V For Voluminous: Book of the Dead

Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema (2005)
by Jamie Russell
FAB Press | 320 pages

I have umpteen books in my library detailing the histories of just about any genre -- OK, maybe not chick flicks or romance -- but otherwise, I am doing just fine. Even when it comes to sub-genres, I have a few select volumes on various subjects (kaiju, aliens, slapstick, German expressionism, etc.), but never before did I consider that I would require an entire volume detailing the history of zombies and the undead (sometimes two very different things) in my collection.

Hell, I never even considered that I would want an entire book on zombie cinema in my home. This is based on my perception of the people that I know who are deeply into zombie films. Outside of my pal Aaron -- aka The Working Dead, who does have considerable critical faculties (check his blog out by clicking here) -- most of my acquaintances who thrive on zombie flicks pretty much just outright love anything with a zombie in it. Sensing this might be the case for someone perversely intent on filling 300-plus pages on the subject, please understand my reticence, and outright lack of consideration, in this regard.

Unbelievably, a pair of trips to the super-scrubbed squeaky-clean Downtown Disney changed my mind on this matter. Just enough time for a quick five-minute perusal at Compass Books, right before going to a film in the adjacent theatre, left me swiftly scanning the entertainment section, where I saw my first copy of Book of the Dead by Jamie Russell. Subtitled The Complete History of Zombie Cinema, the book's grimly beckoning cover (portrayed at right) naturally made me pick it up. Thanks to the intriguing pair of hair-bedecked skulls with glowing yellow eyes peeking out of their graves, I had to check it out to see if perhaps I would be proven wrong by my long-ingrained belief about the zombie-obsessed.

Here's the first shocker: that this book is allowed within two miles of Disneyland. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad it was there, and it certainly proved me wrong (which provides the second shocker). A fairly good-sized volume (320 pages, heavy paper, 7-1/4"x10"), even a cursory glance at the book revealed a well-researched and seemingly thorough trip through the nearly eighty -- yes, that's right -- eighty-year history of zombie films, from Bela Lugosi's White Zombie (1932) on down to Romero's Land of the Dead. Flipping through the book, I found two incredibly generous sections of garish color plates, showing innumerable classic and non-classic zombie movie posters and some wonderfully bloody scenes. And finally, it has a comprehensive filmography, not necessarily (as the author suggests) a "complete" one, but built on the movies that make up the referenced films in the text, including some that are not specifically "zombie" films, such as Romero's The Crazies, but ones that are important to the discussion of the subject peripherally. Nor did the author seek to maintain a full list of films; indeed, mere minutes after getting the book home, I discovered that Richard Elfman's Shrunken Heads was nowhere to be found in the book, despite involving both voodoo and the living dead. (Maybe the next edition, eh?) Despite my delight with this initial look at the contents, I did not buy the book. After my allotted time expired, it was off to the movies for Jen and I, but I did mark the title down in my notebook to remind myself to seek it out at a later date.

That later date came during my next trip to Compass, and after zipping once more through the book's contents before we hit Ocean's Thirteen, I at last purchased Book of the Dead (which is a tad expensive at a nickel under thirty bucks) while waiting for Jen to get off work to join me. It was an absolute joy to read the book while standing around Disneyland, with a very bloody ghoul hanging about on the back cover, grabbing the odd stare from disturbed mothers as they passed by me. (You can take what I mean by the phrase "disturbed mothers" any way you wish. I meant them all...) Certainly there are books within Compass which might not be exactly "family" material, but in a bookshop that is half devoted to children's fare, to find this volume, with its graphic depictions of gore and nudity, couched between the latest Roger Ebert effort and, inexplicably, a half-dozen books on Audrey Hepburn (did I miss something recently?), and sitting out prominently on a shelf at the eye level of a five-year-old certainly caught me by surprise. I'm not demanding they don't carry such things -- I readily encourage that they do -- I was just surprised to find it there, since they tend to only carry bestsellers in most categories, or the latest in mainstream-safe blather.

Reading the book at home has proven an exhaustive effort. Beginning with William Seabrook's seminal zombie travel opus The Magic Island, the book that made zombie talk an American fad in the early part of the 20th century, Russell breaks down each film in his narrative in such detail and with attention to their metaphorical implications that it becomes almost necessary to stop reading and review the actual films oneself before continuing forward with one's reading. I have seen White Zombie a handful of times, but I still found myself revving up my copy to make sure I had not seen a different film than the one of which Russell speaks. Suffice to say that Russell has turned out to be a very astute guide through most of the movies thus far, and while the short film reviews might come up a little more scant on detail than I wished, Russell is not one to give an easy pass to a film just because he is a hardcore fan of the subgenre. It turns out Russell is much like me: deeply in love with a couple handfuls of these films, and more than willing to sternly (though sometimes lovingly) critique those that fall short of his standards. Also, kudos must be given to Russell for including any number of zombie-oriented pornographic titles in his book, which helped toward showing me that he has left no stone unturned in his search for as many zombie films as possible, even if it might have something icky underneath it. One cannot be afraid of the icky when discussing zombies. Or if one orders a book on them for a Disney-locked bookstore. (Either their book buyer knows full well what he is doing, or he doesn't haven't a clue. Or maybe both.)

