Attempting to read 52 books this year. As Stephen King said, "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot."
PUPPET MASTER COMPLETE: A FRANCHISE HISTORY by Nat Brehmer
When I saw that producer Charles Band’s memoir Confessions of a Puppetmaster was under 300 pages, I was concerned that it wouldn’t be thorough enough. How could Band tell the story of his decades in the entertainment industry in less than 300 pages? Well, Confessions of a Puppetmaster turned out to be a fascinating read that was packed with interesting information. Given that Band is best known for starting the company Full Moon and building it on the foundation of the Puppet Master franchise, it’s fitting that I went into reading Puppet Master Complete: A Franchise History by Nat Brehmer with a concern similar to the one I had before reading Confessions of a Puppetmaster: how was Brehmer going to be able to thoroughly cover this franchise in 252 pages? That didn’t seem like enough for a franchise that consisted of fourteen films when the book was published (and has since added another sequel to the mix). But there was no reason to be concerned. Brehmer digs into the making of every one of the Puppet Master movies, starting with the development of the first movie (where we learn some interesting things about the initial draft of the script) and going through all of the sequels, prequels, and spin-offs. The Demonic Toys crossover, the Fangoria-produced reboot, it’s all covered, each movie examined. Sure, you could imagine an expanded version that might include even more interviews, but in its actual form Puppet Master Complete is a mind-blowing tribute to a franchise that doesn’t get as much respect as most of the other horror franchises do.
Brehmer doesn’t limit the book to just the movies, either. Chapters are also dedicated to the Puppet Master toy lines and comic books. Another chapter offers a lot of details on the Puppet Wars trilogy of movies that were never made. Brehmer’s passion for the franchise really comes through in the pages of this book, as a fellow dedicated fan of Puppet Master I found it to be a delight to read.
Puppet Master Complete also gave me a completely new experience: that of reading a book and unexpectedly finding my name listed in the bibliography as a source of information! (Due to an Arrow in the Head article I wrote about plans for a prequel to the reboot.)
THE GROSS: THE HITS, THE FLOPS: THE SUMMER THAT ATE HOLLYWOOD by Peter Bart
The summer of 1998 certainly wasn’t the most exciting movie-going season on record, but Peter Bart managed to make his chronicle of the year’s biggest summer releases an interesting read. Twenty-five years down the line, this book now has the nostalgia factor going for it as well. If you were around and going to movies in the summer of ‘98, reading this book about the decisions studios made in putting that slate of films together is likely to stir up memories of watching the movies on the big screen. It definitely reminded me that I went to see a whole lot of movies that summer, even if most of them didn’t make a lasting impression on me. The lineup covered in this book includes Deep Impact, Godzilla, The Truman Show, The X-Files, Mulan, Doctor Dolittle, Armageddon, Lethal Weapon 4, Small Soldiers, The Mask of Zorro, There’s Something About Mary, Saving Private Ryan, The Horse Whisperer, Six Days Seven Nights, A Perfect Murder, Out of Sight, and The Avengers. (An update of the British TV show, nothing to do with Marvel.) With nods to Halloween H20 and Blade. Accompanied by various family members, I went to see most of the movies.
FACTS AND FIGURES OF JAPANESE MONSTERS: 1954-2012 by Constantine Furman
Facts and Figures of Japanese Monsters is an interesting book to read through and glean information from, but it will best serve as a reference book, something to have on hand any time you want to confirm the height of a certain monster, know what a movie’s tagline was, find out the official name of a creature (and its nickname), or translate the lyrics of one of the surprisingly many original, often quite romantic, songs that have been composed for Japanese monster movies. The book starts out with a long list of tokusatsu movies – many of which I have already seen, but a bunch that I haven’t gotten around to yet, and some I hadn’t even heard of before. So I will be using this book as a guide to make sure I see all of the tokusatsu movies on that list.
Facts and Figures of Japanese Monsters also provides the names of the suitmation performers who brought the awesome kaiju to life, clears up some misconceptions about the movies, digs into timelines and continuity, and more. If you love kaiju and other sorts of tokusatsu movies, this is a good book to have in your collection.
