Customer Reviews

Halliwell's Film, Video & DVD Guide 2006 (Halliwell's: The Movies That Matter)

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Long before the Christmas shelves were full of film guides and before every publisher caught on that there was a market out there, Halliwell's was king. And far superrior to Leanard Maltin's facile effort, which used to be the only other reference around.
This book was indispensible for a whole generation and was even the basis for a short story. Unfortunately, since his death in 1989, the book has been revised again and again, until now it's almost a pale shadow of it's former self. Think of the difference between The Godfather parts 2 and 3, yes, it's that big a gulf.
Leslie Halliwell's ratings of films had become tougher and tougher on any made after 1960- with only four films from that decade given the four star rating. This was plain silly. His tastes were very conservative, blindgly so some times - with foreign and colour films given shirt shrift. But that rating was a cast iron guarantee that it was something special. Something to stay in for. If he gave a film two stars, you'd stay in because it was going to be entertaining. Three stars and you'd forget your plans. Four stars and you forget the world. And these were very, very rare.
On his death I brought a hardback edition in case it went pear-shaped and crumbled into silliness, and since Mr. John Walker has taken over- I'm glad that i did and wish I had brought a dozen editions. Not only are Mr. Walker's comments very unenlightening, you always got the impression that Halliwell had deliberated over the wording, so that even the briefest critique seemed fully-realised by an educated mind alive to cinema, but not Mr Walker's. Virtually every entry is vastly over-rated, with no glimmer of thought behind the utterly one-dimensional wording. Every dumb-ass movie, all those passing fads of the last 15 years has been evaluated & given merit way beyond their value. I remember watching one of his first recommendations ('8 Men Out' rated three stars and was in shock that I'd been let down for the first time in a decade by THE BOOK. And it's happened again and again). His contributions have the statue of a third-rate, fickle hacks - from a down-market grungy tabloid.
Some of the ratings are plain silly, The Terminator gets a tight-fisted one star by Halliwell (it should have been at least ***), while Walker gives the empty and souless special effects vessel Terminator 2- two stars. Check out Speed (***), or any of the other dumbed down intended blockbusters churned out every summer to see how they are rated ('Independence Day' & 'Titanic' two stars). Many of these movies are the modern eqivelant of those long tedious wide-screen Epics of the '50s. With Halliwell's original guide, you grew to form your own opinions and argue for your own favourites, like the 'The Ghost and Mrs Muir' & 'The Manchurian Candidate'. Even rock documentaires have been added into the brew and they are a matter of taste in music as much as the cutting and shaping.
The book is no longer a guide to a quality night in. Even worse than all the poor reviews during Mr. Walker's tenure, is the ditching of the forewords and essays by the founder of the guide for each edition, giving his pets hates and his percieved disappointments in the changing face of the media since the last edition. This now robs the guide of a sense of perspective and personality - which would draw in the reader, when it would have been wiser for Mr. Walker to have add his own essay.
Another gripe is the look of the entries themselves. Where they had been streamlined before, tightly constucted, and smart-with italics to denote a contribution of a very high standard, Mr Walker seems to have been playing with those little computer tools of his. The film sypnosis' have been italicised, and anything else he could find to play about with. The italics are no longer eye-catching, there is now far too much information italicised. So that nothing catches the attention. Sometimes, as with movies, less is more.
Anyway, who cares if it's on DVD or Video? This information dates so easily. What's the point? All it takes to find out this info, is to tap it into Amazon. Duh!
In every edition that he has edited, Walker has made huge blunders of judgement and not just in the film ratings and those gripes listed above. There are now several pages devoted to solely listing all the 3 and 4 star rated movies, both by year and alphabetically. One of the pleasures of the Halliwell guides was to find those treasures on your own and because they were so infrequent they genuinely would stand out and then you'd have that buzz of discovery. Not here, now. By providing everything, the reader no longer invests anything into the discovery. This is basic psychology 101.
In this edition he has eliminated 1 star from nearly 25 or so vintage masterpieces that were rated so by the original founder of the guide. EG: 'Scarface' (1932), 'I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang', 'Wuthering Heights', 'The Letter', 'Rebecca', 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn', ect, ect. This serously damages the historical prespective of the early '30s. Those films have a raw primitive edginess and toughness - & they still draw you in. Maybe all the special effects and whizzing camera-work of modern films has corrupted his ability to see this. He looks but he doesn't see. The '40s - an incredible decade is becoming more and more sparse and mundane. 'The Cabinet of Caligari' (a tedious but mightily important German 1919 film) - was said by Halliwell to have been 'faded' but given, like 'A Birth of a Nation' the 4 stars for it's landmark contribution to cinematic-development. What next, maybe 'The Jazz Singer' can be reduced too. The Original was an entertainment guide and educational. The last word can now be scratched off.
This latest edition also features a new gimmick; every page and entry is colour-coded. Yep, not content with with his italic tools from previous editions, he's now got the colours out too. A bright, garish ORANGE for all movie titles, and in between deviding lines, and any other elements. They burn the eyes after awhile.
What this amounts to is a cack-handed trivilastion of another man's great work that goes against the grain of the original, offering huge disparities in stylish presentation, crituques, and a monuemental dumbing down. At each step and in each decision, Walker's Edited Guide has always chosen the short end, the low road, the simplton's way, the talk-down. He has never ever granted intelligence towards the reader/researcher/browser. If a rival guide had wanted to ruin an indipensible book, they couldn't have asked for greater assistence. For those that live in Britain, it's the eqivelent of the esteemed Barry Norman being replaced by Jonathen Ross for the BBC's seminal film review programme.
The work put into this Guide by Walker - change for changes sake - a kind of perpetual revolution for revolutions sake, rather like an insecure political party trying to mould the world to it's image -begets the question, did you ever like the original, mr. Walker?
It's now so 'relevant' and for 'modern' tastes, that they don't even bother to issue a hard-back edition. The story of this guide is the story of the fall of a five star and indispensible family reference book - a landmark in its field one of the nation's favourite reference works -into a mundane a shrivelled ghost of it's former self.
So do yourself a favour and get a second hand copy before Halliwell died, which is the seventh edition from 1989- try 'ablebooks' (http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchEntry). You'll find him tenacious and tight-fisted, but the films he chooses will have some merit to them and you'll amend the ratings of your favourites in your own mind. For newer entries, go for the superb Time Out film guide, which has been the only one to match HALLIWELL'S in quality.....they will give all that you need. Good viewing.