So, now I have a book in my library about zombie films, and I am happy with this. My fears of being trapped inside a book by an uncritical zombie nut have abated. Most of my friends, though, will have zero interest in seeking out or even paying for this book, but I didn't write this review for them. It is directed at two of my friends specifically. Andrea and Aaron: this book is for you. Don't delay in its immediate purchase. Shouldn't be hard to find... the dead do walk the earth, and they don't buy books like this. They buy Tim LaHaye books and Celine Dion CDs...

Paging Mr. Psychotronic... Paging Mr. Psychotronic...

A quick jaunt up the coast this past weekend to Santa Rosa for a Capricorn party has left me practically movie-less for the past week (with one awesome exception), but not without some unexpected gains to my film library. And by "film library," I mean my actual library about film, not DVDs or videotapes. I'm talking books, people!

An unplanned side trip into Treehorn Books, a used bookstore in Santa Rosa, left two dog-eared -- but in far better condition than my original edition -- copies of Michael Weldon's The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film in my happy little hands. Long out of print (to my knowledge), I cannot stress enough how important this 1983 book was in developing my love of outré cinema, and while I still have not seen every film mentioned in its interior, I have made a pretty good run at seeing most of the pictures contained within its covers. (One of these copies is getting shipped up to Anchorage immediately to my fellow movie nut Aaron, who will appreciate its lurid cover, wonderfully descriptive film entries and black and white reproductions of a host of crappy movie posters greatly.) Weldon also started The Psychotronic Film Guide Magazine, and he doesn't so much review a film, as he does give you a list of all the reasons that you should see a film, whether or not it is a bottom-of-the-barrel scraper. Horror, sci-fi, juvenile delinquent, rock n' roll, jungle, and gorilla pictures, beach and surf flicks...really, exploitation of any sort. If you like any of these genres, this book is a must-have for your collection and further cinematic edification.

I also discovered a gorgeous hardcover copy (with protective book cover) of Astaire Dancing by John Mueller from 1985, and also long out of print. I have yet to break into its text, but much of the book is devoted to frame-by-frame breakdowns of many of the dance sequences from the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical series, covers the majority of Astaire's career, and will be great fun to go through in conjunction with the DVD set that was recently released (and which Jen and I will naturally now have to purchase).

A not-unexpected gain, since I left the book behind on my trip to my brother's in November, was a hardcover copy of Cut! Hollywood Murders, Accidents and Other Tragedies that Mark and Marci passed on to me. I've already noticed that they left Marie Provost out of the book (nothing like being devoured by dachshunds!), so I am unsure as to how complete the research is in the book, but I will wade into it the next time I am in a particularly gory mood. Maybe it will keep me from cracking my ancient copy of Hollywood Babylon again.

A two-hour wait in the San Francisco Airport left me with time to wander about Compass Books, where I snagged a copy of Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy - The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy. I am about a third of the way through this very concise history of the boys, and even if the author (Simon Louvish) gets a little too lavish with his historical overview of comedy in the beginning, I am finding it a most intriguing read.

Didn't really have time to read on the flight, though... the flight is only an hour, and by the time the beverage service shows up and leaves, you are pretty much landing, so it is hard to really get into anything heavy on such a short zip. 

And don't get me started on that crappy little bag of pretzels that they term a "snack". Grrrrr...

Video Kong the First [The Ballad of Kong Pt. 5]

[Stop! Have you read Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3 or Pt. 4? Well, you should...]

After the summer of 1977 and the couple of summers that followed, where I saw it regularly a couple of times a year, I only ran into King Kong sporadically after that. Odd televised airings of the movie on Saturday afternoons or late night here and there. But with the addition of cable television to my life, I would search constantly for a viewing of the movie, and finally captured the great beast on videotape when I recorded a WTBS airing. This tape became like unto a holy object for me for the next few years, as poor a quality as it happened to be, and I cherished it wholeheartedly. That is, I did until 1985.

