Source: My own cover scan.
If there's one thing, more than any other, that put me on the road to being a horror junkie, it's this book right here. This isn't the first time I've talked about it, but last time it was in the company of a slew of other film guides. And while I stand by everything I wrote about it there, I still think it merits stand-alone discussion. Therefore, I'm making it the subject of this inaugural new series here on my blog: "Michael's Film Library", wherein are discussed the various movie-themed books I've collected and read over the years. Given this title's impact on my life, how could I start anywhere but with Terror on Tape?
Written by James O'Neill with the financial backing of no less than Billboard (the same company that compiles sales and spins data on the music industry), Terror on Tape was responsible for my first tentative steps into what has become a lifetime of consuming, loving, laughing, and cringing at these frights of fancy. It's impossible to overstate this book's impact on my life, not to mention the horror movie world at large, so let's dive right in.
Terror on Tape isn't the first book ever written which reviewed movies in alphabetical order from A to Z, nor is it the first of its kind to review horror fare. People like L.A. Morse, John Stanley, and Michael Weldon had James O'Neill well beaten on that front. Stanley penned the first installment of his Creature Feature Movie Guide all the way back in 1981. Weldon's incredible Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film came out in 1983 (and even then, he'd been writing about these kinds of movies in his own 'zine for years prior to that). Morse's double-trouble pair of books, Video Trash & Treasures and Video Trash & Treasures II were back-to-back hits in 1989 and 1990 respectively. John McCarty's Official Splatter Movie Guide and its sequel both pre-date Terror on Tape by several years. Reviewers like Leonard Maltin had been penning encyclopedias of film and television critique for their own yearly guides long before O'Neill wrote his.
But Terror on Tape was something different. While all of the previously mentioned publications included horror films in their pages, O'Neill's manuscript was, as far as I can tell, the first major publication devoted almost exclusively to cataloging and reviewing the wide variety of horror movies available on video instead of sticking to one particular sub-genre, like slashers. And while some entries are a little sketchy on the "horror" front -- Abbott and Costello met the various Universal monsters for laughs not screams, while Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space is only terrifying if you watch it without an idea of what you're getting yourself into -- O'Neill sticks to his guns while casting a wide net. Gore, splatter, horror comedy, psychological horror, and even films that were trying to be scary but failed all get their day between the covers, but what you won't find are any entries on strictly fantasy, science fiction, or exploitation fare to pad the page count. Hitchcock gets his due, with entries on the likes of The Birds, Vertigo, and Psycho, but you won't see reviews of The 39 Steps or North By Northwest, because those are suspense films, not horror. Likewise, while movies like Alien, Predator, and a litany of Godzilla flicks are covered, you won't see entries for Star Wars, Dragonslayer, or any of Indiana Jones's or James T. Kirk's exploits -- pure sci-fi, adventure, and fantasy have no place between these covers.
Given Billboard magazine's mainstream nature, they could have easily requested O'Neill whore himself out to a wider audience by covering the types of movies other guides had already covered. The lack of representation for these blockbusters in lieu of movies like Dr. Giggles, Troll 2, and the awful 1989 remake of Sorry, Wrong Number is heartwarming. It's also great to see someone understanding that 'Horror' as a category extends beyond the likes of Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. These are important films, to be sure, but equally at home in this pantheon are horror comedies like Transylvania 6-5000 and Vamp, along with classic fare like King Kong and The Most Dangerous Game. And while it can be argued that 'thrillers' like The Silence of the Lambs and Jacob's Ladder transcend what we typically think about when we think about "horror", their inclusion in a book like this makes as much sense as Jaws and Halloween.
On top of the excellent prose and reviews, Terror on Tape is filled with a copious amount of black-and-white pictures and photographs. While they don't appear on every page, they run the gamut in size from small quarter-page images like this one of Oliver Reed in full makeup, taken from his 1961 film The Curse of the Werewolf, or (not shown) Patty McCormack being attacked by giant cockroaches in 1975's Bug, to half-page stills culled from movies like Rosemary's Baby and Bride of Frankenstein, to 3/4-page promotional fare like an image of Yvonne Monlaur and David Pell from 1960's Brides of Dracula, on up to movies and stars that get the full-page treatment like Lon Chaney in his hideous full-face makeup from 1925's The Phantom of the Opera. Sure they're gray-scale to keep printing costs under control (the book retailed for $16.95), but they do the job just fine. It's hard to flip five pages through the book without running across at least one excellent still.
