviewed (Tenebre, Return of the Living Dead), the overly broad criteria means they share space with insipid celluloid blunders (Short Circuit 2, Empire Records), thereby simultaneously celebrating and trivializing the importance of the subculture.
TREVOR TUMINSKI
T H E N I N T H C I R C L E 55 RM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72