John Kenneth Muir

Horror Films of the 1990s has both the glossy-covered look and heft of a textbook. But unlike many dry cumbersome film school textbooks, Muir's guide is conversational in tone and exhaustive in details. The format is simple: After a 50-page introduction that outlines his approach and recurring themes of the decade, Muir includes reviews of over 300 horror films, organized alphabetically by year of release. Each entry has a short cast and crew section, followed by a shorter synopsis, then a show more review. The reviews themselves attempt to both cover the style and substance of the film, but more often place it in the larger context of political and social times in which it was released. The photos included are again like a textbook -- black and white and without a focus on gore that is often the hallmark of horror-movie books.

At over 600 pages, this book is not meant to be read in consecutive sittings in order (although that's what I did). Rather, this is the type of guide that should be browsed, and kept handy when flipping channels and coming across one of the included films on tv.

I believe Muir's biggest asset is that although he is clearly a fan (as the extent of his work here and in other volumes attests), this is not the type of fanboy cash-in book you used to see all the time on the Borders sale shelves. This is a thoughtful and in-depth work.

However, his biggest failing is that he can't resist to inject his personal politics into many of the reviews. Certainly, good reviewers always inject their personal beliefs and prejudices into their work; I have no problem with that. But less than halfway through the read, I grew tired of the repetitive slams on Reagan and Bush-era policies. Again, this may have been because I chose to read the book straight through in a relatively short timeframe, but I think some of the leaps made in linking a C-grade horror flick to the perceived excesses of the 80s and 90s were a little contrived. Further, some one-liners came across as cheap shots in otherwise intelligent and thought-provoking essays. (NOTE: I do not mean to imply that this lessened my overall enjoyment of the book, and the cheap shots may have been authored by some of his "guest reviewers", but I just advise that conservatives approach this book with a thick skin).

I will definitely be searching out his works on the earlier decades ------ Joe show less

This book is a very nice volume of information about the Horror Films of the 1990s. There is so much information -- from what exactly was happening in our world during the time and how those events affected what film makers chose to bring us during these years.

The movie entries are amazing but I really loved the opening information and the Appendices in the back of the book. One Appendix featured Horror Conventions like which movies during this time used such things as "Holy Water Pistols", show more "The Car that Won't Start" or a sudden appearance of "The Cat Jump", usually featuring a screeching feline to name a few.

There is the Horror Hall of Fame, Actors and Actresses who have appeared in "at least three genre films during the decade.' There is the memorable movie tag lines, Movie references in the film Scream. Just added tidbits of really fun facts. A nice reference book that is one man's opinion. (I still love it even though he named Blair Witch Project the number 1 horror film of the 90s -- I thought the movie--that started out with such great promise--quickly became laughable and boring for me.)

This book made me want to go out and get John Muir's previous books dealing with Horror movies of the 70s and the 80s. A genuinely beautiful book, it will go on my book case next to two other favorites, Danse Macabre and Sixty Shockers. show less

I read this beefy volume after Clark and Senn's similarly ambitious Sixties Shockers. While the 1960s were a transitional decade for horror movies, the 1990s were allegedly an ebb tide, in which horror was little-produced and hardly marketed as such. Muir does indeed cast a wide net, including such films as Jurassic Park (1993). "Interloper" and "police procedural" themes are among the elements that characterize the typical horror movies of the decade.

The central reviews section of the book show more is organized by year, and each year's chapter begins with a timeline inventorying events of major cultural significance for that year. The critical emphasis is on the relationship of cinematic themes to then-current events. So much is this the case, that the reviews tend to omit comparisons to earlier films, except for the most overt sequels and remakes. For example, the review of Body Parts (1991) does not mention the seminal Hands of Orlac (1924, 1960) Nor does discussion of The Masque of the Red Death (DTV 1991) bring up Roger Corman's magisterial 1964 version of the Poe tale. The stand-out exception is "Appendix D: Movie References in Scream," which catalogs dozens of film allusions that occur in that 1996 post-modern meta-movie.

The reviews are fully equipped with star ratings and opinionated verdicts, which seemed awfully "accurate" to me, when I was in a position to compare my own views. I was especially pleased with the glowing review of The Ninth Gate (1999) -- often the object of critical derision -- Muir even placed it at number five in his "Ten Best" list for the decade.

That list is one of a number of clever and useful apparatus elements placed as appendices. "1990s Horror Conventions" provides an index of movies by common tropes, such as "Car Won't Start," "H.P. Lovecraft," and "Vampires." (The absence of my favorite "Girl on Altar" is sadly due to its general neglect in the movies themselves.) "The 1990s Horror Hall of Fame" is an inventory of notable performers. Having noted that theater horror features were at a disadvantage in the 1990s because of small-screen competition from The X-Files, Muir backs up his claim by tabulating about thirty matches of central plot elements between 1990s horror films and individual X-Files episodes as "Appendix E."

On the whole, this book accomplishes its goals capably and with a fair amount of style. show less

Christopher Guest's idea of comedy is reality plus "one step further." In his movie comedies, the reality is just as important as that one step further. He wants the characters portrayed in his films to seem just like the people one might actually find at a dog show or at a reunion of folk singers from another era. They are just a wee bit off center, like the travel agent couple in "Waiting for Guffman" who have, with one small exception, never left the town they live in, or the dog owner in show more "Best in Show" who keeps encountering former lovers she had before she became happily married.

John Kenneth Muir's book, "Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company," reflects on the making of those two movies, plus "A Mighty Wind." The book was published in 2004, before the release of "For Your Consideration."

Guest doesn't like the term "mockumentary" to describe his films because he thinks that suggests he uses the films to mock dogs shows, folk singers and small-town people with aspirations for Broadway. He prefers calling them comedies done "in a documentary style." Muir uses "mockumentary" anyway, and I think he is justified in doing so. First, the word has become widely used in reference to Guest's comedies. Second, the term means not just belittling or making fun of something, but also imitating something, such as a mock battle or mock turtle soup. Guest's movies play like true documentaries, but with that one step further that makes them great comedies.

Guest's screenplays are much shorter than the screenplays for most movies simply because he omits all dialogue. He chooses actors such as Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Parker Posey, Jane Lynch and Fred Willard who have great improvisational skills. Then Guest just sets the scene, starts the cameras rolling and lets the actors make it up as they go along. Most of this footage never sees the screen. The editing process can take more than a year. In the case of "Best in Show," 60 hours film was trimmed into an 84-minute movie. For "A Mighty Wind, Guest cut 80 hours down to 90 minutes. Sometimes the funniest scenes don't make the final cut simply because Guest decides they are not necessary to tell his story.

I read this book over several days, and in the evenings I watched yet again the three Guest films Muir writes about. I have always liked "Best in Show" best because it is the funniest, and I liked it best again this time. Yet Muir makes a good case that "A Mighty Wind" may actually be the best movie, "the apex of the director's career." It may not be the funniest, but it has more heart and it ultimately tells the best story. show less