Books by Barry Atkinson

My previous book on the subject of horror, science fiction, and fantasy films, "You're Not Old Enough Son," chronicled my journeys through the British fantasy cinema scene during the 1950s and 1960s. These were golden years as I viewed them. Years when fantasy fare spanning the decades 1930 to 1960 (but mostly the 1950s) was served up continuously week after week, month after month, and year after year I realized that an audience in the new decade of the 1970s couldn't (and wouldn't) possibly expect to put up good money to sit through a double bill of "Attack of the Crab Monsters" and "The Beast with a Million Eyes," which only a few years earlier would have drawn a full house on a rainy Sunday afternoon at Leatherhead's Crescent cinema. Maybe, just maybe, I should join them and stop burying my head in the past, however glorious that past may have been. So I endeavored to put a brave face on things and think more positively-for all one knew, what was around the corner might not be quite as bad as I imagined it to be. These, then, are my continued travels through the fantasy cinema in England from 1971 to 2005. The views on all films mentioned, as in my last book, are entirely my own!

British author Barry Atkinson chronicles his childhood adventures as an underage horror film fanatic, who, along with his best chums, schemed to sneak into X-rated horror films such as Them!, Tarantula, Rodan, Dracula, Atom Age Vampire, and many other horror and sci-fi classics. Boomer horror film fans longing for those filmic glory days of yesteryear won t want to miss this heartfelt tribute.

Italian sword and sandal burst upon worldwide screens in 1957/8 with the release of Steve Reeves’ The Labors of Hercules/Hercules. Eight years and over 300 films later, peplum, as it was termed, died out as quickly as it had begun. Author Barry Atkinson brings this sadly neglected and misunderstood area of cinema to vivid life, exploring the genre’s origins, roots and major influences, and its myriad of offshoots encompassing swashbuckling, costume and historical dramas, among many. So welcome to a brash, exciting, colorful lost cinematic world of mythical musclemen heroes, gladiators, cavaliers, knights of old, pirates, ancient Egyptians, ancient Romans, Greek gods, Vikings, barbarians and fabulous monsters, not forgetting Robin Hood, Zorro and the Three Musketeers! Follow the amazing adventures of Hercules, Maciste, Ursus, Samson and Goliath; have the senses roused by bloody gladiatorial combat; journey to fabled lost civilizations and Hades; tremble at cataclysmic scenes of mass destruction; admire copious amounts of both male and female flesh; gape at huge armies on the march engaged in mighty battles; shudder to the sounds of ships’ cannonade; revel in evil villains and exotic queens; admire mammoth sets built by the hand of man; applaud at all those outlandish creatures; wonder how a long-forgotten classic epic like Suleiman the Conqueror can languish in the vaults; and giggle as Robin Hood takes on a gang of pirates in Italy’s version of Sherwood Forest! With the publication of this volume, it is hoped that Italian pepla cinema, and all those who took part in it, will reach the wider audience this rarely discussed genre so richly deserves.

Italian sword and sandal burst upon worldwide screens in 1957/8 with the release of Steve Reeves' The Labors of Hercules/Hercules. Eight years and over 300 films later, peplum, as it was termed, died out as quickly as it had begun. Author Barry Atkinson brings this sadly neglected and misunderstood area of cinema to vivid life, exploring the genre's origins, roots and major influences, and its myriad of offshoots encompassing swashbuckling, costume and historical dramas, among many. So welcome to a brash, exciting, colorful lost cinematic world of mythical musclemen heroes, gladiators, cavaliers, knights of old, pirates, ancient Egyptians, ancient Romans, Greek gods, Vikings, barbarians and fabulous monsters, not forgetting Robin Hood, Zorro and the Three Musketeers! Follow the amazing adventures of Hercules, Maciste, Ursus, Samson and Goliath; have the senses roused by bloody gladiatorial combat; journey to fabled lost civilizations and Hades; tremble at cataclysmic scenes of mass destruction; admire copious amounts of both male and female flesh; gape at huge armies on the march engaged in mighty battles; shudder to the sounds of ships' cannonade; revel in evil villains and exotic queens; admire mammoth sets built by the hand of man; applaud at all those outlandish creatures; wonder how a long-forgotten classic epic like Suleiman the Conqueror can languish in the vaults; and giggle as Robin Hood takes on a gang of pirates in Italy's version of Sherwood Forest! With the publication of this volume, it is hoped that Italian pepla cinema, and all those who took part in it, will reach the wider audience this rarely discussed genre so richly deserves.

