Profiles over 850 cult stars who built their careers on the fringes of movie stardom, playing roles in B-movies ranging from action, horror, kung-fu, mysteries, science-fiction, serials, slashers and westerns.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
As a boy I was passionate about sports, movies, television, and music, and now I make my living by writing about each of these topics. Pretty amazing. I was born in West Virginia, grew up in South Carolina and New Jersey, got a B.A. in History at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and an M.A. in Cinema at USC. I have been living in New York City since 1977 with my wife Suzanne (our married daughter Zoe and granddaughter Julianna live too far away in Maryland), publishing books and articles on movies and sports (mostly baseball). I watch an insane number of movies and politely root for the A's, Lakers, Giants, and UConn women in basketball. I am the writer-researcher on the long-running television interview show, "The Tim McCarver Show," and have done three books with Tim, who is a close friend. I also worked with the dear Ralph Kiner on his autobiography, "Baseball Forever." My twenty-first book, written with Tom Clavin, is my first biography, "Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero" for Touchstone/Simon&Schuster. We have a facebook fan page for the book, for which we interviewed 130 people. I also contribute celebrity interviews on brink.com and am the New York correspondent for the Australian magazine, "FilmInk." I love to write, but there's nothing more exciting than creating a project or more satisfying than finishing it.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unique and fascinating look at actors from the mainstream and the underground.,
By
This review is from: Cult Movie Stars (Paperback)
Danny Perry's writing carries an exuberance seen seldom in film guides. His unique insight is both honest and relateable, as he goes over several actos and actresses that have helped make cinema more fascinating.
Most mainstream actors are omitted but a few(John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart) are included among some great actors of the weird including Tod Slaughter, Tor Johnson, Michael Berryman, John Carradine, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney and son, Toshiro Mifune, Lee Marvin, and Dick Miller. There's a welcome emphasis on B-cinema and Porno films that most mainstream critics would not even touch.These inclusions make Perry seem more like a normal guy than just about any critic I can think of and endears him to us who can appreciate sleaze and trash. Not that there are no emphasis on art house as several actors and actreses of the French New Wave and German and Italian cinema are included as well. To see Max Von Sydow in the same book as Marilyn Chambers is one of the wonderful things about this guide. The book is never less than entertaining because of these reasons and it's one of the coolest guides for the genuine film fanatic that I can possibly reccomend. Especially if you have an appreciation for the bizarre.
6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my favorite film critics,
By
This review is from: Cult Movie Stars (Paperback)
Though I know some people dislike him as much as others love him, I have to say that, for myself personally, no film historian better captures the love and exhiliration that can be felt from watching a truly wonderful movie. In his writings, Danny Peary has always proven himself to be not only a student of films but also a fan. And yes, there is a huge difference! Peary came to prominence with his three Cult Film books. Cult Film Stars provides a great companion for those books and is a lot of fun on its own as well. Cult Film Stars is a thick compilation of entries, listing names from the expected (Pam Grier, Sonny Chiba, Klaus Kinski) to the unexpected (John Wayne, long though of so mainstream but Peary wonderfully shows how Wayne is almost as important as cult star as say Ed Wood's infamous friend Dudley Manlove). Along with listing each star's important films, Peary crams each entry full of interesting and often humorous facts and observations. This books works as a great introduction to films that many might otherwise have not heard of. I was still in high school when it first came out and just starting to discover how much I truly loved film. It was from this book that I first found out about such really cool (sorry if I sounded juvenile there but there's no better way to put it really) people like Pam Grier, Terrence Hill, and Toshiro Mifune. His entries on Kay Lenz, Meg Foster, and Karen Allen helped me to discover such unsung entertainments as Breezy, Ticket to Heaven, and The Wanderers respectively. A really great book for any film fanatic. However, keep in mind, the book was also published a decade ago. Some of the information will be dated but none the less interesting.
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not just movie stars, but CULT movie stars!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Cult Movie Stars (Paperback)
This book is basically a reference book of movie stars and directors who have made films that have spawned cult followings (some of the entries include Tim Curry, Divine, John Waters, Steve Reeves, Mamie Van Doren, Ed Wood, and Bela Lugosi). It includes a short biographical paragraph with little-known facts and has several illustrations - I found the book to be most useful because it also included a brief film history of the performer in his or her best roles. I would recommend buying the book if you are like me and get a kick out of b-movies and b-movie stars. It's really too bad it's out of print.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