RAISED EYEBROWS: MY YEARS INSIDE GROUCHO’S HOUSE by Steve Stoliar
All of the Marx Brothers were dead well before I was even born, but I still happened to become a big fan of the comedy team after catching their 1932 movie Horse Feathers on TV one day. That inspired me to check out and collect all of their cinematic work. I’m amused by their antics, blown away by the wordplay – and fascinated by stories of the men behind the characters. So when I heard about Raised Eyebrows, a book written by an aspiring comedy writer who got the chance to work in the home of Groucho Marx’s home for the last three years of the comedy legend’s life, it became an instant “must read” for me.
Steve Stoliar’s association with Groucho began in 1974, when he started a petition to get the 1930 Marx Brothers movie Animal Crackers re-released. It was the only one of the Marx movies not in revival screening rotation. This petition caught the attention of Groucho and his secretary / manager Erin Fleming... and not only did Steve end up meeting Groucho, he was even hired to handle his fan mail and organize his memorabilia so it could be donated to the Smithsonian museum. Steve’s office while handling these duties was right inside Groucho’s home. Groucho wasn’t in top condition during the years Steve spent in his house. He was losing his short term memory and suffered multiple strokes, in addition to other ailments, but he was still witty. And still being visited by – or going out to visit – other Hollywood legends like George Burns, Red Buttons, Jack Lemmon, Peter Sellers, Nunnally Johnson, and Bob Hope. Steve also crossed paths with the likes of Bud Cort, Elliott Gould, and Barbra Streisand at Groucho’s place, and of course met Groucho’s brother Zeppo – who even took Steve’s girlfriend on a date after she and Steve broke up. Never mind that she was around 20 and Zeppo was in his 70s. Steve had a lot of fun being around Groucho, but things weren’t very peaceful in that home. He also witnessed the uneasy relationship Groucho had with his adult children, and saw firsthand how unstable Fleming was. The 80-something Groucho loved the 30-something Fleming, there was talk of him either marrying her or adopting her... but while she won his heart and may have helped keep his career going in his final years, she was also mentally ill, manipulative, and possibly abusive. So when there was a legal battle over whether or not she should serve as Groucho’s conservator, Steve witnessed that as well. And even testified in court.
Raised Eyebrows is an incredible story and definitely is a must read if you have any interest in the Marx Brothers. I highly recommend the audiobook version, as that not only gives you the chance to hear Steve Stoliar tell his story himself, but any time he quotes Groucho he does a good impression of the elderly Groucho’s voice. It really helps you picture the man who said these things.
THE SHINING GIRLS by Lauren Beukes
I can’t see “The Shining” without thinking of Stephen King, even if it’s followed by the word “Girls” – in fact, The Shining Girls just makes me thinks of the ghostly Grady girls in King’s haunted hotel story. Lauren Beukes’ The Shining Girls doesn’t actually have anything to do with The Shining, but there is a bit of a King feel to the story, so it’s no surprise that King provided a positive quote to put on the book’s cover.
Chapter by chapter, more or less, The Shining Girls bounces back and forth between the stories of a young woman who takes an internship at a newspaper in 1993 as part of an effort to dig up more information on the man who got away with slashing her up a while back and her mysterious attacker. A criminal from the Depression era who stumbled into a house that has given him the ability to travel through time. All he has to do is think of a certain date as he’s stepping out of the house and he’ll arrive on that date. We all have ideas on how we could use time travel to accomplish things in this world, but all this guy wants to do is move through the decades so he can track down certain special girls, the shining girls of the title, and murder them to appease the house. And he stays busy doing this. Every time we check in on him, he’s either stalking someone, murdering them, or plotting something awful. That keeps the reader engaged and thrilled, while we’re also becoming invested in our heroine’s search for answers in 1993. First of all, how is she going to be able to figure out that her attacker was a time traveler? And once she has done that, how is she going to be able to stop him?
You may not be able to make sense of everything about The Shining Girls, but the book is a great read anyway.
THE AMERICAN WAY: A TRUE STORY OF NAZI ESCAPE, SUPERMAN, AND MARILYN MONROE by Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler
My review of The American Way can be read here on Life Between Frames at THIS LINK.
