While we are just finishing up Jon Towlson’s book The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror Films 1931 to 1936, it looks like we’ll be continuing our little history lesson with this new book by Raymond Valinoti Jr., entitled Hollywood’s Pre-Code Horrors 1931-1934, published by BearManor Media.
Valinoti Jr. has a Master’s in Library Science and is a freelance researcher, so I can only imagine this guy has done his homework on this subject, which is a damn fascinating one. With all the BS we hear about the goings-on with Hollywood and getting pictures released, it amazes me what they went through back in the ’30s, and was still able to get away with murder! Well, at least on the big screen!
Back before the MPAA, movie studios tended to get away with a lot more than they did have the late ’30s when they started to be held to a higher (and moral) standard. During the depression, the studios really pushed the limit, trying like hell to get people into the theaters with films like Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and The Black Cat (1934).
This title is available in both softcover ($19.95) and hardcover ($30) editions and can be ordered from either Amazon or directly from BearManor Media. It’s the same price, so do a favor for the small business guy and order from BearManor Media. Just click HERE. They put out some great books, many of which I have in my own library.
Growing Up with Manos: The Hands of Fate
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.
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!
