The Scarecrow Video Movie Guide

Rating:
Summary: Terrible arrangement of reviews makes this a useless book
Review: I have to say that the reviews are witty and a good read but trying to figure out where the minds behind this book have put anything is difficult and make this a useless reference tool.

In order to find any movie you're best to turn to the index since the arrangement of the films is seemingy random. The most annoying example is the first 300 or so pages called "The Directors" where many films are listed by their directors. This would be nice if you knew the director but more often than not you don't so its a bad way of finding anything. Worse not all of a directors films are listed in the section or even in the book. Some are given only one film. One film? Why does that make them a great director? Why is say Denys Arcand's Jesus of Montreal the only film listed here while he's directed several other great films as well? (and who would think to look for Jesus under A?

Films in the other sections don't end up where you think they should. For example not all documentaries are in the documentary section. The two Paradise Lost films on the killings of three boys in West Memphis are in the "Murder, Mystery, Suspense" section between Our Man Flint and Phone Booth. The films of Neil Simon like Seems Like Old Times are listed under "Performance, Literature and the Arts". I like the film, but it belongs in comedy.

I could go on and talk about factual errors like Samurai Fiction not being listed as a Japanese film, but I won't. Nor will I ponder about why some films were included while others were not.

Its all well written but too hard to use as anything other than a book to randomly read reviews from. I wouldn't care except that this is suppose to be a film guide and its not very useful as that.

Pick this up if you want interesting personal reviews for casual reading but do not pick this up if you want a real reference guide, because its not.

Rating:
Summary: The Other Movie Guide Book to BUY
Review: The Greatest Video Store in the World has released THE SCARECROW VIDEO MOVIE GUIDE. The Scarecrow Video Store is a true mecca for movie lovers located in Seattle Washington's University District. This 808 page celebration of film is written by the friends and workers of the store. They bring to the concept of Movie Guide Books exactly what they bring to Video Store--obsessive passionate iconiclastic eclectisism. After an introduction the book starts with a section on

14 Chapters categorize the movies in a unique way.

In Chapter 1: DIRECTORS you'll find movies listed according to the last names of the fine folks who directed them. So this section starts out with 3 movies by drive in trash maestro, Al Adamson: Black Heat, Mean Mother and Satan's Sadists. No, they don't include all of Adamson's film (and skip over perhaps his best known Dracula Versus Frankenstein) but the idea seems to be to travel down roads not as well traveled as other movie guidebooks. So what movies do they include of Woody and Altman and Richard Lester and Herschell Gordon Lewis? Who did they leave out of the director's section that they should have in there (Doris Wishman, Richard Rush, Ted V. Mikels perhaps?)

Then there's 13 more chapters and you get nearly 4,000 capsule reviews from a variety of perspectives and some mini-essays on diverse filmmakers from Anthony Mann, and Les Blanc to Silent Film-maker Nell Shipman. There's bonus lists like 'Movies We Wish Were on DVD', 'The Most Depressing Movies Ever Made' and 'Best Musical Documentaries Ever Made.'

If you're confused by how this book is organized there are 3 indexes that will help sort it out for you.

Also readable is what amounts to the Scarecrow Video Store story which opens the book. George Latsios (and Rebecca) started the world famous store with little more than George's passionate obsession with movies both very good and very bad. They built a remarkable rentable collection that includes many impossible to find treasures. Brain cancer took George from us, but there were two saviors who wanted to preserve and take further what George did with Scarecrow Video.

Do I really believe that a Movie Guide book that actually features a good review for the awful Bond movie A VIEW TO A KILL can possibly be worth buying and treasuring. Yes, I sure do.

The capsule reviews are not written by professionals but by a large group of knowledgeable movie nuts, most of who work, or use to work, at Scarecrow Video Store.

You see most of us who are likely to read from cover to cover a movie guide like this already know that A View to a Kill is the last Roger Moore Bond movie and it feels so tired and forced that even Christopher Walken's somewhat restrained performance and Grace Jones' outrageous fashion can't help overcome how awful the film is or how annoying Tanya Roberts and her many many "Oh James" exclamations truly are. So the review really sticks out as something so completely wrong and out of touch that it is... well. . . worth reading. Yeah that also meant you'll have to pay attention when this reviewer: N.J. aka Nathan Jensen recommends a movie you don't know anything about because perhaps his taste meter is on a completely different scale than yours. You'll also find a few minor research errors like the one in the listing for 1983's Octopussy, N.J. writes "It's little wonder Moore quit after this film." Moore's last Bond film was of course 1985's A View to a Kill. Oops. Might want to fix that one for the Second Printing.