I had started out working in the Hallmark warehouse of a news agency in Alaska (or rather, the news agency in Alaska, and in a moment of superlative marketing clarity, such a business happened to be named the Alaska News Agency). Actually, I worked for the Book Cache, a chain of stores that were owned by the same people who owned ANA (and which would eventually, through a morass of corporate gobbledygook which I don't wish to go into any further than I have, sadly go the way of the dodo). Hallmark held a large presence in the bookstores, but I had recently been swept into a new position: that of the Hardback Returns Manager. The title was B.S. though; since there was only one person in the department for 98% of the time, it wasn't really a management position, unless you count the sometime rather unruly stacks of books, which required supreme management on my part.

While I still worked in the Hallmark warehouse, we had started carrying two series of cheap VHS tape lines. The first line was from a company called Outlet Book Company, who then and now specialized in bargain books. I did not know it at the time, but the movies were what is known as public domain titles, ranging from Chaney's Phantom of the Opera to Lugosi and the Ritz Brothers in The Gorilla to Joan Crawford in Rain to Charles Laughton in The Beachcomber. The quality proved to be sometimes substandard, but such is the way with public domain movies. You get what you don't pay for... the tapes were cheap because the movies were cheap. The boxes looked all the same, and comprised of oversized plastic shells that popped loud when you unstuck the plastic from each side. The design of the covers only showed titles on the front and descriptions with a brief cast listing on the back, and were gray and generic.

The second installment of movies, a few months later, came from another bargain book specialty company called Crown, which, while I didn't know it then, actually owned Outlet. (And eventually, Random House would purchase Crown, and thus Outlet, and make it a subsidiary in 1988.) So, really, this was a line within a line. Once again, the movies were still public domain, but at least had actual pictures from the movie on the cover, and had morphed into the size and shape that nearly all VHS tapes had taken on by that point: little video rectangles, compact and neat. The boxes were not quite as generic as the Outlet ones, thanks to the covers having a variety of colors, though the pictures used on them were in black and white. It looks pretty silly now, but I actually found the somewhat "pop art" aesthetic pleasing to the eye.

Many of the titles were the same as with the initial Outlet batch, but there were some surprises: Walk in the Sun stood out for me. Best of all on this go-around though, there was not only a few early English Hitchcock thrillers, none of which I had seen yet, but also a copy of Godzilla vs. Megalon (without Belushi, I was sad to discover, but dubbed in English... though since I saw it initially on TV this way, it was not a problem).

We had some success with these runs of videos, and the decision was made to venture into carrying a larger selection of videotapes in our stores. When the studios started concentrating on retail sales of videotapes, moving beyond the rental market, there were no Best Buy or Suncoast-type stores yet in our state. The rental stores were slow to pick up on the first-run sales market, but we dove into it wholeheartedly at our stores. We made most of our sales on first release titles like when Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial first came out on video. We would several hundreds of copies of those titles in a very short amount of time. But at some of our bigger stores, we carried around a hundred titles or so (not counting local Alaskan videos), finding out which movie titles sold regularly, and restocked them from our warehouse. 

As a side gig to my regular work, because I was the movie buff in the building, I was given control over the warehouse stock for a period. I would eventually become the buyer, along with audiocassettes, in a very short time. While she didn't want me to go crazy, I was given almost free rein by my boss to order whatever I felt we should carry. This was all around 1985. And RKO had just released King Kong onto video.

Of course, apart from getting my own copy, I just had to carry King Kong in our stores. When Paramount released a handful of Godzilla titles like Monster Zero and its ilk, I convinced my boss that we should carry them as an experiment. (They ending up selling pretty well for a couple of years.) But Kong was a no-brainer. We had to carry it. It was a bonafide, acclaimed classic and there was a lot of publicity about its release. Beyond wanting to get one for myself, I wanted the whole world to have access to getting their own copy, and felt strongly we should be selling it. 

The videocassette was proclaimed on the cover as the "Original Studio Edition," put out under RKO's "Film Classics Series," and was led with the famous shot of Kong on top of the Empire State Building facing the onslaught of the biplanes. On the back was the shot of Kong about to charge through the gates of the Skull Island wall. I don't know how many copies we sold, but we ended up carrying multiple editions of King Kong throughout the handful of years that I ran the video line for the Book Cache stores. Whatever changes in taste or preference our customers had in that time, I always made sure to keep the mighty Kong in stock. Kong wasn't cheap at first either. I think it leveled out around $19.95 eventually, but our initial retail price was around $39.95. At least, that is the price I recall from when we first carried it. And the price I paid... before my employee discount that is.

The important thing, though, is that I finally had a copy of Kong of my own that wasn't recorded at an atrociously fast speed, and that was supposedly duplicated from the finest archival print that could be found at the time. And I cherished that copy of King Kong for about...oh...a year.

[To be continued in Part 6 here...]