Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 17:19:21 -0400 From: [g--l--n] at [bgnet.bgsu.edu] (Metroplex) Subject: FTP 552 Administrivia: FTP's 551, 553 and 554 will be forthcomming. I seem to have misplaced them. ==== FIT TO PRINT by catherine yronwode for the week of January 1, 1996 THIS IS FIT TO PRINT NUMBER 552: I have found a great "viewer's companion" volume for those whose fannish interests range beyond comics and into the realm of horror, science fiction, fantasy, super-hero, and animated movies. The book is John Stanley's Creature Features Movie Guide Strikes Again, Fourth Revised Version, available from Creatures At Large Press, 1082 Grand Teton Drive, Pacifica, California 94044, (415) 355-7323. At 454 jam-packed pages, the price-tag of $22.50 for the softcover and $52.50 for the hardback is easy to handle; you'll definitely get your money's worth! The John Stanley who compiled this massive, illustrated filmography is not the John Stanley who used to do Little Lulu comics, by the way. He is, as anyone raised in the San Francisco Bay Area will know, the host of the late, lamented Creature Features television show and a former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. A steady attendee of the San Diego Comicon, he is a genial, out-going, extremely knowledgeable guy who can answer just about question you may have concerning the good, the bad, and the woefully obscure in fright-cinema. Want to know more about Dracula Blows His Cool (1976, "West German softcore sex comedy"), Radio Ranch (1935, "feature-length video version of the serial Phantom Empire"), Linnea Quigley's Horror Workout (1991, "she leads assorted monsters and fright characters through aerobics"), Repo Man (1984, "meanwhile, there's a 1964 Chevy Malibu driven by a crazed nuclear scientist")? If you do, this is where to find out. Did you ever wonder about the differences or similarities between the 1940 film Spellbound, directed by John Harlow and the 1945 film Spellbound directed by Alfred Hitchcock? John Stanley will inform you. (Okay: semi-spoiler warning - the former, says Stanley, is a "British shocker featuring demonic possession and spiritualism, based on The Necromancers by Hugh Benson" with Derek Farr, Hay Petrie, and Vera Lindsay, while the latter is a "psychothriller" about "guilt, fantasy, schizophrenia, paranoia, and persecution complexes," which boasts montage scenes by Salvador Dali, a screenplay by Ben Hecht based on The House of Dr. Edwardes by Francis Beeding, and stars "headshrinker Ingrid Bergman" and "amnesia victim Gregory Peck.") Best of all, Stanley supplies video sources for both of these movies - and for most of the other films he lists. That way, if you have a hankering to watch a double-bill of Return of the Killer Tomatoes and Return of the Swamp Thing, or The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man (both being adaptations of the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson) - you'll know exactly how to acquire the videos you seek. To give you an idea for Stanley's thoroughness as a reviewer, here's more on that latter hypothetical double-feature: Stanley tells us that the 1964 Vincent Price version, The Last Man on Earth, is faithful to the "classic" novel and that the screenplay was co-written by Matheson himself under the pseudonym Logan Swanson. On the other hand, he says the 1971 Charlton Heston version (The Omega Man) was given a "new plotline" by Anthony Zerbe and that the director, Boris Sagal, "has made a sow's ear out of silk purse." Hmm...maybe you don't want to watch that double particular bill after all. I could go on and on, citing examples of Stanley's erudition and wit; in fact, reading John Stanley's Creature Features Movie Guide Strikes Again is more amusing than watching some of the bad movies themselves. I may never actually view the 1988 film Redneck Zombies, but thanks to Stanley, i will never forget its lame premise: "Beer infected with radioactivity turns ale-swilling patrons into walking dead. What? Again? In 'Entrailvision' yet." Review-nuggets like that are enter-taining in their own right. Here's another, to leave you laughing: "Mysterious Two (1979) Stars John Forsythe and Priscilla Pointer as white-robed emissaries from another planet or dimension who hypnotically gather followers and then lead them away to where? Not even you, the viewer, will find out in this allegorical tale inspired by the Jonestown Massacre of 1978." ==== Fit to Print appears in print each week in Comics Buyers Guide and is available via e-mail. Tell your friends! To subscribe to Fit to Print via e-mail send a request with the words "Subscribe FtP" in the subject header and your address in the body of the message to [g--l--n] at [bgnet.bgsu.edu.] You will be added to the list and receive the next available issue. Back issues are available. FTP to nspace.cts.com and look in the Comics/About Comics/Comics News/Fit to Print directory. FtP is also available on the World Wide Web at http://www.scar.utoronto.ca/~91mithra AND http://www2.csn.net/~searls. Responses are welcome and should be directed to [g--l--n] at [bgnet.bgsu.edu.] Fit to Print is Copyright Cathrine Yronwode. All rights reserved.