Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Hardly Indispensable, 26 Dec 2002
I would hardly call this book complete, and see more than a few omissions, perhaps intentional, but not at all logical. The first error, and this has to be the one that irks me the most, is Jones's failure to give entries to the first two Evil Dead movies. He has an entry for Army of Darkness, in which he merely mentions the Evil Dead movies.
The second oversight that confuses me is his lack of recognition for all of the Demons movies that Lamberto Bava did, and only mentioning Demons 5. The first of the Demons series Lamberto did was simply entitled Demons, and was far more worthy of reference then the 5th installment in the sequence. Why he didn't put his effort into Mario Bava eludes me. He obviously thought his directing talent deserved a pat on the back at the expense of his son, Lamberto, but not enough recognition to have any entries for his own movies.
The last thing I am going to mention (there are many more errors and omissions) was his blatant disregard for the first two Simpsons Halloween Specials. He gave entries to the 5th through the 3rd... did his hand cramp up? I fail to understand why obscure, foreign, hardcore, horror pornos would hold precedence over classics like House of Exorcism with Telly Savalos. Maybe priorities weren't straight, or perhaps two years of working on this "indispensable" volume wasn't enough?
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Hardly Indispensable, 26 Dec 2002
I would hardly call this book complete, and see more than a few omissions, perhaps intentional, but not at all logical. The first error, and this has to be the one that irks me the most, is Jones's failure to give entries to the first two Evil Dead movies. He has an entry for Army of Darkness, in which he merely mentions the Evil Dead movies.
The second oversight that confuses me is his lack of recognition for all of the Demons movies that Lamberto Bava did, and only mentioning Demons 5. The first of the Demons series Lamberto did was simply entitled Demons, and was far more worthy of reference then the 5th installment in the sequence. Why he didn't put his effort into Mario Bava eludes me. He obviously thought his directing talent deserved a pat on the back at the expense of his son, Lamberto, but not enough recognition to have any entries for his own movies.
The last thing I am going to mention (there are many more errors and omissions) was his blatant disregard for the first two Simpsons Halloween Specials. He gave entries to the 5th through the 3rd... did his hand cramp up? I fail to understand why obscure, foreign, hardcore, horror pornos would hold precedence over classics like House of Exorcism with Telly Savalos. Maybe priorities weren't straight, or perhaps two years of working on this "indispensable" volume wasn't enough?
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A good reference, but flawed, 29 Aug 2000
This is an excellent read, with plenty of very obscure references to monsters in films & TV. However, the lack of mention of some obvious big screen monsters like the Alien, the Predator, the Thing, etc, makes this book inexplicably incomplete. It's not as if (as I first suspected) Jones had opted to concentrate more on older monster films & shows - there are references right up to the late 1990s, so it's hard to understand his reasoning. On the other hand, I was able to use the book to find out the title of an obscure 1977 US TV movie that I remembered from my youth (Curse of the Black Widow), so it's certainly pretty comprehensive in other ways. It's an interesting read in itself, and ideal if you discover an unusual monster film or TV episode and you want to know more about it - Jones' thumbnails of each film/show are very detailed. A very good book, but not perfect.
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