STARTLING TOMES

WES CRAVEN: THE ART OF HORROR . John Kenneth Muir. McFarland; 1998. Wes Craven burst on the low-budget scene with the controversial   Last House on the Left , then hit the big time with   Nightmare on Elm Street . Craven had mixed success with the films that followed, but then came the   Scream  franchise which was extremely successful. Then as a producer, Craven's name was often attached to projects that he did not direct -- "Wes Craven Presents" -- such as   Mind Ripper  and   Wishmaster . Muir follows a biographical/career section with lengthy essays on each of Craven's movies up until 1998. He also covers Craven's telefilms, the movies he produced but did not direct, and his short-lived television series,   Nightmare Cafe . Craven tried unsuccessfully to mimic the success of the   Nightmare on Elm Street  films with the psycho Horace Pinker character of   Shocker , but it didn't work. Muir obviously admires Craven's work (m...

SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY AND HORROR FILM SEQUELS, SERIES AND REMAKES :   An Illustrated Filmography with Plot Synopses and Critical Commentary . Volume 1. Kim R. Holston and Tom Winchester. McFarland; 1997. Foreword by Ingrid Pitt. You gotta love a book that has a foreword by the one and only Ingrid Pitt of Hammer horror fame. But there's lots more to enjoy afterward, including synopses of hundreds of movies, along with a brief analysis of each film and interesting quotes from reviews both good and bad. There are also lots of photographs in this very thick volume, which covers everything (in more or less alphabetical order) from   The Abominable Dr. Phibes  to   Zapped Again , with stops along the way to look at multiple versions of   Invasion of the Body Snatchers , the   Halloween   and   Friday the 13th   films, Roger Corman's Poe series, the many, many Frankenstein and Dracula movies, and a whole lot more, covering the classics up to the ...