Thursday, October 04, 2007

Three Reasons to Buy a Twelve-Pound Book


1) It's a twelve-pound book! Can you imagine all the work that went into it? You have to buy it! You owe this guy! It has 1,000 meticulously restored illustrations and 800,000 words and he published it himself and it took him 32 years to write! Did you hear me? It's a TWELVE-POUND BOOK! The prologue alone, which describes the massive effort, would be reason enough to buy it. The book is called MARIO BAVA: ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARKNESS, by Tim Lucas. 2) If you only know the film KILL, BABY... KILL! through the recent appearance of its faded and less than artful trailer in MGMIEET (as I did) you will be amazed and enlightened to read about its profound influence on both Fellini and Scorsese (in the book's introduction, Scorsese says, "We have to keep resisting the idea of official film history, a stately procession of 'important works' that leaves some of the most exciting films and filmmakers tucked away in the shadows.... The more disreputable the genre and the lower the budget, the less there is at stake and the freer you are to experiment and explore new territories." The "blog," while lacking Scorsese's authority, has contemplated such issues now and then). 3) In a move which should make make McNeil and other connoisseurs of groovy 1960s film titles very happy, there are, like, 25 four-column pages of microscopic font on DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS.