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Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented the American Independent Film


Marshall Fine - 2006
    Among filmmakers and film buffs, Cassavetes is revered, almost as a god. A major star of live television and a serious actor, he stumbled into making his first film, Shadows, and created a template for working outside the Hollywood system that would produce some of the most piercing and human films of the last thirty years including A Woman Under the Influence and Husbands. He became the prototypical outsider fighting the system for much of his career. Film critic Marshall Fine had unprecendented access to Cassavetes' wife, Gena Rowlands, and other members of their inner circle, as well as industry insiders who worked with Cassavetes -- some speaking publicly for the first time. Together, they tell his daring, tumultuous, and compelling story.

The Pines


Robert Dunbar - 1989
    The boy seems to have a psychic connection to something in the dark forest, something unseen... and evil. The old-timers in the region know the truth of the legendary creature that stalks the Pine Barrens. And they know the savagery it's capable of

Insane Bastards


Wade H. Garrett - 2018
    Rocky is a large man suffering from gigantism, and Twig is a foul-mouthed and perverted midget. Separately, they had always been mistreated and bullied, but together, they are unstoppable, unleashing sadistic and barbaric acts of violence on the assholes of society.Warning! This is an extreme-horror/ splatterpunk story that contains adult content, including, but not limited to: profanity, sexuality, brutality and obscenities. If you’re not a seasoned extreme-horror reader, it’s highly advised not to embark on this journey. It will save you distress and me a negative review.

Four Novels of the 1950s: The Way Some People Die / The Barbarous Coast / The Doomsters / The Galton Case


Ross Macdonald - 2015
    For his centennial, The Library of America inaugurates its Macdonald edition with four classic novels from the 1950s, all featuring his incomparable protagonist, private investigator Lew Archer.Set against the background of a glittering yet darkly enigmatic Southern California, Macdonald’s books are both unsurpassed entertainments and emotionally powerful evocations of an outwardly prosperous, inwardly turbulent America. Macdonald mastered the hard-boiled detective form early on and brought to it a prose style of extraordinary beauty. The four novels collected in this volume reveal him broadening the genre into an intensely personal means of expression, transforming the tragedies and dislocations of his own life into haunting fiction. “My interest,” he wrote to his publisher, “is the exploration of lives.”In The Way Some People Die, Lew Archer embarks on a missing persons case that starts at a house in Santa Monica “within earshot of the coast highway and rifleshot of the sea,” and takes him on a violent and twisted journey through Los Angeles high and low. The Barbarous Coast exposes a world of hidden crime and corruption in the movie business, as Archer intrudes on the well-protected secrets of a studio head. A gripping and tightly knit drama of madness and self-destruction, The Doomsters signaled a breakthrough in the Archer novels with its exploration of “an alternating current of guilt” within a family, a theme to which Macdonald would often return. The Galton Case, one of the standout masterpieces of the detective form, is a mythically charged and deeply personal book that traces the calamitous consequences of a young man’s claim to be the lost heir to a fortune. For Macdonald The Galton Case marked a turning point in his career, the realization of his quest to create fiction from “some of the more complicated facts of my experience.”As a special feature, this volume includes five important statements—among them the famous essay “Writing The Galton Case”—in which Macdonald reveals the autobiographical background of his books and his understanding of his own contribution to the evolving genre of detective fiction.

The Horn


John Clellon Holmes - 1988
    Edgar Pool is "The Horn," the hero, and the man who helps change the face of American music. He becomes the legend whose triumphant and tragic career is reconstructed through the memories of his friends and lovers.

Horror Show


Greg Kihn - 1996
    When Monster Magazine reporter Clint Stockbern sets out to interview the legendary '50s horror movie director Landis Woodley, he uncovers a bizarre story of real-life horror.Flashback to Hollywood, 1957. Woodley is shooting his latest zombie movie, Cadaver, in a real morgue when he has a brainstorm that will help him pinch some pennies. But when zombie make-up effects are replaced by real corpses, a deadly curse begins to take its toll on those foolish enough to become involved with the filming of the soon-to-be cult classic, Cadaver.

Kong: King of Skull Island


Joe DeVito - 2005
    A prequel and sequel to the 1933 novel that introduced King Kong blends the talents of a renowned fantasy artist with those of a top science fiction writer to create a worthy and long-awaited successor to the Depression-era fantasy that spawned numerous feature-length films.