THE GETAWAY by Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson’s 1958 crime novel The Getaway is about a bunch of very bad people – and at times, it’s a bit shocking that Thompson allowed so many of these characters to be so bad. Nearly everyone in the book is complete trash, and those who aren’t don’t fare very well. At the center of the story is career criminal Carter "Doc" McCoy, and most writers would have worked to give their lead character some redeeming qualities or a code of honor, even when writing about a criminal. It would have been especially simple to give this guy some redeeming qualities, since Doc is primarily a bank robber, and the public can often get on the side of a bank robber as long as they don’t hurt anyone. But Thompson wasn’t interested in making these characters likeable. While Doc puts up a nice guy facade, he’s willing to double-cross anybody and happens to be a cold-blooded murderer who racks up enough innocent victims over the course of the book, he becomes a spree killer as well as a bank robber. He commits these murders while he’s on the run, getting away from his latest robbery – and he’s accompanied on the road by his wife Carol, who was a librarian and still lived with her parents before she crossed paths with Doc. Here’s another character who could have had redeeming qualities. How does she feel about the murders Doc commits? Oddly, we’re not told. When we’re privy to Carol’s thoughts, she’s only ever worried about her relationship with Doc. As it turns out, we don’t know what Carol thinks about the murders because she doesn’t think about them. She doesn’t care. She’s another awful person.
I’m not saying Thompson should have given these characters good qualities, just relaying the fact that I was stunned at how terrible most of them were. Reading The Getaway is like trudging through slime with them. The saving grace here comes in the final chapter, when Doc and Carol reach their destination: a supposedly safe haven in Mexico that’s referred to as the kingdom of a self-appointed king. El Rey. The Getaway has been brought to the screen twice; first in 1972 and again in 1994. Neither of those cinematic adaptations included the El Rey chapter... which was fitting for the movies, because the characters there weren’t as loathsome as they are in the book. In the movies, you want Doc and Carol to get away. In the book, they deserve comeuppance. And it’s on the way. Slowly creeping up on them.
Quentin Tarantino said that when he heard the ‘90s version of The Getaway was in the works, he assumed it was going to include the El Rey portion of the book. That would be the only reason to make another version, to adapt the El Rey chapter. But El Rey was left out again. So he paid homage to the El Rey chapter by making that place the destination of the characters who are on the run in his From Dusk Till Dawn script. But even in that movie, characters only talk about El Rey. We never see what happens there.
CINEMA SPECULATION by Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino is presumably going to segue from a filmmaking career to a career as an author when he retires after he directs his tenth feature – and after writing a novelization of his ninth feature Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he continues getting a head-start on the author stage of his career with Cinema Speculation, where he reminisces about childhood trips to see movies and dedicates multiple chapters to digging into specific films. Giving background information on them, going over some of their influences, and critiquing them. Over the course of this book, Tarantino takes the reader on a cinematic journey from 1968 to 1981, covering films like Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Getaway, The Outfit, Sisters, Daisy Miller, Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder, Paradise Alley, Escape from Alcatraz, Hardcore, and The Funhouse. He also pays tribute to critic Kevin Thomas, imagines what it would have been like if Brian De Palma had directed Taxi Driver instead of Martin Scorsese (it was a possibility), and talks about how the “post-sixties anti-establishment auteurs”, who made it their artistic mission to shake up cinema, gave way to “the movie brats”, the filmmakers who had grown up on film and TV and wanted to make their own versions of the crowd-pleasers they loved.
I didn’t always agree with what Tarantino had to say in this book (especially with his opinion of the 1980s being one of the all-time worst decades for film), but I was always interested in reading what he had to say about the movies he covered here. I don’t know if I was interested enough that I would ever want to read through Cinema Speculation for a second time, but it was an enjoyable one-off, and I will be looking through the book again to compile a list of movies that I want to watch (or rewatch) after seeing Tarantino mention them. Beyond the movies that get full chapters dedicated to them, he also references a ton of other movies, so it’s going to be quite a list.
I AM LEGEND AND OTHER STORIES by Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson brought us a lot of great horror and sci-fi stories over the decades, and two of his most popular stories are contained within this book: the vampire apocalypse novella I Am Legend (which was a source of inspiration for Night of the Living Dead, as well as the film adaptations The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, and I Am Legend), and the short story Prey, the killer Zuni fetish doll tale that was brought to the screen as the most famous segment from the 1975 anthology movie Trilogy of Terror.
I Am Legend takes up about half of this book’s 317 pages and is a great read on its own, but it was a clever move on the publisher’s part to increase the page count by including ten other Matheson stories with it. And it provides the reader with even more unsettling entertainment. As with most story collections, this one has its ups and downs. Some of the stories don’t work as well as others. But some of them are awesome, and even the ones that didn't quite hit the mark were fun to read. You get supernatural beings, murderers, young witches being recruited to fight in war, a man who releases so much anger into the world that it turns his own house against him, curses, and stories of madness. Although Matheson’s stories inspired a lot of movies, many of the ones contained in this book have never received film or TV adaptations. But in addition to I Am Legend and Prey, the book also features Dance of the Dead, which Matheson’s own son Richard Christian Matheson adapted for an episode of the anthology series Masters of Horror that was directed by Tobe Hooper.
