Incredibly Strange Films

It's been a year since I bought this book and read it; I still frequently go back to it. This is one of the best books on the subject of forgotten and low budget films, primarily exploitation. One of the key elements that makes this book stand out is that it does not view the films as a novelty or apply that so over used term "So bad their good." There's a real sincerity, respect, and intelligence regarding the subject, which is unfortunately rare. This book can see beyond the simple aesthetics, most of which are product of budget or lack there of, and get to the meat of what is significant and interesting about these films. The interviews and essays are interesting and intelligent, and the film list in back has yet to disappoint me. This book was able to articulate and intellectualize something I've felt ever since I saw Plan 9 from Outer Space when I was 11 and thought "I must get a copy of this." The Introduction alone is one of the best critiques of cinema I've come across, and I went to film school for two and a half years. A very valuable book in anyone's collection from a frequently fascinating source, Re/Search.

This book is an excellent guide to the odd side to film. It really made me enthusiastic about low-budget, high-creativity films. Besides excellent interviews with strange film-makers, it has a great guide to the many genres of strange films and an even more amazing guide to strange film personalities. I recommend this book for anyone, whether a film enthusiast or not, as an excellent way to find good entertainment and great reading.

As with all the Research Series books, Incredibly Strange Films lavishes the reader with little known information on a marginal subject with great detail. I originally received this book in 1986 and was immediately impressed with the exhaustive research of all our forgotten films as well as the profiles on directors such as H.G. Lewis. It also includes a helpful index (as far as I can remember) that will send you running for the video store. I haven't written a book on films but I know that you need not be a film buff or major to enjoy this book. The photos are reason enough to buy this book.If you don't believe me, just view the cover!

This book changed my approach to writing, filmmaking, and life itself. It's an extremely unaffected yet affecting tome, which allowed a half-intellectual such as myself the unashamed ability to love the dumb things I love. It's a striking example of how art and entertainment lie in the world of heart, commitment, and sincerity, as much as in the world of craft or ability. Without it I would not have been able to write the filmmaking book I wrote with Lloyd Kaufman, All I Know About Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger.

RESearch's Incredibly Strange Films is an exhaustive and intelligent look at a neglected subject: "weird," low-budget, and exploitation movies, and the folks who make them. This is basically the book that canonized cult directors like Frank Hennenlotter, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Russ Meyer, and Doris Wishman. Celebrating--and analyzing--genres like Mondo, sexploitation, LSD films, and today's most recently fetishized genre of "educational films," the essays in this book are jubilant and informed. Also provided are a number of interviews with cheese film luminaries like Ted V. Mickels (The Corpse Grinders), Herschell Gordon Lewis (Wizard of Gore), and Larry Cohen (It's Alive!). Essayists Joe Morton and now-infamous Boyd Rice provide terrific commentary. Haven't you always wanted to read Boyd Rice interviewing Herschell Gordon Lewis about gore and direct mail marketing? Although the book is a bit out-of-date now (published in 1986), it is still a valuable source of information on these brilliantly bizarre, and often ignored, movies. Everyone from fans to film scholars should check this one out.