Cheap Tricks And Class Acts

Reveals the behind-the-scenes production secrets of the Hollywood films of the 1950s.

The emergence of the double-bill in the 1930s created a divide between A-pictures and B-pictures as theaters typically screened packages featuring one of each. With the former considered more prestigious because of their larger budgets and more popular actors, the lower-budgeted Bs served largely as a support mechanism to A-films of the major studios—most of which also owned the theater chains in which movies were shown. When a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust ruling severed ownership of theaters from the studios, the B-movie soon became a different entity in the wake of profound changes to the corporate organization and production methods of the major Hollywood studios. In The Battle for the Bs, Blair Davis analyzes how B-films were produced, distributed, and exhibited in the 1950s and demonstrates the possibilities that existed for low-budget filmmaking at a time when many in Hollywood had abandoned the Bs. Made by newly formed independent companies, 1950s B-movies took advantage of changing demographic patterns to fashion innovative marketing approaches. They established such genre cycles as science fiction and teen-oriented films (think Destination Moon and I Was a Teenage Werewolf) well before the major studios and also contributed to the emergence of the movement now known as underground cinema. Although frequently proving to be multimillion-dollar box-office draws by the end of the decade, the Bs existed in opposition to the cinematic mainstream in the 1950s and created a legacy that was passed on to independent filmmakers in the decades to come.

For the last sixty years discussion of 1950s science fiction cinema has been dominated by claims that the genre reflected US paranoia about Soviet brainwashing and the nuclear bomb. However, classic films, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and It Came from Outer Space (1953), and less familiar productions, such as It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), were regularly exported to countries across the world. The histories of their encounters with foreign audiences have not yet been told. Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain begins this task by recounting the story of 1950s British cinema-goers and the aliens and monsters they watched on the silver screen. Drawing on extensive archival research, Matthew Jones makes an exciting and important intervention by locating American science fiction films alongside their domestic counterparts in their British contexts of release and reception. He offers a radical reassessment of the genre, demonstrating for the first time that in Britain, which was a significant market for and producer of science fiction, these films gave voice to different fears than they did in America. While Americans experienced an economic boom, low immigration and the conferring of statehood on Alaska and Hawaii, Britons worried about economic uncertainty, mass immigration and the dissolution of the Empire. Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain uses these and other differences between the British and American experiences of the 1950s to tell a new history of the decade's science fiction cinema, exploring for the first time the ways in which the genre came to mean something unique to Britons.

From classics like King Kong, to beloved B–movies like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, to blockbusters like Jurassic Park, it’s easy to see that filmmakers and audiences alike love to see dinosaurs on the screen. This comprehensive filmography, arranged alphabetically by title, contains entries that include basic facts (year of release, country of origin, studio, and running time), followed by a concise plot summary, the author’s critical commentary, information on the production and the people behind it, and secrets of the often-ingenious special effects. Three useful appendices feature films with minor dinosaur content, planned but unfinished dinosaur movies, and the quasi-dinosaurs of Toho Studios. To be included, a movie must depict one or more representations of a “prehistoric reptile.” Inaccurate portrayals are included, as long as the intent is to represent a real or fictional dinosaur. Not eligible are films featuring prehistoric mammals, prehistoric humans or humanoids, and beasts of mythology—unless, of course, the movie also has a dinosaur.

This eclectic overview of horror cinema offers up a collection of horror films for practically any occasion and literally every day of the year. For example, the author recommends commemorating United Nations Day (October 24) with a screening of The Colossus of New York, whose startling climax takes place at the U.N. Building. Each day-by-day entry includes the movie title, production year, plot summary and critique, along with a brief explanation of how the film fits into the history of that particular day and interesting anecdotes on the film's production.

The figure of Julius Caesar has loomed large in the United States since its very beginning, admired and evoked as a gateway to knowledge of politics, war, and even national life. In this lively and perceptive book, the first to examine Caesar's place in modern American culture, Maria Wyke investigates how his use has intensified in periods of political crisis, when the occurrence of assassination, war, dictatorship, totalitarianism or empire appears to give him fresh relevance. Her fascinating discussion shows how—from the Latin classroom to the Shakespearean stage, from cinema, television and the comic book to the internet—Caesar is mobilized in the U.S. as a resource for acculturation into the American present, as a prediction of America’s future, or as a mode of commercial profit and great entertainment.

Spanning over a century of cinema and comprised of 127 films, this book analyzes the cinematic incarnations of the "uncanniest place on earth"--wax museums. Nothing is as it seems at a wax museum. It is a place of wonder, horror and mystery. Will the figures come to life at night, or are they very much dead with corpses hidden beneath their waxen shells? Is the genius hand that molded them secretly scarred by a terrible tragedy, longing for revenge? Or is it a sinner's sanctum, harboring criminals with countless places to hide in plain sight? This chronological analysis includes essential behind the scenes information in addition to authoritative research comparing the creation of "real" wax figures to the "reel" ones seen onscreen. Publicly accessible or hidden away in a maniac's lair, wax museums have provided the perfect settings for films of all genres to thrillingly play out on the big screen since the dawn of cinema.

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