Please Note: Scarecrow founder George Latsios. would have expected nothing less of me than to find a few mistakes and to nit-pick about a few things in this book. After all I'm the guy who embarrassed him about not having a copy of THE GLORY STOMPERS in Scarecrow several years ago as well as many other... uh memorable films. (And of course TGS is NOT in the guide book! As Dennis Hopper might say: "Man, that's just not cool, man." )

Every once in a while a movie gets two reviews. Sometimes this is a necessary like say with Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. Sometimes both reviews say about the same thing like for 1985's Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins so you wonder why two reviews were necessary.

There are plenty of examples of worthless movies getting their due in this guide too. You'll find 1997's Spice World appropriately dissected as a movie not bad enough to be good and not good enough to watch. And I don't know what bet "N.H." lost that he got to review King Kong Lives, but at least he got to have his say about Posession elsewhere in the guide.


Yeah this thing might drive you a little crazy. (I mean where are reviews forBad Girls Go to Hell,Girl with Gold Boots and did I mention Glory Stompers? But that's a good thing that it engages you and gets you passionate about movies again isn't it? Sure it is.

I mean I think there's something wonderfully subversive that you review a few Oliver Stone movies and completely ignore Platoon and Wall Street.

What else can I say about a book that features reviews that embrace Brewster McCloud, el Topo, Oscar (! With Stallone!!!) and understands the appeal of Rudy Ray Moore movies, pays tribute to Les Blanc, gives a thumbs up review to A View to a Kill and wonderfully insists Amityville Horror is a ridiculous boring movie? Read with pleasure what is written in the reviews of all the Texas Chainsaw Massacre Movies (the re-make and Leatherface too)!!! Discover Poland's Sargossa Manuscript, Sweden's The Man on the Roof, Thailand's Killer Tattoo, Iran's Secret Ballot and The Circle, Germany's Tuvalu, Videograms of a Revolution and much more.

Sure you might get frustrated when a list tells you one of the best Musical documentaries is something called Inside Bjork but you won't find a review of it anywhere in the book. (Gee, guess you'll have to get to Scarecrow Video in Seattle and rent the thing yourself, huh?). Feel utterly vindicated when 1998's Armageddon and Michael Bay are torn new ones by the kind of capsule review you wished a published critic would have written and then read a review of the same flick in which it is declared a wonderful guilty pleasure of a movie!!! Ah one man's rotting bile is another's junk food pig-out. Throw up your hands, dance the Watusi and read the book some more.

If you liked Michael Weldon's Psychotronic books you'll do flips over this one. If you want the guide-book with the most accurate running times and release dates of movies then buy Leonard Maltin's book. If you want a mostly accurate and exhaustive listing of lots of movies rated with dog bones by a team of reviewers whose tastes run the full gamut of all genre but are fairly predictable and mainstream-then be sure to get your copy of the Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever Book. However if you want an alternately brilliant and frustrating guide to movies-many of which aren't found in other guides-then buy The Scarecrow Video Movie Guide ASAP. It may be-- or is that, maybe-- the best guide of them all.


Christopher J. Jarmick co-wrote the critically acclaimed mystery suspense novel: The Glass Cocoon

Copyright© Christopher J. Jarmick 2004



Rating:
Summary: Very mistaken about Heaven's Gate
Review: They claim it was it was a 1981 film (it was a 1980 one). That Al Pacino was too busy doing The Godfather to appear in it. Huh? Pacino played Michael Corleone in 1974's The Godfather Part 2 and didn't play him again until 1990's The Godfather Part 3. How was Pacino too busy with The Godfather to play in HG in the late 70's early 80's? Also, the movie claims Robert DeNiro was too busy to appear in what became the Kris Kristofferson role in HG. Ok but he book claims getting KK for this role was the thing that hurt HG the most. This is mostly wrong as an analysis. DeNiro isn't much suited for westerns. Kristofferson with his countryboy way was better suited for it. Also, the problem with HG was the badly photographed and terribly edited sequeances and terribly written screenplay by (also) director Michael Cimino, having DeNiro in the lead would not have helped one bit in fact it would have just hurt the film more.