A rich but meandering book that will mostly appeal to like-minded fans.
One horror fan’s mélange of memories, opinions and movie facts.
Violent horror movies, especially of the slasher variety, tend to split viewers into two camps. Either you avoid them or, like horror aficionado and producer Rockoff (Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978-1986, 2002), you adore them. This ode to the genre combines personal reminiscences, movie trivia and rambling digressions into a book that is neither film criticism nor history but more like a monologue by a well-informed and highly opinionated fan. One aspect of the book describes how the adolescent author scared himself silly watching horror movies on rented VHS cassettes and late-night cable stations and eventually worked his way into the industry as a screenwriter and producer. Another aspect is devoted to Rockoff’s commentary, which is particular and anecdotal in its approach. In one chapter, he names his top choice in a number of categories—e.g., “Greatest Kills,” “Most Future Stars,” “Most Sequel-Worthy Killer” and “Best Holiday Slasher.” In another, he defends a series of positions heretical to the fan community (for instance, that Ridley Scott’s Alien is boring). It’s likely that no one but other self-proclaimed horror geeks will find these sections of interest, but Rockoff is an amiable and often amusing guide to all this macabre minutia. Elsewhere, the book suffers from inexplicable digressions on subjects ranging from pornography (a recurring interest) to Charlie Sheen, and the author’s flippant attitude toward critics who take a more skeptical or theoretical view of the genre is off-putting. But at his best, Rockoff is a passionate defender of the creative rights of filmmakers, no matter how shocking or disturbing their creations might be, and a convincing advocate for scary movies as transgressive art—or just plain fun.
A rich but meandering book that will mostly appeal to like-minded fans.Pub Date: May 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-6183-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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