Disaster Movies: A Loud, Long, Explosive, Star-Studded Guide to Avalanches, Earthquakes, Floods, Meteors, Sinking Ships, Twisters, Viru

by Michael Rose and Glenn Kay

Complete with a foreword by Mike Nelson, host of Mystery Science Theater 3000, this dynamic guide to one of Hollywood's most popular and enduring genres provides a history of the disaster genre,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556526121
• ISBN13: 9781556526121
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

I'm still waiting for the ultimative Disaster-Movies-Reference-Work

In meantime there exists more Disaster Movies on the screens, than stars on heaven. For the fan it becomes harder and harder to keep the overview. It seems that the autors had the same problems. They write about all sub-genres from water, lava, earthquakes,to airplanes, snow till radioactivity and fire. They even have chapters about swarms of killeranimals, parodies and invasion from outer space, but they only grat on the surface. For a reference-work this book is far too incomplete. Not a must for the filmbuff but ok for a beginner. For a filmbook they could have included more pictures !

An Entertaining Look at Cinematic 'Guilty Pleasures!'

Movie fans who have either marveled or groaned their way through the likes of 'Earthquake,' 'The Swarm,' 'Beyond the Poseidon Adventure,' 'A Night to Remember' or 'Towering Inferno' should enjoy this amusing look at Disaster Movies. Disaster movies are one of life's guilty pleasures. You can turn off your mind, grab the bucket of popcorn and enjoy. OK, the special effects may be cheesy and the dialogue awful - not to mention the one-dimensional characters and the holes in the plot a mile wide - but it's a disaster movie, for Peter's sake, so enjoy! Key and Rose take the reader through the world of disaster movies, beginning with flicks from the '30s. They divide the films into categories like "Sinking Ships," "Hot Molten Lava," "Those Darn Aliens," etc. and devote 2-5 pages on each film, giving potted plot summaries, highpoints/lowpoints and cracking wise. The book has a five-tier rating system, ranging from "Highly Recommended" to "So Bad it's Good" and also includes lists such as the greatest disaster movie stars, highest-grossing disaster films, disaster movie love themes and so on. Frankly I enjoyed the book. It's funny, informative and dishes out some well-deserved criticisms about its subject.