If you’re a collector of film reference books, you just might recognize the name Philip J. Riley. He was a man that was determined to help keep the facts and memories of old classic monster films alive and well by releasing some amazing books over the last few decades. Starting in the late ’80s, he started to release the Universal Filmscripts Series Classic Horror Films, which he edited. Along with the help of such scholars as Gregory William Mank and Forrest J. Ackerman, fans got to not only read the original shooting script, but see original newspaper clippings, different news stories, and a ton of other info about the making of the film. He went through most all the Universal Classics and then started a different sereies on films that never came to be, based on original scripts that were found, such as Robert Florey’s version of Frankenstein.
For his constant dedication to preserving the information about these great films, I have always held him in high regard. He knew and understood the importance of what he was doing, not just for his own sake, but for all the fans out there. I take my hat off to you, Sir.
I have several of Riley’s editions in my library, which I turn to anytime I doing research on any of the Universal Monsters. And I know I will be adding more of them in the years go come. Because of the amazing amount of work you left us fans with, you will surely be missed, but never forgotten. Thank you.
As horror fans, we all know just how crazy some of these films can be. Hell, the ’80s alone had some of the most crazy-ass, rubber monsters, doing in their victims in all sorts of bizarre ways. That was one of the things that made some of those films so much fun, always looking for what we called a good “quality kill”, which meant a death scene like something we’d never seen before. For example, while the rest of Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend is a sheer waste of time, the “basketball to the head” is legendary!
We all have our favorite “bad” movies that we enjoy. Hell, I hold two events a year dedicated to these kind of movies. For years, Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space was regarded as the worst film ever made, but I know from personally experiences that not to be true. But there is one title that seems to have risen to the top and is one that is brought up the most when talking about the top turkey! And that film would be Harold P. Warren’s 1966 epic film Manos: The Hands of Fate. A film of this caliper has to have its stories and now you can learn more about this film than you probably ever wanted to!
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