As a long-time Halliwell admirer, I completely agree with the critical points made in the lengthy review submitted by "bobby j" on February 10, 2006 - that is, that the Halliwell guide has been badly marred since Mr. Halliwell's death in 1989. I would add, though, that the guide inevitably retains some significant value in that the overwhelming part of the guide's content respecting Golden Age films of the 1930s and 1940s remains intact as left by Mr. Halliwell and is for that reason a potential revelation to younger film-goers who may even have no idea who Mr. Halliwell ever was. In this sense, even this much disfigured edition of Halliwell's work remains far and away better as a guide to Golden Age movies than does any other guide in the market (of course, the 1989 7th edition, the last put out by Mr. Halliwell himself, is the ideal one to get for this purpose).

In order to give some balance, I set forth here a review I gave of the 2001 edition as earlier edited by Mr. Walker: "In spite of certain limitations, Halliwell's guide far surpasses any other. From 1965 until 1989, Leslie Halliwell wrote every word of his reviews personally, not by committee. He wrote with definite prejudices: he loved Golden Age movies that represented the best products of the studio system; he loved wholesome, unpretentious movies that sought simply to entertain as well as weightier films; he hated arty films for talking down to audiences and for failing to entertain; he hated 70s-style films that featured solely unattractive characters; he rated films for how they fared as a collective effort by many contributors, not as the mystical work of, say, a director; he rated films very strictly, giving, perhaps, no more than 10% of all his reviews either a 3 or 4 star rating (on a scale of 0 to 4), with most getting no more than 1 star. In short, he went against many modern trends in film, making him a gem for those valuing perspective and sharp judgment while eschewing fads and fashions. And he wrote as a highly gifted man with a 50s Cambridge education and an apt, pithy manner of expression. This, then, is the nearest one can come in the world of film reviewers to what may be regarded as a sure guide to quality. The updates since Mr. Halliwell's death in 1989 have paralleled what is more typically found in other popular reviewers, which, while mildly disappointing, still does not detract materially from the continuing power of the work. Halliwell with a few warts is still far and away the best, given that the essential Halliwell remains. Highly recommended."

Here is what I said about the 2002 edition: "This lowers [to 3 stars] a 5-star recommendation given in an earlier review based on a previous edition of this guide. The latest edition leaves intact Mr. Halliwell's reviews for films before 1965 and these remain invaluable. But Mr. Walker's tampering with later reviews is now extensive and has added only pretentiousness and poor judgment to the product. The work remains exceptional for Golden Age movies; otherwise, caveat emptor."

I have retained a 3-star rating for this edition only because the "Halliwell part" remains so superior to anything else out there. Of the 23,000 films reviewed in the 2006 edition, 16,000 are carry-forwards of reviews written by Mr. Halliwell himself and the vast majority of these have not yet been tampered with. For movies released before 1965 - still the "core" of the work - there is still nothing else comparable in the market. With much more tampering, especially with this "core" part, this work may indeed become so bad as to be not worth considering. It is nowhere close to that yet, notwithstanding the recent hack work. Therefore, get the 1989 7th edition if you can; if you can't, don't overlook the jewel that remains buried beneath the unattractive covering placed over it in recent editions.

As a very amateur film buff I have always enjoyed reading Halliwell's Film Guide. Ever since I saw my father's copy from the early 1980s I've admired the amount of coverage each film gets. The beauty about film guides is you can totally disagree with the review that is written. That is really the point. People have different reasons for liking movies and you can debate till the cows come home about how good a movie is. One of my favourite movies is Star Wars. My mate and I always have this debate about A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back and which is the better movie. The same can be said about how many stars these two movies have received. For example, in the past Empire had three stars and now it has four. Why? Obviously John Walker thinks so. But that is splitting hairs. I dont agree with some of his changes to ratings, like Alien going from the original 1 star to 4, but that helps fuel debate. On the whole you can't beat Halliwell's for the comprehensive coverage it provides and the amusing write ups it gives. However, I only give this version four stars because of the use of orange in the writing of the titles and the stars. If you spend a lot of time reading the book you can practically get a headache trying to see what the titles are and how many stars the movie has. Hopefully the next version will use a different colour and that will makes things easier.