Edited by Steven Peros & Mark Bailey
Reviews by Larry Blamire, Dan Madigan,
Tracy Phoef Sutton, Mark Bailey
Published by BearManor Media
Recently, I’ve reviewed a number of books collecting other people’s reviews, mostly of movies, and, if I recall correctly, I enjoyed them all.
Obviously a niche market, but I guess I’ve always been part of that niche. Back in the 1970s, when I was a budding movie buff as well as first beginning to collect books, I scooped up every collection of reviews or essays about movies I could find.
Some were very good books about bad movies, whilst others were very bad books about good movies. I still have them all.
At hand today, Cinema Bizarro is a very good book about (mostly) bad movies.
The fact that such all-time turkeys as Robot Monster and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters are treated with an equal level of respect to such genuine genre classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Blob says a lot about the mindset of these reviews.
One of the interesting things that separates this one from previous film review collections is that, while most of the others were credited to one individual writer (Tim Lucas comes to mind for a couple of them) Cinema Bizarro compiles works from multiple writers.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that three of these writers—Nadia Robertson, Larry Blamire, and Phoef Sutton—are Facebook friends of mine. I was, however, unaware of their involvement when the book was sent to me for review. By pure coincidence (Look, I know you aren’t going to believe me on that but I swear it’s true!), theirs are some of my favorite chapters.
Larry gets five chapters, on I Married a Monster from Outer Space (a much better movie than its title implies), The Unknown Terror, and Night of the Blood Beast, as well as two fun chapters on weird westerns of the 1930s and ‘40s. Those last two may be my favorites in this book.
Nadia tackles five sections, too, covering the classic Day of the Triffids as well as obscurities like Arch Oboler’s 3-D The Bubble, Amicus’s anthology Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, The Woman Eater, and Kronos.
Phoef deals with some of the most famous no-budget cult flicks in his five chapters, including the original Little Shop of Horrors and Robot Monster (aka the one with the gorilla in the diving helmet).
As you can probably tell, all of the movies addressed here are of the type that used to get shown on local Creature Feature-type shows back when I was a teenager in the ‘70s. In fact, that actually is where I, myself, saw many of them.
The other writers here, all sadly unfamiliar with me until now, are Tracy Mercer, Steven Orkin, Mark Bailey, Mike Peros, Steven Peros, Brian R, Solomon, Dan Madigan. Art, design, and layout are all credited to Mr. Bailey, who also contributes an introductory note, as does Mr. Orkin. The copyright for the whole book is assigned to Steven Peros, who also provides the Introduction. That Intro explains that most of these folks have participated in a couple of books like this.
After that comes a brief section of succinct bios of the various writers, all nicely written and giving enough of everyone’s background and prior credits to ensure that ignorant readers like myself know why these folks are qualified to be represented in a book like this one.
While nostalgia clearly plays a big part in Cinema Bizarro, the fact that all of these “less than perfect” movies are treated respectfully and given a fair-minded once-over made me look at many of them in whole new ways. I’m betting it will do the same for most readers.
Booksteve recommends.
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