Matheson was a terrific storyteller, and I Am Legend and Other Stories left me wanting to seek out even more of his work.
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF H.P. LOVECRAFT by H.P. Lovecraft
This isn’t just a book I’ve read in 2023, it was a book I was reading in 2022 as well. It took me around nine months to get through its 1000+ pages, reading one of its 63 stories here and there as the weeks and months went by. I don’t think this tome actually lives up to the “Complete” part of its title, I’m pretty sure there are plenty of Lovecraft stories that didn’t end up being collected here, but I certainly don’t feel like I was ripped off. There was plenty to read, “Complete” or not.
Before diving into this book, I had only read Lovecraft’s Re-Animator stories and The Outsider, both of which I enjoyed. There were several more that I enjoyed in this collection, and others that were not very appealing to me. Some of them were almost an endurance challenge to get through. And I have to admit, I didn’t become a fan of the storyteller as I read more and more of his stories. I often found his style of overwriting to be off-putting, with his extensive blocks of description and exposition. Of course, everyone who starts reading Lovecraft now knows to expect appalling moments of racism and xenophobia, which were definitely there with some frequency, and I felt that the writer seemed deeply pretentious as well. I don’t generally care for fiction that’s heavy on dream sequences or examinations of dreams, so his “Dream Cycle” wasn’t for me, but some of the “Cthulhu Mythos” stories were entertaining. Lovecraft did so much world-building, it’s surprising he never wrote a full epic like the Lord of the Rings saga, as he described fantasy worlds in so much detail it sounds like they’re going to be the setting for a long story. In some cases, it was too much detail, because the story would end soon after he had finished describing everything.
I’m far from a devotee after reading Lovecraft’s “Complete Works”, but he did craft a lot of impressive horror tales that I had a good time reading. I also like thinking of the fact that these stories were published in the pages of magazines with titles like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories between the years of 1917 and 1937. It’s fun to imagine the people of those days picking up a magazine and reading some of these twisted stories.
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train is an interesting “missing person” mystery, but the most fascinating thing about it – and the reason it’s worth checking out – is the incredible job author Paula Hawkins did of digging into the thoughts and feelings of the characters that guide us through the story. It’s told from the perspective of three deeply flawed women. There’s Rachel, a depressed alcoholic who still does her routine train commute every day even though she lost her job months ago. During the train ride, she looks out at the neighborhood she used to live in, before her husband left her for another woman, and focuses on the couple that lives a couple doors down from her former home, daydreaming the perfect life for them. Then the woman goes missing. She’s Megan, and her life was far from the fantasy Rachel dreamed up for her. Megan has a troubled history and restless nature, and she’s cheating on her husband with her therapist. When Megan vanishes, Rachel inserts herself into the investigation because she thinks she has witnessed some things that might be helpful to the authorities and to Megan’s husband. As she takes it upon herself to figure out what really happened to Megan, she spends time in her former neighborhood, a fact that doesn’t sit well with her ex-husband’s new wife. Anna. Who fears for her safety and the safety of her child with Rachel lurking around. And, we’ll come to find out, misses the thrill of being a mistress instead of a wife.
As the book began, I thought Rachel would be a very unreliable narrator and thought I knew exactly where the story was going to end up. But Hawkins threw in some nice twists and turns while doing an astounding job of getting across the mindsets of each of the three leads – Rachel, Megan, and Anna.
The Girl on the Train has received two different film adaptations, neither of which have gotten overwhelmingly positive reviews. I watched one of them years ago and remembered next to nothing about it, so I didn’t know exactly where the book was going even though I had already seen the movie.
SALEM’S LOT by Stephen King
Salem’s Lot is, just like Carrie, a Stephen King novel we have his wife Tabitha to thank for. After King dropped the early pages of Carrie in the trash, Tabitha fished them out and encouraged him to continue writing the story. Salem’s Lot started as a joke he made while he was working as a high school English teacher and had the students reading Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. He wondered what would happen if Dracula came over to modern America – and joked that the Count would probably get run over by a taxi cab. In response, Tabitha asked, “What if he came to Maine?” And that’s when King was struck with the idea for Salem’s Lot.
