Beyond Richard Laymon novels, LaserDiscs, and comic books, I also have a small library of movie-related materials. Film review guides, especially, have a special place in my heart because, by and large, they don't exist any longer. Four years ago, I wrote a basic post about the lost world of video movie guides, so I won't rehash that here. You can go check it out if you want to see a few pieces of my collection.
But one of the favorite pieces of my collection is 1994's Terror On Tape by James O'Neill which I also wrote about a few years back.
I have a lot of books which focus on horror films, like John McCarty's Official Splatter Movie Guide, or cover a wide range of weird/cult/grindhouse fare of which horror is a significant segment, like Michael Weldon's Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, but my major introduction to the wide world of horror cinema, the stuff beyond Friday the 13th and Halloween, was Terror On Tape, and for that reason its always held a special place in my heart.
What I did not learn until many years later was that while O'Neill never wrote a sequel/companion volume to Terror On Tape, he did write a second guide in the same vein for science fiction films. I've finally gotten my grubby paws on it, and I could not be more excited.
Science Fiction and Horror, as genres, have a considerable amount of crossover, and there are many films which could arguably count as either or both depending on how the viewer feels. Movies like Alien, John Carpenter's The Thing, and the various Godzilla films (at the very least, the 1954 original before things got goofy) all present horrific takes on science fiction or fantasy material. As such, there is some overlap between this and Terror On Tape.
What I love, however, is that even when this happens, O'Neill didn't just cut-and-paste his old review in and call it a day. Everything is re-written, even if it basically says the same thing, and as dumb as it sounds, this is a nice touch.
What's also excellent is that Sci-Fi On Tape does not confine itself merely to films. Sci-Fi television shows also get their due between the covers. There's even an episode guide section in the back of the book which goes over Doctor Who, Lost in Space, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The X-Files, and other programs episode-by-episode, summarizing and rating each individual show. As far as I'm concerned, this is above and beyond the call of duty for a book like this, which makes it that much more interesting and enjoyable.
Sci-Fi On Tape was produced in a pre-Internet era, where sites like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB weren't around to collate all this content. The best you would have found back in the day were personal home pages on hosting sites like AOL or Geocities where fans would make their own shrines with the limited storage space allowed. Viewed in this light, it's a must-have for any videophile with an interest in the genre. While the information can be found with a few clicks of the keyboard today, having this in one's pocket for a trip to the video store in 1998 would have been indispensable.
Top marks on this one as well; this is a gem of a film guide, and sits nicely beside Terror On Tape in my film library.
We used to display a reference copy of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide next to the library DVD shelf, but no one ever seemed to even touch it. I think we have similar genre-specific books to your elsewhere in the district, and those might still get some traction.
Unfortunate, but understandable. After all, when information on virtually every film ever made is available on a device you keep in your pocket or purse all day, why bother with Leonard Maltin, Golden Movie Retriever, or any other print resource. :(