Hooray for unexpected presents one buys oneself! Yes, the book I ordered on The Internet when I was 7 finally went to a second printing and has arrived at my lovely house. I now hold in my dirty greasy clutches my very own copy of Peter M. Bracke's SWEET chronicle of the Friday the 13th films, Crystal Lake Memories. I've only just begun to dig into it, but boy oh boy, true believers! Each film in the series gets a big fat chapter with photos galore, commentary, and oral history-style entries from cast and crew. It's exhaustive. I think it's simply kind of awesome that a book like this- a beautiful, lovely, coffee table style hardcover tome- about a reviled series of 'throwaway' slasher flicks would even get published. Sometimes life is good, my friends. Perhaps the hardcover fancy chronicle of Dallas won't exist solely in my head someday. I love Dallas. Man, I love that episode where Lucy was all hopped up on goofballs and Sue Ellen was pregnant and drunk and she fell down the stairs and Lucy was kneeling by her and slurring her words and was all like "Whhhhhhatttrrre youuu doooin, SueElllen? Arrre youu goinnn out?"Anyway.
This megasupersizedgigundo work is everything you could possibly want to know about Jason and Co, in a fucking coffee table book! Crystal Lake Memories will reside comfortably next to my giant Walker Evans coffee table book because that's just how I roll.
*note to self: buy coffee table
This really is one sweet-ass book . . . ! I picked mine up last December as a birthday present to myself, and (after I read it, of course!) it's been on proud display, face out, on a bookshelf in the living room ever since! (We don't have a decent coffee table, either!)
ReplyDelete(Now if only Paramount-and/or-New-Line-but-probably-Paramout would get around to putting out some decent deluxe editions of the films, that'd be SWEET!)
"WORD!" indeed!!!
ReplyDelete"And if you don't have a coffee table, it turns into a coffee table!"
ReplyDeleteThey have one of those for Nightmare On Elm Street, incidentally?
You just made my day! I was resigned to never being able to read this book when they ran out of copies and it was selling for a hundred plus. Three cheers for Stacie and her vigilance!
ReplyDeleteI just got my copy on Thursday, and I have already made it to the chapter on JASON X. It's a very good book...well-researched and surprisingly candid.
ReplyDeleteI love books like this, and there are so few on anything horror-related. It's nice to see these films getting a little respect, dammit!
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, Josh, it was a long wait. I found out about this book 12 minutes after the first printing sold out, months and months ago.
Hooray!