Dracula isn’t in Salem’s Lot, but there is an ancient, evil vampire known as Kurt Barlow in the story. Basically a Dracula stand-in. And over the course of this book, King imagines what it would be like if such an evil force were to infiltrate the small Maine town of Jerusalem’s Lot. ‘Salem’s Lot for short. The vampire causes some awful things to happen, and some of the people in this town do some awful things well before they have any sort of vampirism to blame for their actions. Looking back over King’s bibliography now, Salem’s Lot sort of reads like a test run for his later novel The Stand, which tells the story of the world falling apart due to a flu pandemic. Here he was able to practice for that by having the vampire pandemic take a town apart piece by piece. As in The Stand, there are some good people ready to battle against the forces of evil. Like author Ben Mears, who has come to Salem’s Lot because he has memories of a childhood stay there, and happens to arrive in town just as the vampire and his human lackey move into the Marsten house, the old “haunted house” that looks over ‘Salem’s Lot. There’s also Ben’s love interest Susan Norton, Doctor Jimmy Cody, teacher Matthew Burke, a child named Mark Petrie, and alcoholic priest Father Callahan.
There’s a lot going on in Salem’s Lot and a whole lot of characters, and sometimes it feels like the story got away from King a little bit. I didn’t feel like every one of the book’s many pages were necessary, and I also felt like it took a little too long getting to the vampire action. But once the vampire action starts, it’s a nightmarish ride to the end, and the book is packed with extremely creepy moments. A vampire child in an unearthed coffin. The standoffs with Barlow. A woman rising from her slab in the morgue. A bus driver being confronted by several vampire kids. (There are a lot of vampire kids in this story.) And the famous moment where Mark’s pal floats outside his bedroom window, asking to be invited in. I felt that the ending was a bit clunky, especially when you take into account the prologue I wasn’t sure about, but clunky endings aren’t too rare in King stories.
Salem’s Lot is a long, detailed book, but interesting enough that I was able to read through it pretty quickly.
JACK HILL: THE EXPLOITATION AND BLAXPLOITATION MASTER, FILM BY FILM by Calum Waddell
There aren’t many “household name” directors whose careers I would want to read a film-by-film examination of. For example, I couldn’t care less about cinema gatekeeper Martin Scorsese or most of his films, even if Taxi Driver is one of my favorites. My interest in James Cameron peaks at the time when he was working on The Terminator, Rambo: First Blood Part 2, and Aliens simultaneously. Beyond Jaws, I don’t need to know much “behind the scenes” information about Steven Spielberg movies (and watching The Fabelmans covers his life well enough for me). But I will gladly read about lesser known directors from the drive-in / grindhouse era. Tell me everything there is to know about the works of Greydon Clark (and he has a great autobiography that does just that). Let’s examine the work of H.G. Lewis. I may not enjoy many Al Adamson movies, but I’d read about them if the book about his career wasn’t so expensive. One of my favorite filmmakers from that era is Jack Hill, who made some extremely entertaining movies – Spider Baby, The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Switchblade Sisters – but also some very troubled ones. But no matter what the quality of the finished film was, it’s covered in Calum Waddell’s book Jack Hill: The Exploitation and Blaxploitation Master, Film by Film.
Just as the title promises, Waddell walks us through Hill’s filmmaking career, from the student film that ended up serving as the inspiration for the ending of Apocalypse Now, through the movies I mentioned earlier, up to the disaster of the 1982 sword and sorcery film Sorceress. A filmmaking experience that was so disappointing, Hill has gone forty years without directing anything else. And he doesn’t seem too upset about that fact. An examination of each film is followed by an interview with Hill in which he shares his memories about working on them. Actors Sid Haig, Judith Brown, Joanne Nail, and Karl Schanzer, as well as producer John Prizer, are also interviewed along the way. Not interviewed are producers Hill had a terrible time working with on the likes of Blood Bath, Higher and Higher, Sorceress, and the Boris Karloff movies Fear Chamber, House of Evil, Isle of the Snake People, and Alien Terror.. Hill had a lot of producer trouble in his day. In fact, he has some of the most negative stories I’ve ever heard told about Roger Corman.
This book was a great read and offers a lot of information about a filmmaker who deserves to be more well-known.
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