You can cry all you want about how fast food has gone up, but have you checked the price of books these days? Just the ones on this page tally up to almost $300. Still, when so many are coming out that cover topics near and dear to this monster lover's heart, I can't help but to close my eyes and hit the "Buy" button for at least a couple.
Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen Hardcover Book Jeff Bond:
Retail Price: $89.99
The ultimate guide to the famous productions of Irwin Allen, legendary producer of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, featuring over 2,000 exclusive images.
This lavish coffee table hardback book is the first and only book of its kind to take a visual journey through the mind and career of legendary producer Irwin Allen, the “Master of Disaster”—the man behind some of the most popular television programs of the 1960s and the visionary who invented the special effects movie blockbuster format with his 1970s hits The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. It traces Allen from his early days as a Hollywood agent and radio personality to his lengthy stint at 20th Century Fox, where he produced movies such as The Lost World and Five Weeks in a Balloon and the popular television shows Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants.
Allen employed the studio’s sprawling lot and soundstages, its library of movie footage, costumes and props, and its veteran special effects craftsmen to bring vivid color and movie-quality action, miniature effects and visuals to television viewers accustomed to low-budget, black and white programming. Allen’s flare for action and visual punch gave audiences some of the 1960s most popular and iconic figures: Admiral Nelson and Captain Crane of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea; the Lost in Space Robot and Jonathan Harris’ nefarious Dr. Zachary Smith; Will Robinson and the Robinson family of space travelers; the pop art kaleidoscope of The Time Tunnel; the Jupiter 2, the Seaview, the Flying Sub, the Spindrift.
Before George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Irwin Allen broke box office records with two of the biggest movie blockbusters of all time: The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Wooed to Warner Bros. at the height of his power with the offer of a building named in his honor and one of the most generous studio contracts ever given a producer, Allen faced his biggest challenge: topping himself with The Swarm, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, When Time Ran Out, and a series of ambitious projects for television.
Illustrated with more than 2000 images including concept and production artwork, storyboards, blueprints, design sketches, miniatures and behind-the-scenes photographs, many of them never before published, this is the ultimate guide to Allen’s famous productions, from his documentaries The Sea Around Us and The Animal World to his spectacular TV-movie City Beneath the Sea, plus fascinating unproduced projects, all explored in detail for the first time.
Jeff Bond is the author of Danse Macabre: 25 years of Danny Elfman and Tim Burton, and The Music of Star Trek. He was Executive Editor of Geek magazine and Senior Editor at CFQ, the revival of Cinefantastique magazine, from 2003 to 2006. He covers film music and other subjects for the Hollywood Reporter and has written hundreds of movie and television soundtrack liner notes booklets.
Hardcover: 600 pages
Monsters, Movies and Me True Tales of My Journey Into Cult Horror Films Hardcover Book by Frank Dietz
Retail Price: $41.99
Fighting zombies and mosquitoes with Adam West. Hurling rubber squid demons at a Canadian metal-banger. Incurring the wrath of Jerry Lewis. Gagging on spaghetti sauce in a ghoul costume. Getting naked with a strange woman on a film set. Losing a knife fight with James Hong. Animating flying horses, gorillas, and dancing penguins. Re-writing Pamela Anderson. Walking the undead through the streets of downtown Pasadena. Battling the Thing from another world. All these stories, and many more, are included in Frank Dietz’s memoir of a kid who dreamed of making monsters… and ended up starring in some of the most notorious horror films in cult cinema history. Frank relates often hilarious memories of making movies like ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE, BLACK ROSES and ROCK N’ ROLL NIGHTMARE. His journey is filled with equal parts disappointment and triumph, as an actor, screenwriter, animator, and producer in the wild world of Hollywood moviemaking.
Hardcover: 358 pages
Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
Cine-Saurus The History of Dinosaurs in the Movies Book
$19.99
by Stephen Czerkas
Published by The Dinosaur Museum, Blanding, Utah. The official catalogue/book of the traveling museum exhibition with many extra photos and informative text.
96 pages
Color throughout
Over 260 illustrations
Softcover
Smoke and Mirrors: Special Visual Effects B.C. (Before Computers) Book
Retail Price: $45.00
Visit The Twilight Zone, journey to The Outer Limits, experience 2001: A Space Odyssey, and boldly go on a Star Trek! See how motion picture special effects were created “B.C.”—Before Computers!
From Lon Chaney to Ray Harryhausen, from Georges Mèliés to George Lucas, meet the magicians— many of whom never received screen credit—who conjured up everything from ferocious dinosaurs battling a giant ape in King Kong to sinking the Titanic and shaking up Los Angeles in Earthquake. They brought Frankenstein to life, introduced generations to the beloved Wizard of Oz, and during World War II gave audiences a taste of warfare in films like The Flying Tigers. In the 1950s they helped us survive a War of the Worlds and took audiences along on Captain Ahab’s hunt...
Paperback : 272 pages
Dimensions : 8.5 x 0.64 x 11 inches
Bela Lugosi Becoming Dracula The Early Years Volume One Hardcover Book
Retail Price: $48.00
The cobwebs of time and space are finally cleared. Drawing on years of research across four countries, excavating and analyzing thousands of yellowed documents in archives as well as every digitized source, Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger shine light from their candelabrum onto a long-forgotten past, onto the creation of a legend. Becoming Dracula is a two-volume biography covering Bela Lugosi’s life from his birth to 1930, when he first played the famous vampire onscreen.
“No one has chronicled the life and career of Bela Lugosi with more precision than Gary Rhodes. With Becoming Dracula: The Early Years of Bela Lugosi, Volume One, Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger detail Lugosi’s heretofore obscure early life in Austria-Hungary with a level of focused research akin to literary paleontology. As fascinating as the future Count Dracula's journey through Europe to America is, Lugosi-philes everywhere will rejoice that there will be a Volume Two continuation!”
– Alan K. Rode, author of Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film (2017)
“The path to becoming a vampire is simplicity itself: one need only fall victim to the notorious Count Dracula. The path that led to becoming Count Dracula, though, was lengthy, arduous, and fraught with disappointment, especially for the noble bloodsucker’s initial cinematic portrayer, Bela Lugosi. Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger have returned to focus their impeccable research and unimpeachable historicity on that path. ‘Tis a path that begs to be followed.”
– John Soister, author of Conrad Veidt on Screen (2009) and Many Selves: The Horror and Fantasy Films of Paul Wegener (2017)
Winston Effect: The Art & History of Stan Winston Studios
$49.99
For over 30 years, the amazing Stan Winston and his team of artists and technicians have been creating characters, creatures and monsters for the silver screen, from The Terminator and the extraterrestrial monstrosities of Aliens and Predator to the terrifying dinosaurs of Jurassic Park and the fanciful character of Edward Scissorhands.
Now, at last, he's opening up the Stan Winston Studios to collaborate on the first-ever book to reveal all the behind-the-scenes secrets of his groundbreaking and hugely influential artistry and effects work. Featuring an extensive array of sketches, production art, and exclusive photographs straight from the studio archives, this is a landmark book in cinema history! 336 pages
Why do you do these things to me? I've been spending like crazy lately and I have to put a pin in it somewhere, but that Irwin Allen book looks like a ton of fun.
ReplyDeleteIf I had to pick one out of the bunch it would be that one. Smoke and Mirrors a close second.
ReplyDelete