Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film

Now this book is thick! It has every film of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and even Thriller/Psychotronic nature between its covers, as well as TV Films - and not just the USA, but most of the foreign fantastic films, from 1896 through early 1999. I'd forgotten about this book and when I leafed through it, I remembered why. The format is rather dull and therefore forgettable. Because it includes every film of that certain stripe, the print size is rather small to squeeze all of them in (us older guys may have to squint once in a while). Here is a sample page: The information stressed is of factual nature: all the actors involved with each film, most of the production people, the year & studio of course, capped by a one-sentence description of the film. This actually demonstrates the skill required to describe each & every film here-in effectively with just one turn-of-phrase.

The book is over 1000 pages, but the main alphabetical listing is at just over 700 pages; there follows a massive 300-page Index of Artists (all Actors, Directors, etc.) and Film Chronology by year (again, in that very small type, so beware). This is not for those who want to find out details of a film's plot or opinions on the quality of each (though the one-sentence descriptions do manage to impart a sense of good/mediocre/or bad). This is for those who want to find if a certain actor appeared in a certain Sci-Fi film or if even a certain Sci-Fi film exists at all. Finally, I don't know why the sub-title of the book is "Ali Baba to Zombies." The first film listed is "Aaron's Magic Village" (not Abbott & Costello...) and the last is "Zvenigora."