Back when the Krypt was at the old site, before moving into the blog format, I had reviewed the book A Vault of Horror by Keith Topping (you can read our review HERE), which I really enjoyed. The subtitle to the book was a “book of great (and not so great) British horror movies from 1956-1974”, which I really loved because as we know, movies will always be subjective on whether they are “good” or not. But one of the things I really enjoyed about this book was the format, and all the different trivial information for each of the titles. It had categories like “Nudity, Violence and Sadomasochism” or “Outrageous Methods of Dispatch“, or “You May Remember Me From…”, which gave out some pretty interesting and useful information about the films and those involved. The real shame was that it wasn’t a title that I saw around too often, like at bookstores or even many talking about it online. It’s from Telos, a small press publisher from the UK, which might be the reason. But it’s a great little book and well worth any library.
And even more so, because author Keith Topping has recently published a 2nd volume, also from Telos. This new edition is called Return To The Vault of Horror (A Guide to 58 Great British Horror Movies From 1956 – 1978). Titles covered in this volume range from Hammer titles like X – The Unknown, The Snorkel, The Brides of Dracula, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, to Blood of the Vampire, Tales from the Crypt, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, The Asphyx, Horror Hospital, Symptoms, to Pete Walker’s Frightmare and House of Mortal Sin. No matter what, you’ll definitely get a nice selection of films worth reading more about.
As of this writing, it’s only available on Amazon in a Kindle version, for only about $6.50, but no paperback. You can order it directly from the publisher, where it is priced at £19.99, which is about $25. I’m sure the postage from the UK won’t be too cheap, but I found that the postage stayed the same whether I ordered 1 book or 3, so . . . Still, we need to do what we can to support these smaller publishers, right? Especially when they are bringing us some delightful titles on the films we love.
Of course, if you’re going to order it, make sure you take a look at their catalog because you might find some other titles. I know I’ll be ordering a couple of them from author Mark Iveson, Vincent Price: The British Connection and Peter Cushing: The Reluctant Globetrotter. You can head over to their website HERE.
