Monster Rally Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $14.49 You Save: $2.50 (15%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Monster Rally
Book Review: A Great Resource for Movie Lovers
Summary: 5 Stars
I've never really considered myself a movie fan, but after reading this book, I realized just how many movies out there I've enjoyed, and how eager I am to discover new ones.
This book covers a lot of types of movies, not just horror films. There was a very entertaining chapter on El Santo movies, which I never would have been interested in if I hadn't been introduced to them in such a fun and lively fashion. And the chapter on Bigfoot movies, with analysis from a Bigfoot expert from Arizona, actually inspired me to not only seek out some of the films, but to purchase Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life: The Story Of Sub-Humans On Five Continents From The Early Ice Age Until Today and explore the legend of Bigfoot.
It is obvious from reading this book that the editor, as well as the contributing authors, has a great passion for films of all kinds, and that passion has a way of rubbing of on the reader. At least, that's what happened to me!
Book Review: A Monster Mashup
Summary: 4 Stars
S. Michael Wilson's MONSTER RALLY is an eclectic anthology of pop culture essays (new and old) which share one common thread: namely, monster movies! The "monsters" highlighted in this fun volume run the gamut, from Mutants (EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, INVADERS FROM MARS, THE ANGRY RED PLANET) to Monsters (KING KONG, GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE, Mexican horror films, Yeti/Abominable Snowman monster movies) to Madness (Jason, SCREAMING MIMI, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, FREAKS, THE BLACK CAT, Jim Jones, Charles Manson). While novice fans will mostly enjoy this collection, monster movie geeks will get more out of MONSTER RALLY, as some of the references are more obscure than others. Likewise, the bulk of the films discussed are "retro"/B movies, with little culled from the 21st century.
As is usually the case with anthologies, some of the essays are stronger than others, and of course personal favorites may vary according to taste. As a Kong fan, I quite enjoyed editor S. Michael Wilson's contribution, "A Giant Falls: A Critical Looks at Peter Jackson's KING KONG," but perhaps you might prefer Patrick O'Donnell's "Curse of the Abominable Snowmen: A Bigfoot Researcher Sheds Light on Three Yeti Films." To each her own! What's certain is that these geeks (primarily S. Michael Wilson, Patrick O'Donnell and David Jacobs, who penned most of the essays in MONSTER RALLY) know their stuff.
Book Review: A quick fix for monster junkies
Summary: 5 Stars
Because you have clicked this link for product info for MONSTER RALLY I would discern you must be a monster movie fan, and a heartily recommend this book to any and all monster movie fans. But it should be noted that the term "Monster" in the title of this book covers a really broad area. Scattered among the more traditional essays on Jackson's King Kong, Dark Shadows and Lovecraft, Jason and Freddy, Yeti films, 50s' sci-fi, Lugosi's Rue Morgue and the like are more esoteric genres: UFOs, Satanism on screen, Mexican wrestling flicks, Hollywood weirdness, serial killers and their celluloid counterparts, fx maestro Paul Blaisdell and an informative chapter on how Argento "stole" the plot for THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PULMAGE from Fredric Brown's novel SCREAMING MIMI. I thought the blending of "psychotronic-like" topics and classic monsters gave the book great flavor and ensured an unpredictable, yet highly enjoyable read.
Book Review: All this and Santo, too?
Summary: 5 Stars
I usually don't pick up books on films. They are usually haphazardly assembled collections of capsule reviews interspersed with grainy space-filling movie stills. The ghoulish cover on this one caught my attention, though, and I ended up ordering a copy. I am glad that I did.
No soulless capsule reviews here. Most of the chapters cover entire genres and touch on films in a more thematic nature, and the few singular reviews in the book are lengthy and detailed. This isn't a book for someone who wants to see if a movie is worth renting based on how many chainsaws the editor gave it. This is for the film aficionado who already knows a lot about movies, but is always eager to learn more.
Pleasantly surprised and thoroughly entertained, I can easily give this book five chainsaws.
Book Review: Amateurish and Poorly Done
Summary: 1 Stars
This is not a good book, folks. The terrible layout, the mistakes, the insipid writing style all point to the self-indulgent world of self-publication. Which should not be surprising, given that the authors have all written for various amateur 'zines in the past. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is here, since it translates into a basic lack of quality control. First, the number of spelling and grammar errors contained within this book is ridiculous. Mr. Wilson, I don't know if anybody's told you, but part of the job of editing a book is to read it through and check for mistakes like this. We see "shear" terror and "peaked" interest, and more than a couple of purely non-grammatical utterances (p. 69: "Anne to tell the others in the circle that Lockwood is the killer.").
That would be disappointing, but excusable, if the authors were saying anything worth reading. But here, as in a high school book report, plot synopsis reigns supreme. Pages and pages are wasted simply rehashing the stories of dozens of films, with little to no analysis or even evaluation. True, there is some interpretation in the chapter on Ken Russell's "Lair of the White Worm" -- but after reading it, you'll wish there hadn't been. It's that torturous.
Which brings me to the style of the writing: amateurish, unfocused, and irrelevant. There are passages in which an author trashes a movie in one sentence (say, "Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child"), then turns around in the next sentence to praise it. The authors seldom miss a chance to make a "funny" comment in passing, but the results are completely sophomoric and inappropriate. Take this gem from p. 76, talking about "Samson vs. the Vampire Women": "In a dank dungeon, half-naked, buffed, Latin men are chained to stone walls waiting to be drained by a sexy Vampire Queen (who looks more capable of corrupting the morals of a donkey at a Tijuana sex show)." What is this? Did somebody involved actually think this was acceptable?
And then of course there is the subject matter chosen for individual chapters. In a book which promises "a creepy collection of critiques celebrating cinematic creatures," etc., one would expect to find lots of material on movies, right? Instead we are confronted by not one, but two chapters discussing the reality of UFOs, completely divorced from the context of cinema. The "critiques" boasted of on the front cover include the vital question of how movie depictions of Yetis stack up against real Yetis. Because, as we all know, cheap horror and exploitation films are always interested in faithful documentation of their topics. And I'm not even going to go into the fact that the authors apparently expect the reader to accept the "reality" of the Abominable Snowman without a fight.
There are a few good bits, however. The chapter on Paul Blaisdell's monster-making career was highly interesting and well-done, mostly because David Jacobs, the author of this section, refrains from the excesses found almost everywhere else in this volume, actually does his research, and seems to have run the spell-checker before submitting the piece for publication. There are a few other bright spots (Jacobs' essay on the newspaper prophet Criswell is another hidden treasure), but they come so few and far between that the overall impression is that you can find most of this material presented to better effect in other books.