The Essential Monster Movie Guide: A Century of Creature Features on Film, TV, and Video

Rating:
Summary: Hardly comprehensive
Review: Besides the fact that Stephen Jones sounds like he is not a big fan of the genre, his "comprehensive" volume excludes a large number of horror movies for the sake of including way too many "erotic" horror movies and horror cartoons. The fact that he has a low opinion of some of the most popular horror movies of all time is annoying, but I realize everyone is entitled to their opinion. There are instances, too, where I have read his synopsis of a movie and it appears, to me, that he clearly hadn't seen the movie. Even though this is one of the very few horror movie guides available, I can't recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Hardly comprehensive
Review: Besides the fact that Stephen Jones sounds like he is not a big fan of the genre, his "comprehensive" volume excludes a large number of horror movies for the sake of including way too many "erotic" horror movies and horror cartoons. The fact that he has a low opinion of some of the most popular horror movies of all time is annoying, but I realize everyone is entitled to their opinion. There are instances, too, where I have read his synopsis of a movie and it appears, to me, that he clearly hadn't seen the movie. Even though this is one of the very few horror movie guides available, I can't recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: not quite
Review: i did a fast skimming through this book and noticed that for an Essential Monster Movie Guide, it certainly doesn't praise or hype the genre that well. this book comes across like it was written by an elitist who's too good for horror. nearly every movie/special gets a low rating and i can't understand why a book like this that could've been a good companion to the horror fan would be so anti-horror as a whole. horror fans, in general, want to be be entertained and or scared...i for one don't want logical stories and things that make sense IF it detracts from the entertainment factor because typically what makes sense and uses logic in horror is BORING. it gets 2 stars from me because it offers a diverse selection of films and includes mini biographies of horror legends like Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, etc. But for a horror movie book, the writers certainly didn't help their genre by bad-mouthing it so much in this book.

Rating:
Summary: VERY meticulous guide for horror buffs!
Review: I own at least 4 or 5 so-called "Monster Movie" video guides. They all more or less follow the same format and are pretty inclusive guides, however, THIS guide by Stephen Jones is the BEST one that I own! First of all it is up-to-date with DVD listings, etc. and most importantly, follows the recent trend in Euro-horror by listing and reviewing several of the more well-known titles. I enjoyed the trivia and the foreward by Forrest J. Ackerman. And who can resist buying this guide with that awesome "Wolf Man" cover?!?!? This guide really is very thorough and the author should be applauded for his eye for details which makes any great work worth its salt....or in this case garlic, mummy wrappings, and silver bullets (or canes!)

Rating:
Summary: Monsters mashed, sliced, diced and julienned
Review: Less an "essential" guide than an overly ambitious trifle for browsing through in idle moments, this frustrating book will incense buffs with its blatant omissions of valid monster films in favor of pointless listings for TV shows and even porno flicks with "classic monster" cameos. Misguided and woefully incomplete though it is, the book does contain helpful filmographies of monsterdom's movers and shakers and the photos are topnotch. Its eccentric format will ultimately reward trivia-mongers with enough patience to sift through all the obscurity.

The best thing about the book is Forrest J. Ackerman's sprawling foreword, a `Monster Mosaic' in which the erstwhile editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine recaps his long affinity (nearly 80 years) with monster moviedom. It's classic Ackermonster at his self-satisfied best (worst?), bragging, boasting, dropping famous names and tossing off juvenile puns with glee. Among minor pop culture figures with outsized egos, Ackerman has only one serious rival (Marvel Comics' Stan Lee) for shameless self-promotion. But give Ackerman his due: His gaudily cool magazine was an inspiration to legions of lonely kids (myself among them) who might otherwise have felt ashamed for liking monster flicks.

(Memo from an old monster buff: Two out-of-print books worth searching for are "An Illustrated History of the Horror Film" by Carlos Clarens and "Horror in the Cinema" by Ivan Butler - both scholarly but very entertaining.)

Rating:
Summary: Essential? Hardly. More like "*A* Monster Movie Guide"
Review: Sure, the book does *try* to be pretty comprehensive. There's lots of obscure stuff here, and the author even includes porno movies if they feature vampires or something. It's even comprehensive enough to cover single monster-themed episodes of TV shows that didn't normally feature such things, like the episode where Gilligan dreams he's a vampire, or when the Gruesomes move next door to the Flintstones.

Actually, it's *too* inclusive at times. Movies are included simply because one or more characters watch clips of *other* movies, suggesting that the author would include 'Malcolm In The Middle' because of that show's opening montage. Likewise included are documentary movies and TV shows that include clips of monster movies - for example, an episode of A&E's `Biography' that's about Boris Karloff. Also, there are entries for movies and TV episodes where a character just dresses up as a monster ('3 Men and a Little Lady' is included because Ted Danson's character dresses up as the vampiric "Count Cholesterol" for a commercial) or where people think that somebody *might* be a monster (like the is-Vincent-Price-a-vampire episode of `F-Troop'). Dubious inclusions like these just make the many omissions that much more unforgivable.

