Katharine Coldiron. Fort Bridge Media, $16.99 commerce paper (276p) ISBN 979-8-9872083-1-1
Essayist Coldiron (Ceremonials) delivers an entertaining ode to cinematic duds. “Bad movies are teaching tools for making and studying good movies,” she contends, exploring what such movies and tv reveals as Assault of the 50 Foot Girl (1958), Staying Alive (1983), and Showgirls (1995) unintentionally reveal in regards to the strategies of high quality filmmaking. The standout opening essay examines Edward D. Wooden’s 1959 Plan 9 from Outer House (“the Citizen Kane of bad movies”), suggesting that the movie’s unintentionally disorienting modifying demonstrates how “lighting, location, and landmarks” set up continuity between scenes in higher motion pictures. Different dispatches dissect the pressured musical numbers in ABC’s short-lived police procedural/musical mash-up Cop Rock (1990), and the campy “surrealist sensibility” of the 1977 horror flick Dying Mattress, which, she asserts, elevates its premise a few people-eating mattress by recognizing its personal absurdity. Not all the items persuade; Coldiron’s declare that the “transparent disposability” of the low-budget Nineteen Forties Teen Ager movie sequence makes them “intriguing, even unique” is a bit too beneficiant. Nonetheless, her evaluation of a few of the stranger footnotes in cinematic historical past finds surprising knowledge about how motion pictures work. Cinephiles will get pleasure from digging into this. (Could)
Particulars
Reviewed on: 02/22/2023
Style: Nonfiction
“Well bless their hearts.”
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