FrightFest Guide SC (2016-2024 Fab Press) The Dark Heart of Cinema comic books 2021-2023

Volume 5 - 1st printing. "Grindhouse Movies!"

By Alan Jones. Foreword by Jane Giles.

Just when you thought it was safe to stop repeating "It's only a movie... only a movie... only a movie!" it's time to take a stroll down the dark and deviant back alleys of the Exploitation film industry. Your host, acclaimed film critic and broadcaster Alan Jones, returns with another mind-boggling trawl through the glittering gutters of cinema to uncover yet more obscure Grindhouse gold.

For this astounding sequel to his acclaimed FrightFest Guide to Exploitation Movies, Jones has chosen the most underrated, alluring or flat-out disastrous sick flicks from the eye-opening epoch that created an obsessed generation of slavering besotted fans. From red light district fleapits to neon-drenched 42nd Street dives and late night Drive-Ins, Jones forensically catalogued everything for posterity, pre-determining cult status even though he didn't realize it at the time.

With a foreword by Jane Giles, the award-winning author of Scala Cinema 1978-1993, along with a highly personal, informative introduction by Jones, you can now take a walk on the wild side of chronic B-movie adoration, guided by the one person who knows the astonishing, once maligned, now lauded genre better than anyone else.

Softcover, 240 pages, PC/PB&W.

Cover price $24.95.

Volume 6 - 1st printing. "Vampire Movies!"

By Nathaniel Thompson. Introduction By Alan Jones. Foreword by Kim Newman.

For centuries, mankind has been chilled by tales of vampires. A fixture of literature, art, and folk tales, the vampire was a natural early choice for a movie monster at the dawn of cinema and has remained popular ever since as the screen's most enduring and sexually charged nightmare figure.

Within these bloodstained pages, you'll discover that vampires of the silver screen are far more complex and diverse than variations on Dracula and other staples like Carmilla and the Countess Elizabeth Bathory. All the icons are here, from Bela Lugosi and Max Schreck's pioneering fiends to the heyday of Hammer Films, but that's just a sanguinary taste of what's to come as you explore macabre offerings from Hong Kong, India, Italy, France, Germany, and more.

Cover Design by Harvey Fenton, based on Spanish poster artwork for Salem's Lot (1979) and Japanese poster artwork for Dracula (1958).

Softcover, 240 pages, PC/PB&W.

Cover price $24.95.

Add to cart Near Mint $17.95

Add to cart Near Mint $17.95

Volume 7 - 1st printing. "Mad Doctors Movies!" By Doctor John Llewellyn Probert. Foreword by Tom Six. Mad medics... sinister surgeons... psychopathic psychiatrists. We put our trust in them. They say they want to help, to cure, to relieve pain and soothe suffering. They claim those experiments they've been performing are for the greater good of mankind. But what if they actually want the opposite? What happens when doctors are dead set on researching the strange, the bizarre, the weird? What happens when all that scientific and medical knowledge only results in the creation of unimaginable horror? Ever since the dawn of cinema, filmmakers have been depicting on screen the potential outcomes of medical madness and science gone sick. John Llewellyn Probert takes a detailed look at the history of one of the most enduring archetypes in cinema, with an introductory overview of the genre followed by reviews of over 200 key mad doctor movies. In addition to critical appraisal, the author's own medical background allows him to provide a unique insight into just how well the filmmakers have done their homework. Softcover, 8-in. x 11-in., 240 pages, full color. Parental Advisory Cover price $24.95.