At Night She Cries, While He Rides His Steed


Ross Patterson - 2015
    His life, set in 1849 against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush, is one long parade of amazing sex, dynamite montages, whiskey, and explosive gunfights. The kinds of things men could do when men were actually men. He is the richest man in town — equal parts loved and feared by all. But when the Schlager Brothers come to town, so too comes the end of the good times. St. James is forced to defend everything that matters to him (including, but not limited to: prostitutes, his horse, money, and drugs. Oh, and his wife and children too, sort of). God help anyone who stands in his way.

Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire


Dan Hanks - 2020
    But not everything is as it seems when ex-Spitfire pilot Captain Samantha Moxley is dragged into a fight against the shadowy US government agency she used to work for. Now, with former Nazis and otherworldly monsters on her trail, Captain Moxley is forced into protecting her archaeologist sister in a race to retrieve two ancient keys that will unlock the secrets of a long-lost empire - to ensure a civilisation-destroying weapon doesn't fall into the wrong hands. But what will she have to sacrifice to save the world?File Under: Fantasy [ Top Women Riff-RAF Pyramid Scheme Bash the Fash ]

Soulstorm


Chet Williamson - 1986
    There they will confront madness, murder, and the ultimate evil so that their billionaire host might find the key to life beyond the grave. But as they learn, dead souls dwell in The Pines. And death is just the beginning...

Midnight Movie


Tobe Hooper - 2010
    . . literally. As the death toll mounts, Tobe embarks on a desperate journey to understand the film’s thirty-year-old origins—and put an end to the strange epidemic his creation has set in motion.  Featuring the terror, humor, and sly documentary style Hooper devotees remember from such classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Midnight Movie is vintage Tobe Hooper, again demonstrating the director’s place as one of the godfathers of modern horror.

Blood Crazy


Simon Clark - 1995
    People go shopping. To the movies. Everything is just as it should be. But not for long.By Sunday, civilization is in ruins. Adults have become murderously insane. One by one they become infected with a crazed, uncontrollable urge to slaughter the young—even their own children. Especially their own children.Will this be the way the world ends, in waves of madness and carnage? What will be left of our world as we know it? And who, if anyone, will survive?Terror follows terror in this apocalyptic nightmare vision by one of the most powerful talents in modern horror fiction. Prepare yourself for mankind’s final days of fear.

Joko’s Anniversary


Roland Topor - 1969
    More than just a clever piece of black humour, in Joko's Anniversary Topo urges the reader to a very serious consideration of the potential degredation of any individual by society.

The Richest Girl in the World: The Extravagant Life and Fast Times of Doris Duke


Stephanie Mansfield - 1992
    But those headlines do not even begin to tell one of the most compelling and fascinating stories of our time. A maverick from an early age, the strikingly attractive and eccentric heiress thumbed her nose at society, all the while forging an incredible life as a renegade with an appetite for adventure, a weakness for pleasure, and a penchant for privacy. Duke and her lifelong rival Barbara Hutton--with whom she would have to compete for the love of several men, most notably international playboy Porfirio Rubirosa-were dubbed "the Gold Dust Twins." Her father, James B. Duke, namesake of Duke University and one of the richest men in the country, was a rough-edged businessman whose greatest love was for his only daughter. Denied affection from her mother, a glamorous socialite concerned mainly with public appearances, Doris Duke led a sheltered adolescence, seeking friendship with those ignored by high society. Later, as her marriage to the politically ambitious son of a prominent grande dame of society crumbled, her concern with secrecy would develop nearly obsessive dimensions. Duke maintained dictatorial control over her four extravagant homes across the country, and she gained a reputation for excess as well as seeming pettiness. Her phenomenal wealth enabled her to withdraw from the world, even to distance herself from the university that bears her family name, and ignore its responsibilities. Recently she adopted a thirty-five-year-old former Hare Krishna who was a confidante also of Imelda Marcos. Here is revealed for the first time Doris Duke's fascination with those who embraced the spotlight she always shunned, especially Imelda Marcos, who found an ardent and fin

Throat Sprockets


Tim Lucas - 1994
    Spending his lunch hours in a porno theater to relieve his boredom, a young advertising executive discovers an obscure film called Throat Sprockets and develops a fascination for women's throats that gradually consumes his life.