The same can be said for the sidebars, also copious throughout the book, which offer brief write-ups on some of the most (in)famous names and faces of horror's cavalcade: Carol Lynley, Tobe Hooper, Christopher Lee, Curtis Harrington, Eiji Tsuburaya, Basil Rathbone, Vincent Price, Dario Argento, Clive Barker, and Jess Franco are just a handful of those profiled, with a paragraph or two about who they are followed by a chronological listing of some of the films they were involved with in one way or another. These are great little encapsulations which easily open the door for readers who might be interested in learning more about the different stars, makeup artists, and directors who created their favorite films. These are usually featured on the same page as the film for which they are most famous, so you'll find Tsuburaya's entry near Godzilla, Hooper's profile beside Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Andy Milligan right across from Bloodthirsty Butchers, Tom Savini by Dawn of the Dead, and so forth.
But I think the best part of Terror on Tape is the stuff O'Neill really had to do his homework on, and it's what made it so valuable to have on-hand when one took a trip to the local video rental palace: the alternative titles. Especially in the 1970's and 1980's, it wasn't uncommon for a given film to be released under multiple titles. These changes may have come about for any number of reasons (different distributor, different 'cut' of the film, different country of origin, etc...), but unless you really knew your stuff, it was possible to pick up A Hazing In Hell without realizing you'd rented it two weeks earlier under the title of Pledge Night. Here is where the book shines: every alternative title of which O'Neill is aware gets its own entry directing the reader to the film's most commonly-known moniker. While all of this is a few keystrokes away on IMDB today, it's impossible to overstate how useful this was when it came out. This in hand at the store meant you were guaranteed to rent something you hadn't seen before, because now you knew Voodoo Bloodbath was just another title for I Eat Your Skin.
"But Michael, what about the reviews themselves?"
Oh, right! Can't forget a few words about O'Neill's style here, can we? Thanks for the reminder. The truth is, Terror on Tape was compiled by one man, and his opinion and yours are likely to differ on several points. Every film is rated on a scale from half a star (for absolute garbage like Attack of the Swamp Creature and Bruno Mattei's Night of the Zombies) to four (for indisputable classics like Night of the Living Dead and Halloween). Like every film reviewer, O'Neill sometimes allows nostalgia to get in the way of his ratings -- a four-star rating for House of Dark Shadows being the most obvious offender -- but to be fair, he doesn't kiss a movie's ass if he doesn't feel it's warranted (and if you don't believe me, check out his 2.5-star review for the original Prom Night).
He also makes a few gaffes along the way, like spoiling the ending of Jacob's Ladder, only giving Predator 2.5 stars (WTF?), and berating David Fincher as a poor director for Alien 3 (which was utterly mangled by 20th Century Fox after Fincher wrapped a film shoot filled with nigh-impossible demands), but most of the time he's right on the money, as in this hilariously spot-on one-star skewering of 1980's Home Sweet Home:
This worthless holiday hacker has beefcake-to-the-stars [Jake] Steinfeld on a rantin' rampage as a musclehead out to fatally fuck up a family's Thanksgiving dinner. Please place the appropriate turkey joke here.
...or this 3.5 star appreciation for the 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker:
Dan Curtis produced this popular TV shocker in which [Darren] McGavin gives a classic portrayal as reporter Carl Kolchak. When a series of show-girl killings sweep Las Vegas, Kolchak discovers the murderer to be an 80-year-old Hungarian vampire named Janos Skorzeny, but has a hard time convincing the authorities, who either think he's crazy or are afraid he might be right. Terrifically paced, with the horror of the pasty-faced, fanged [Barry] Atwater well played off the neon glitz of Vegas and successful touches of humor and social satire. Followed by a sequel, The Night Strangler, and a TV series: "Kolchak: The Night Stalker."
Of course, the main down side of books like this is they are only current up to a point. Terror on Tape was written twenty-six years ago, which means that for all it finds time to look at, there's an awful lot about which it must remain quiet. Neither Billboard nor O'Neill himself have reprinted or updated it in the years since its original publication, and that's really a shame -- although nowadays he'd have to call it something else, and really, Terror on Disc or Terror on Netflix just don't have the same ring.
Terror on Tape doesn't proclaim to be the definitive review guide for horror. It's James O'Neill's opinion on the films he basically got paid to watch and review, and its meant to open the reader's eyes to stuff they had no idea existed while helping them navigate the often-confusing horror aisles of the time, where the box artwork was often the best thing about the movie (Don't Go In The Woods, anyone?). A stinker is a stinker, and a classic is a classic, but if you read something in here that makes you go, "WHAT?! I gotta see that!" regardless of its final rating, then it did its job.
It certainly did it's job back in 1995, expanding the horizons of a sixteen year old kid working his first real job in a library, who had no idea most of this stuff existed. And for that, it will forever remain an important, essential, and well-loved part of my film-lovers' library. James O'Neill, if you're out there: thank you from the bottom of my blood-dripping little heart.
Congratulations @modernzorker! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your board And compare to others on the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPDo not miss the last post from @hivebuzz:
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!