I Was a Monster Movie Maker: Conversations With 22 Sf and Horror Filmmakers - Hardcover

Writer Tom Weaver lives in Sleepy Hollow, New York, and has been interviewing moviemakers since the early 1980s. He has contributed to numerous magazines, including Fangoria, Starlog, Monsters of the Vault and Video Watchdog. He is also the author of Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Flashbacks (1998, $38.50), Return of the B Science Fiction and Horror Heroes (1999 [1988/1991], $30), Poverty Row HORRORS! (1999 [1993], $25) and John Carradine: The Films (1999, $65).

Weaver interviews 22 cheap monster-movie vets, the likes of Phil Brown, star of I Wanted Wings (1941), who later played Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen in Star Wars and who recalls working in Weird Woman and other '40s fear fests with Lon Chaney Jr. Maureen O'Sullivan recalls tree-top days with Johnny Weissmuller, playing Jane to his Tarzan and meeting Edgar Rice Burroughs, but not her recently rediscovered nude swimming sequence in some Ape Man epic. Ray Walston recollects his turn as TV's My Favorite Martian, his Emmy-winning tenure on the Picket Fences , and Bela Lugosi's drinking, acting tips, and pronouncement that Walston was "the best Renfield I've ever had." Best of show is the talk with Candace Hilligoss, star of the delectably grim low-budget gem Carnival of Souls (1962). She reports wanting to mount a sequel to Herk Harvey's prototypical cult classic but having the project stolen and eventually made into a flaccid 1989 flicker. Mike Tribby
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