There's an awful lot missing. Probably the most egregious is the almost total lack of Japanese giant monsters - `King Kong vs. Godzilla', `King Kong Escapes', 'Frankenstein Conquers The World', 'War of the Gargantuas' and the documentary 'Godzilla, King of the Monsters' are all that's included - no real Godzilla movies, no Rodan, no Mothra and no Gamera, let alone anything more obscure like Daimajin. Also striking is the absence of 'Alien' or any of its sequels, and the same goes for 'Predator'. Also absent, all of the `Evil Dead' movies and most of the modern Lovecraft adaptations (`Re-Animator' and `Necronomicon' are included, `Bride of Re-Animator', `From Beyond' and the two `Unnamable' moves are not). None of the `Hellraiser' movies are included, either.

Some of the omissions are more noticeable than they'd normally be because of their proximity to similar material that made the cut. For instance, 'C.H.U.D II: Bud The CHUD' is included, the original is not. Likewise, `Gremlins' is not in the book but its sequel is. Neither "Swamp Thing' or its sequel are included, but we have individual write-ups for 3 separate episodes of the 'Swamp Thing' cartoon. There are entries for 2 episodes of the original 'Twilight Zone', and for 4 episodes of the 1980s 'Twilight Zone' series, but there is no entry for 'Twilight Zone: The Movie'.

Also noticeable is the fact that while some TV episodes are included, other episodes of the same show are omitted, despite equal (if not greater) monster content than those episodes that made the cut. For example, there is an entry for *1* episode of the original `The Outer Limits', and only 2 for the 1990s `The Outer Limits' series (the syndicated `Monsters' series from the early 1990s fares a little better, with 10 out of 72 episodes given their own entries). Also, since there were monsters in every single episode, why are there entries for *1* episode of 'The Real Ghostbusters' and only 3 out of 13 episodes of 'The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo"? (the other Scooby Doo series are better represented, but are still far from complete) It just begs the question - why bother to list individual episodes if you're not going to bother to do it right?

While it *could* be argued that the author's introduction explains why certain movies are not included (there's has a lone paragraph that could be taken to mean that he's focusing on "classic" monsters), the books actual contents don't bear that out. Nothing is in evidence anywhere to explain why certain things were omitted while other things were not - how can Gorgo be worthy of inclusion if Godzilla is not?

Rating:
Summary: Essential? Pfffft!
Review: The only thing essential about this book is to avoid it.

To begin with, the lion's share of entries contain little or no critical commentary, and what little there is, is banal.
The book is preposterously inclusive in some areas...while ignoring many substantial films. Hokum and camp are generally the order of the day. Maybe that's the intent of the book, but it's not for me.
It's a flip-through book rather than a good read, and one that will rarely be glanced at again... The book's attractive, clean format and reasonable cost (for a book of its breadth) are about the only things to recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Hardly a ground breaking book....
Review: There is the old saying that a fear of monsters is a sign of human xenapobia (the fear of anything and everything that is different), and sadly recent events have made the real world all too uncertain and fearful, more so then any monster movie ever made the audience feel. Beyound that, this book mostly talks about cheesy and low budget creature features that have largely made science fiction hard to treat seriously as a story genre, even recent pictures like Terminator and Alien have become cliches, and the trend continues.

Rating:
Summary: Very good monster movie reference book.
Review: This book has lots of info about the monster and creature movies from the 20's to the 80's. It mostly covers the movies like Frankenstein, Mummy, King Kong, Phantom Of The Opera, and anything with Lon Chaney Jr., Peter Cushing, and Boris Karloff. I wish it had a little more about some modern classics (*cough*TexasChainsawMassacre,FridayThe13h,NightmareOnElmStreet*cough*). However, it does have everything you'll ever need to know about early horror films. And the inroduction by Forrest J. Ackerman was very interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Slightly Disappointing Guide
Review: This guide book pretty much follows the typical movie guide format - the movie title and year, a description and brief critique, and a rating. The author gets extra points for also including information on any novels or novelisations published in relation to the film, and frequent comments about the film's score composers (a nice extra touch). The entire volume is in alphabetic order, with film titles mixed alongside brief biography entries for genre people, instead of in a separate index.

Where the book falls down, though, is in the lack of a clear set of rules defining what's in the book, and what's not. The best the reader gets is a comment about the book being for "the classic monsters" which I believe might upset some Godzilla fans who won't find any of that Japanese classic monster's movies included, for example.

The book becomes almost schizophrenic in its comprehensiveness: single episodes of television shows are included if they happened to contain a vampire (even standard soap operas and sitcoms), and movies gain entry if they include a clip from a classic (for example, where James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN appears on a monitor screen in a scene in an otherwise non-genre film); yet there are plenty of films one would THINK should certainly fit the book's format, yet no entry is found. The end result is a sometimes frustrating experience for the reader who will simply wonder why a particular title is not included...and without those clearly defined rules, there is no justification.

On the other hand, the book has its own benefits that help it stand comfortably next to other monster-movie genre guides like 'Creature Features'. The introduction and foreward are very entertaining in their own right, and the author includes a section on his own top choice genre selections. He also clearly prefers to form and maintain his own opinions on these films rather than follow popular opinion, which is a practice sometimes found in other guide books. Even so, there are a few entries that are based on hearsay instead of actual viewing experience, a fact that is readily admitted in the introduction. The ratings given are understandably done as a comparison to other genre films because - to paraphrase the author - to compare them to CITIZEN KANE would result in a majority of them getting only one star.

All in all, a worthy purchase as a reference guide and an entertaining read, but beware of the frustration that potentially comes along with it. The buyer may want to consider supplementing it with another guide.