Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares
Creatures in the Movies, by famed filmmaker John Landis, displays the finest monsters ever to crawl, fly, slither, stalk, or rampage across the Silver Screen, from B-movie bogeymen and outer space oddities to big-budget terrors!
Landis shares his own intriguing and hilarious insights into the world of filmmaking, as well as in-depth "conversations" with prominent monster creators like as David Cronenberg, Christopher Lee, John Carpenter, and Sam Raimi- to explore some of the most terrifying monsters ever seen. He also examines the historical roots of the archetypalcreatures like vampires, zombies, and werewolves, and takes you behind the scenes to learn the secrets of the special-effects magicians that produced legends like King Kong, Dracula, and Michael Myers from Halloween. With over 1000 beautiful movie stills and posters, this book will have even the most fervent horror fans on the edge of their seats for hours!
Author Biography
John Landis is a well-known horror director who has directed films such as American Werewolf in London, Michael Jackson's Thriller video, and Innocent Blood. He has also directed a slew of iconic films that aren't horror, such as The Blues Brothers, Animal House, Trading Places, and Three Amigos! well as going to Africa
—The hardback edition is referred to in this paragraph.
Nobody could ever describe me as a "movie fanatic." I appreciate old films as much as anybody else, but my primary motivation is to be delighted rather than to seek for deeper meanings, analyse cinematic processes, or list obscure trivia. I generally ignore directors, producers, performers, special-effects teams, and other minor details. I just want to be able to suspend my disbelief for a few hours and enjoy a fantastic film as an enthusiastic, if somewhat casual, spectator.However, a buddy of mine who is unquestionably a fangirl recommended "Monsters in the Movies," so I purchased it at a fantastic rate on Amazon. I'm relieved I did. Even those who aren't very interested in the subject should be able to spend hours poring over this magnificent collection. In his Introduction, Mr. Landis writes: "This book is not intended to be an encyclopedia of every creature ever featured in a film. It is also not my objective to provide a comprehensive history of horror, fantasy, and science-fiction film. It is a visual representation of monsters from the films I picked." His description is spot on, and he does an excellent job.
My movie preferences
go more toward space travel and science fiction than horror, vampires, or mutants, therefore I've only watched a tiny portion of the films in this collection. Nonetheless, I found a lot to love in it. It's organized into 15 parts, including Ghosts, Mummies, Mad Scientists, Dragons & Dinosaurs, and Atomic Mutations, among others. Following a two-page introduction that offers background, each part has numerous pages of captioned photographs from movies in that genre. Even though many of the photographs in some areas are in black-and-white, the arrangement is appealing, vibrant, and bright. Despite the fact that some of the photographs are relatively little (a couple of inches on a side), they are all sharp and clear. There are intriguing portions interspersed among the sections.
Christopher Lee, Joe Dante, David Cronenberg, Sam Raimi, Ray Harryhausen, Rick Baker, and John Carpenter all get two-page interviews. Mr. Landis offers a lot of information in "Monsters in the Movies," and he does so in a very fascinating way with superb production standards throughout. I don't know enough about the subject to pick nits about the material he offers for all of the movies he covers, but it appeared accurate to me.
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