Wes Craven's

Wes Craven's Last House On The Left
$19.95
The best way to describe this book is reverent. This is a seriously in depth look at Wes Craven's demented debut, Last House on the Left.

Szulkin has done a ton of research. There are countless references in here to obscure genre work, foreign films, etc, etc. Plenty of pictures, too, big, bright and shiny pictures of various artwork from the film and its unofficial 'sequels', grisly scenes, and more. Whatever you think of the film, this is an impressive book.

Last House on the Left is definitely demented, but looking at the current state of the horror genre, it holds up pretty well. The raw, grainy quality and the depiction of the kind of sick, stark horror you read about in the papers--this is definitely not a movie that glorifies crime and murder as other slick, entertaining films do. Craven would do similar things later in the decade with The Hills Have Eyes, another ultra low-budget but creepy study of an American family.

Video nasty buffs and horror fans will highly appreciate such a respectful book about an oft-disrespected and reviled film. I mean, this is the second, revised edition(!) That is dedication, folks.

Cursed (Unrated Version)
$14.99
I avoided seeing CURSED for years, after hearing all of the talk about just how terrible it was. So, I finally got hold of a copy and watched it last night, figuring that I was about to witness a total catastrophe. Well, perhaps it was my extremely low expectations, but I actually enjoyed it! While it's certainly no GINGER SNAPS or AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, CURSED isn't the disastrous failure I'd heard about. Christina Ricci (Addams Family 1 and 2, Sleepy Hollow, Monster, The Gathering) plays her lead role w/ ease and humour. She is a gothic chick without even having to work at it! Her features alone make her the next Barbara Steel! CURSED also has a decent plot and pacing. The CGI transformation effects are passable, but still make me mourn for the days of latex! The cast, apart from Ms. Ricci, is typical Craven / Williamson, mostly young, shallow, yet beautiful people. CURSED also has far fewer in-jokes and less self-aware humour than the SCREAM films. So, it's a fairly straightforward werewolf movie. If you love Christina Ricci, werewolves, or Wes Craven, then CURSED should give you a boost...

Wes Craven's New Nightmare: A Novel
$4.99
The perfect novelization to the last (Sure it is) Nightmare on Elm Street movie. The book itself is an interesting read and the photos are worth a look. The entire mood of the movie is caught on the pages and if you love these movies like I do, you won't be able to put it down.

Wes Craven Presents They
$9.99
Apparently being afraid of the dark means not being able to actually SEE anything in the dark, according to the writers of this film.

"They" is a terrible movie. The acting is decent enough, the emotions from the characters whenever something bizarre or sad happens is believable (most of the time) but the biggest problem with this film is that it was completely boring. Not interesting for a single second until the final 5 minutes.

Yes that's right- over an hour and 20 goes by and THEN something interesting happens. The ending is pretty good, but the story throughout the movie should have focused on what eventually happened to the woman instead of waiting until the VERY end to show it. How much longer were we expected to wait until something interesting happens? The writers should have focused on what ended up happening to the young woman for the other characters in the movie.

The signs that something horrible was about to happen to certain people by a blood mark appearing somewhere on their body was more along the lines of bad and lazy writing instead of interesting "what's going to happen next?" story-telling. Whenever something bad was about to happen to the characters (such as the woman who was swimming in the dark) the actual suspense honestly wasn't there at ALL almost the entire time. The only good part (besides the ending) was the guy in the restaurant who had a gun in the beginning of the movie (I won't spoil what happened here).

Plus the entire movie was completely dark (like I mention above in the opening line). So dark you couldn't see the monsters, and couldn't even see the film. Dark for the sake of darkness. Bad movie.