Bøger af Mark Thomas McGee

Superman and the Mole-Men (1951) with George Reeves. The Fly (1958) with Vincent Price. The Last Man on Earth (1964). These low-budget films earned big-profit bonanzas, and the man behind the yields was Robert L. Lippert. When Spyros Skouras was forced to resign as commander in chief of 20th Century Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck was persuaded to return to the studio to take charge. As the studio was on the brink of disaster, Zanuck put the brakes on every project in the works and fired just about everyone on the lot, except for one man, the only one working for the studio who made their bread-and-butter pictures which, at this point in time, was the only kind of movies the studio could afford to make--and he was Robert L. Lippert. Lippert produced over 200 movies tailored to the small town exhibitors that had to change their program two or three times a week. They loved him for it. Kansas theater owner Bill Leonard told his fellow exhibitors to ". . . just line up with these Lippert pictures and you and your patrons will be happy." James Clavell--author of Shogun, Andrew McLaglen--director of McLintock, and Sam Fuller--director of Pickup on South Street, got their first breaks in the business from Lippert. Read about his battle with the Screen Actors Guild, his stormy marriage, and, of course, his movies. "Compelling, a good read. I found it hard to put down." -Western Clippings "McGee has performed an invaluable service in rounding up RL's wild celluloid herd into a single corral." -Videoscope

Bigger! Better! Bolder! This is an affectionate, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny look at the movies your parents didn't want you to see, the monster movies from Science Fiction's Golden Age. It's also about some of the fans who couldn't get enough of them, known today as monster kids. This is their story too. Some of these monster kids, like stop-motion expert David Allen, became monster movie filmmakers themselves. You'll read about him and Bill Warren, the author of the fabulous Keep Watching the Skies! And Forrest J Ackerman, the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. It's all here! With an introduction by monster kid Don Glut. Be warned. You'd better read every word. There's a pop quiz at the end of the book."McGee knows this genre upside down and backwards, and writes with real authority. He loves these movies, and celebrates them as much for their goofy failings as for their imagination and entertainment value. Best of all, McGee is a terrific colloquial writer of great wit. I laughed out loud as I revisited many of my favorite pictures. You will too."- David J. Hogan, author of Dark Romance and Film Noir FAC.

This is the HARDBACK version. Mark McGee, the author of You Won't Believe Your Eyes! once again takes the reader back to the 1950s, this time to explore the careers of three pioneers in bargain basement entertainment -Sam Katzman, James Nicholson and Roger Corman, the first filmmakers to recognize that the kids were the ones who bought most of the movie tickets. While the major studios continued to lose money every year on films that were aimed at an audience that was home watching television, Katzman, Nicholson and Corman were making movies that appealed to the young people. Rock and roll movies. Juvenile delinquent dramas. Science fiction and horror thrillers. They were hated by the critics and chastised by the guardians of public morality. But the exhibitors loved them. They counted on these three guys to keep them in the black, which they did for almost twenty years. It took the studios decades to finally get wise to themselves and now they're flooding the market with mega buck versions of the kinds of movies Katzman, Nicholson and Corman made for $1.98. A lot of these films were junk. Some of them were treasures. You be the judge which was which.

This volume examines motion picture promotion and gimmicks.