Disaster Movies: A Loud, Long, Explosive, Star-Studded Guide to Avalanches, Earthquakes, Floods, Meteors, Sinking Ships, Twisters, Viruses, Killer ... Fallout, and Alien Attacks in the Cinema!!!! [Paperback]

Glenn Kay (Author), Michael Rose (Author), Mike Nelson (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2006

Complete with a foreword by Mike Nelson, host of Mystery Science Theater 3000, this dynamic guide to one of Hollywood's most popular and enduring genres provides a history of the disaster genre, descriptions of its trends and unusual traits, portraits of famous stars, and reviews of more than 150 disaster movies. The films reviewed include everything from famous titles such as The Poseidon Adventure, Titanic, and The Towering Inferno to more obscure movies such as The Night the World Exploded, Terror on the 40th Floor, and War Between the Planets. Casual disaster-movie fans, as well as die-hard lovers of the genre will benefit from the rating system, which ranges from "Highly Recommended" to "Avoid at All Costs," and the dubious "Recommended for All the Wrong Reasons."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This smart and punchy guide to movies centered on man-made, divine or natural events leading to high death tolls or mass destruction is a must have for the genre's devoted fan. The co-authors' short history of the form begins with newsreel footage of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the earliest produced disaster film (the "little-seen" silent 1913 Italian film The Last Days of Pompeii) and nods to the many cheesy one-offs and contemporary mega-budget computer-animated star-packed blockbusters. The bulk of the book offers pithy and often humorous reviews of disaster films (organized by disaster type) that analyze key genre elements (such as "scenes of self-sacrifice" and "horribly gruesome and elaborate death scenes") and rates films on a five-tiered system, from "Highly Recommended" (among them, Airplane!, Mars Attacks! and both the 1953 and 2005 War of the Worlds) to "So Bad It's Good" (Firestorm, Meteor and Bug). Movie buffs should get a kick out of this.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–An engagingly snarky introduction to the genre, including film reviews that range from Highly Recommended to Avoid at All Costs and So Bad It's Good. The critiques are divided into categories that pretty much match the subtitle. The longest are of easily obtained movies, while those that are more obscure have shorter reviews. Each one includes the film's Most Spectacular Moment of Carnage. The extras, like Don't Be a Hero: The Disaster Movie's Hardest Lesson or The Most Ridiculous Disaster Movie Concepts Ever, are also entertaining. Art includes black-and-white stills, movie posters, and cartoons, as well as a color insert of some remarkable posters. For anyone who loves a good disaster flick–or a bad one, for that matter–this is an invaluable resource.–Susan Salpini, formerly at TASIS–The American School in England
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press (August 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556526121
• ISBN-13: 978-1556526121
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,568,714 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I'm still waiting for the ultimative Disaster-Movies-Reference-Work, December 28, 2006

By 

Cyberbambi123 (Zürich - Switzerland / Europe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Disaster Movies: A Loud, Long, Explosive, Star-Studded Guide to Avalanches, Earthquakes, Floods, Meteors, Sinking Ships, Twisters, Viruses, Killer ... Fallout, and Alien Attacks in the Cinema!!!! (Paperback)

In meantime there exists more Disaster Movies on the screens, than stars on heaven. For the fan it becomes harder and harder to keep the overview. It seems that the autors had the same problems. They write about all sub-genres from water, lava, earthquakes,to airplanes, snow till radioactivity and fire. They even have chapters about swarms of killeranimals, parodies and invasion from outer space, but they only grat on the surface. For a reference-work this book is far too incomplete. Not a must for the filmbuff but ok for a beginner. For a filmbook they could have included more pictures !

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Entertaining Look at Cinematic 'Guilty Pleasures!', August 28, 2006

By 

Michael OConnor "Wordsmith" (Wausau, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Disaster Movies: A Loud, Long, Explosive, Star-Studded Guide to Avalanches, Earthquakes, Floods, Meteors, Sinking Ships, Twisters, Viruses, Killer ... Fallout, and Alien Attacks in the Cinema!!!! (Paperback)

Movie fans who have either marveled or groaned their way through the likes of 'Earthquake,' 'The Swarm,' 'Beyond the Poseidon Adventure,' 'A Night to Remember' or 'Towering Inferno' should enjoy this amusing look at Disaster Movies.

Disaster movies are one of life's guilty pleasures. You can turn off your mind, grab the bucket of popcorn and enjoy. OK, the special effects may be cheesy and the dialogue awful - not to mention the one-dimensional characters and the holes in the plot a mile wide - but it's a disaster movie, for Peter's sake, so enjoy!

Key and Rose take the reader through the world of disaster movies, beginning with flicks from the '30s. They divide the films into categories like "Sinking Ships," "Hot Molten Lava," "Those Darn Aliens," etc. and devote 2-5 pages on each film, giving potted plot summaries, highpoints/lowpoints and cracking wise. The book has a five-tier rating system, ranging from "Highly Recommended" to "So Bad it's Good" and also includes lists such as the greatest disaster movie stars, highest-grossing disaster films, disaster movie love themes and so on.

Frankly I enjoyed the book. It's funny, informative and dishes out some well-deserved criticisms about its subject.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Concept With Some Hiccups In Execution, February 1, 2008

By 

The Angry American "Serious Reader" (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Disaster Movies: A Loud, Long, Explosive, Star-Studded Guide to Avalanches, Earthquakes, Floods, Meteors, Sinking Ships, Twisters, Viruses, Killer ... Fallout, and Alien Attacks in the Cinema!!!! (Paperback)

For disaster-movie fans like myself, there aren't many choices among books devoted to the subject. In that regard, "Disaster Movies" functions as a treasure trove of commentary on well-worn classics like "Earthquake" and "The Towering Inferno", as well as some more esoteric selections, notably the camp classic "Kingdom of the Spiders".

Aside from the fact that the commentary is light on serious criticism, my primary problem with the book is how some elementary facts get mangled. For example, in reviewing the feature film "Deep Impact", the authors incorrectly refer to Elijah Wood's character as an amateur astrologist as opposed to an amateur astronomer. A slip-up like that might have been overlooked had they also not made the same mistake in describing Annabella Sciorra's character in the made-for-TV mini-series "Asteroid". (She was a professional astronomer in that movie.) And I was really disappointed that they didn't at least mention the best movie from the death-from-above sub-genre, the 1978 made-for-TV drama "A Fire In The Sky".

Understand that if you decide to pick up this book you're not going to get the same level of criticism that you would if you were reading a pro like Roger Ebert or Michael Medved. "Disaster Movies" is what it is--a fun, if error-riddled, book about the terrible things that happen when Hollywood star power and crazy screenwriters collide.