From Publishers Weekly
Having alternately shocked, perplexed and fascinated viewers for years, the most violent films in American cinema-from Reservoir Dogs to Apocalypse Now to Raging Bull-get their proper due in this volume from the author of The Films of Sam Peckinpah. (Peckinpah is the notoriously gore-loving director of Westerns.) Fulwood fairly races through a smorgasbord of gruesome flicks. Thankfully, he chooses well, although minor footnotes like Executive Decision somehow sneak in with all-time classics like Psycho. Fulwood's fervor for the genre is addictive, and it should make readers forgive the book's hopscotching structure, which can haul them from John Woo to Tarantino to Scorsese and back in a blink. The author has an obvious facility with cinematic criticism, and is able to put works in their proper contexts without sounding densely academic. For that reason, a more thoughtful introduction about violence and its critical role in film culture would have been welcome. But even without one, Fulwood's giddy reverence of the films he chooses makes for a highly readable tour of the dark side of Hollywood history. 50 b&w illus.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Here are 100 of the most violent films in cinema history, the ones that viscerally affected moviegoers and stayed fixed in their minds forever. Understand how and why these films work through an illuminating analysis of their influence and iconography in such classics as Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, and John Woo's The Killer. See how directors kept pushing back the boundaries of acceptable violence, from the slicing of an eyeball in Un Chien Andalou to the chopping of an ear in Reservoir Dogs, from the creepy voyeurism of Peeping Tom to the shocking shower scene in Psycho, Amorality, anti-heroism, censorship, controversy, and the continuing popularity of the violent image to kickstart a movie and provide thrills all receive an enlightening discussion. Plus: an endpiece written in the light of September 11th .
