(no subject)

18. Sex with Kings by Eleanor Herman

Trash history, part 2.  This volume actually came first, which explains why it is vastly less well organized than Sex with Queens.    A blurb on the book jacket from the Kirkus Review praises Herman's research.   Clearly, the Kirkus Review's definition of research is "has read a book on the subject once."  It's complete and utter trash.  But entertaining nonetheless.


19.  The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror by David Skal

This chatty and occasionally insightful book is less a cultural history of scary entertainment than a cultural history of the classic movie monsters:  Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man and assorted freaks.   A lot of emphasis is put on the original translation of Dracula and Frankenstein from book to theater to movie, and on the original Universal productions.  Oddly, Skal omits any mention of the Hammer Studios revival of these monsters in the 1960s, choosing instead to focus on American TV and the late night horror hosts such as Vampire and Zacherley.  Skal really has done his research, and recounts interviews with old movie stars such as David Manning.

  Skal's book ends in the late 1990s, so he does not touch on the cultural aspects of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Twilight.  I would love to see what Skal would make of the romantic emasculation of the vampire in Twilight or the twisted phenomenon of torture porn (the Saw and Hostel movies).