By MIKE ASHLEY (Taplinger Publishing Co.; 1977)
This mini-encyclopedia is fairly obscure, but remains one of my favorite genre resources. In its day it was billed as the “most thorough” attempt yet at compiling mini biographies of horror/fantasy authors, and has been a favored possession of mine for many years. It was WHO’S WHO [...]

By JACK STEVENSON (FAB Press; 2006)
This slim, heavily illustrated 127-page book is the first-ever English language account of the making and reception of Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 classic HAXAN, a.k.a. WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES, apparently “The World’s Strangest Film”.
HAXAN is definitely a bizarre piece of work, mixing documentary-esque dissertations on medieval superstition and hysteria with [...]

By H.P. LOVECRAFT (Dover; 1945/73)
From one of the foremost horror scribes of all time comes perhaps the finest, most concise recounting of the genre I’ve ever encountered. No, H.P. Lovecraft wasn’t known for his nonfiction, but excelled nonetheless in the critical and bibliographic spheres. Both are richly represented in this short and indispensable [...]

By JOSEPH LANZA (Chicago Review Press; 2007)
This isn’t the first book about the English cinema’s premiere enfant terrible Ken Russell, but it is very likely the best. That’s largely due to the simple fact that the others–which include Joseph Gomez’s KEN RUSSELL: THE ADAPTOR AS CREATOR (1976), John Baxter’s AN APPALLING TALENT (1973) and [...]

By T. WINTER-DAMON (TAL; 1993)
A spirited 100-page look at the life and fiction of the late Rex Miller, one of the most distinctive horror/mystery specialists of the eighties and nineties. In earlier years Miller was a radio DJ and collectible dealer, but his true calling was cemented by the 1987 publication of SLOB, a [...]

By JANE HAMSHER (Broadway Books; 1997)
In the category of books about moviemaking this one for me ranks near the top of the heap. It’s about the twisted inception of Oliver Stone’s NATURAL BORN KILLERS, told from the point of view of Jane Hamsher, one of its producers.
Together with her lunatic partner Don Murphy, [...]

By TOM MES (FAB Press; 2005)
Japan’s Shinya Tsukamoto is one of the world’s most vital living filmmakers, and this exhaustive study of his life and films is an essential reference, ideal both for Tsukamoto fanatics like me and those new to the filmmaker’s work. Shinya Tsukamoto, of course, is the genius creator of classic [...]

By MICHAEL YORK (Smith and Kraus, Inc.; 2001)
A “Devilish Diary” by the British actor Michael York about his experience playing the Devil in the Christian feature MEGIDDO : THE OMEGA CODE 2. The movie was a sequel to 1999’s evangelical hit THE OMEGA CODE, produced by Matt Crouch (the son of millionaire televangelist Paul [...]

By J.K. POTTER, NIGEL SUCKLING (Dragon’s World; 1993)
Picture this, if you can: A bizarrely contorted man with a literal clock face stationed amidst an alien landscape of clouds, weeds and a drained swimming pool. Or try this: A woman with a bulky contraption on her head that shimmers in the manner of a reflection [...]

By BEN COBB (Creation Books; 2007)
A long-overdue volume, and in my view an essential one, a thorough study of the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, arguably the premiere wild man of the cinema. The Chilean-born Jodorowsky is the creator of the seminal midnight movie classic EL TOPO, as well as the mind-roasting HOLY MOUNTAIN, the [...]