Customer Reviews

Cult Movie Stars

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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.

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.

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.

It's got a lot of good info and tons of pictures, but some stars are missing and the info is a bit inaccurate (ie. They say Peter Boyle died in 1990, how can he when he's playing Frank on Everybody Loves Raymond!) It helps you figure out the names of those rarly seen stars from your favorite low-budget films, but hardy gives much info on people you want to know about, no Marty Feldman, Elvis Presley, Dudley Moore, Rick Moranis, Paul Rebuans, or anyone the same, but take it as it is.