British author Barry Atkinson (You’re Not Old Enough Son; Indie Horrors!) plunges us into a cinematic world dominated by the atomic bomb and presents us with a buffet of delights, from the rare to the unusual. Although the classics get a deserved mention, the author concentrates mainly on the neglected lesser titles, many not seen for decades, giving them a much-needed public airing. Readers will indulge in chapters devoted to: Key actors, companies, directors and composers! Comparisons between Japanese monster movies and their Americanized counterparts! Scarce, unseen American, British and foreign horror, sci-fi, fantasy features! Stone Age women of the “B” variety! A couple of out-and-out schlock classics! The Abominable Snowman in the 1950s! A reappraisal of much-maligned, but much-loved, guilty pleasures! Toho’s forgotten monsters! Dr. Jekyll’s evil offspring! British science fiction and noir thrillers of the ’50s! Jungle Jim! Chaney, Karloff and Lugosi in the 1950s! Best entrant in Universal’s Creature trilogy! Does colorization enhance a black-and-white favorite? How do monster special effects rate before CGI? Do Regal International’s widescreen program fillers really add up to that much? Which scenes constitute the decade’s most memorable fantasy moments? Does dialogue matter? What impact did New Age science have on the vampire and werewolf myths of old? All this and much, much more in a fresh evaluation of what most fans and critics now recognize as the pivotal decade for horror, sci-fi and fantasy.

The modern Western is so intent on portraying the West as it really was that the end product comes across as a tedious, dimly photographed exercise in grime, gloom and doom. Westerns of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s may not have been entirely accurate in their depiction of the Old West, but they moved like wildfire and entertained prewar and postwar audiences by the millions. Sadly, the classic American Western no longer exists-where good guys were good and bad guys were bad. The great Western hero actors of the past have holstered their six-shooters and ridden off into the fading sunset. Author Atkinson looks at the Western career of four of Hollywood's often overlooked cowpokes: Randolph Scott, Audie Murphy, Joel McCrea and George Montgomery, What these hombres have left behind is a vast body of work that continues to bring pleasure and enjoyment to many, many fans of a certain age, and may even garner a few younger devotees.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the independent, cut-price horror, science fiction and fantasy movie. Movies where most of the aliens are, well, for want of a better word, Alien rip-offs; where the leading men and women display all the emotions of cardboard cut-outs; where decent music is more or less non-existent; where direction veers from the truly sublime to the utterly ridiculous; where plots are ruthlessly plagiarized from other, more high-profile productions; where special effects aren't all that special; where the level of gore has to be seen to be believed; where the hero is good-looking but wooden and the heroine a blonde/brunette bimbo; where the dialogue is stilted and shored up with stock phrases; and where the cheapo ethics immortalized by Edward D. Wood, Jr., Jerry Warren and their ilk are still being kept alive and well by courtesy of Nu Image, Asylum, American World Pictures, North American Pictures, RHI Entertainment, UFO, Castel Film Romania, Cinetel Films, PM Entertainment and a host of other small film companies specializing in low-budget fare. But before we all pronounce sentence, start to sneer, utter hoots of derision and sweep this lot under the carpet, let's pause for a second and take stock of these fascinatingly guilty delights alongside top-rate (but still classed as independent) movies.

Like Scott, Murphy, McCrea and Montgomery, the subjects ofvolume one, the four actors showcased in this second volume, RoryCalhoun, Rod Cameron, Sterling Hayden and Richard Widmark,were all perfectly capable of playing their tough roles with ease becauseof their hard, uncompromising upbringing (especially truein Calhoun's case). ey were also naturals in the saddle, born toride, even Hayden, their combined output in the eld an enduringreminder of how, many, many years ago, the Western movie reignedsupreme over all others. So let's hit four divergent trails out Westwith four contrasting meaner-than-hell hombres and see how theycoped, in true Western tradition, with bad guys (when they weren'tbeing bad guys themselves), Indians on the warpath, sexy saloondames, trigger-happy gunmen, cavalry detachments, double-crossingpartners, devious land-grabbers, crooked logging-grabbers, corruptlawmen, ladies (and tomboys) in peril, dishonest town o cials,the construction of railroads on schedule across hostile terrain, thefelling of timber and, in two instances, the legendary battle of theAlamo, all lmed in and around America's breathtaking untamed,rocky native scenery. You won't be bored for a single second!