Recommended reading - TCM Underground

 

TCM Underground

50 Must-See Films from the World of Classic Cult and Late-Night Cinema

by Millie De Chirico & Quatoyiah Murry.

Foreword by Patton Oswalt.

Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
 
Published by Running Press Adult.
Published 2022.
Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0762480009
ISBN-13: 978-0762480005

Description:

With knowledge, humor and an appropriately twisted perspective, [the authors] give readers a fuller realization of what late-night cinema offers. With a foreword by Patton Oswalt, this celebration of strangeness is well worth exploring. – Pop Culture Classics.

Based on the Turner Classic Movies series, TCM Underground is the movie-lover's guide to 50 of the most campy, kitschy, shocking, and weirdly wonderful cult films you need to see.

In the pages of this book, you'll explore this unique order of films – primarily from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s – with insightful reviews, behind-the-scenes stories, subgenre sidebars, and full-color and black-and-white photography throughout. Go along for the ride with new takes on crime films, including The Honeymoon Killers and The Harder They Come. Witness one-of-a-kind horror in Bill Gunn's landmark vampire film Ganja and Hess and Nobuhiko Obayashi’s infamous and indescribable Hausu. Absorb the boundary-pushing documentary-style trilogy The Decline of Western Civilization, which throws you into indelible moments in the punk and metal music scenes. And marvel at pure '80s oddities like Mac and Me and The Garbage Pail Kids.

 

From Possession to Polyester and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to Xanadu, no two films are alike in this compendium. Just sit back and prepare to be surprised, amused, and entertained by this celebration of the stars, filmmakers, and stories behind fifty of the most beguiling and unforgettable movies ever to hit the screen.

Recommended reading - Into the Dark

 

Into the Dark
The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950

by Mark A. Vieira.
 
Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
 
Published by Running Press Adult.
Illustrated edition.
Published 2016.
Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 0762455233
ISBN-13: 978-0762455232
 
Description:
 

Bursting with glossy stills and archival material, film historian and photographer Mark A. Vieira's Into The Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950 offers an unprecedented portal into Hollywood's golden era of cynicism. A systematic study of noir, this gorgeous coffee table tome fills a significant gap in scholarship on the genre.” – MovieMaker.

 

You know film noir when you see it: the shadowed setting; the cynical detective; the femme fatale; and the twist of fate. Into the Dark captures this alluring genre with a cavalcade of compelling photographs and a guide to 82 of its best films.

 

Into the Dark is the first book to tell the story of film noir in its own voice. Author Mark A. Vieira quotes the artists who made these movies and the journalists and critics who wrote about them, taking readers on a year-by-year tour of the exciting nights when movies like Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Sunset Boulevard were sprung on an unsuspecting public. For the first time, we hear the voices of film noir artists speak from the sets and offices of the studios, explaining the dark genre, even before it had a name. Those voices tell how the genre was born and how it thrived in an industry devoted to sweetness and light.

 

Into the Dark is a ticket to a smoky, glamorous world. You enter a story conference with Raymond Chandler, visit the set of Laura, and watch Detour with a Midwest audience. This volume recreates the environment that spawned film noir. It also displays the wit and warmth of the genre's artists. Hedda Hopper reports on Citizen Kane, calling Orson Welles "Little Orson Annie." Lauren Bacall says she enjoys playing a bad girl in To Have and Have Not. Bosley Crowther calls Joan Crawford in Possessed a "ghost wailing for a demon lover beneath a waning moon." An Indiana exhibitor rates the classic Murder, My Sweet a "passable program picture." Illustrated by hundreds of rare still photographs, Into the Dark conveys the mystery, glamour, and irony that make film noir surpassingly popular.

 

About TCM:
 

Turner Classic Movies is the definitive resource for the greatest movies of all time. We entertain and enlighten to show how the entire spectrum of classic movies, movie history, and movie-making touches us all and influences how we think and live today.