Free (Kindle/Kobo/ePub) Cult Sci-Fi Movies: Discover 10… [Pop Culture Cinema Essays]

[ATDrake]

Cult Sci-Fi Movies: Discover the 10 Best Intergalactic, Astonishing, Far-Out, and Epic Cinema Classics by Danny Peary (Wikipedia), a much-published professional film critic, is a collection of essays devoted to Exactly What It Says In The Title, free courtesy of publisher Workman.

This seems a bit on the sampler-y side to promote Peary's other upcoming cult cinema books which are advertised in the front of this (only 10 essays compared to the 30+ that the other volumes are getting).

But the 10 provided are fairly substantial, full-length essays that go into a fair amount of depth and not only discuss the films as such, but also provide nifty behind-the-scenes production notes and other trivia, plus pictures and further recommended viewing.

So, if this is the going to be the trend in samplers instead of those silly first-chapter excerpt things, I'm all for it.

And this does cover not only the sort of schlock cinema that makes it to cult status on So Bad It's Good™ reputation, but also genuinely quality films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey.

So you get a nifty selection from Barbarella to Zardoz, both of which are notorious for putting its stars into the skimpy cut-down outfits of the imagined future, although Sean Connery's red diaper from the latter is far more widely disseminated* on the internets, as far as I can tell.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK), Kobo & Google Play (both available to Canadians).

ETA: Now also free @ B&N (also UK).

ETA 2: Now also free @ iTunes (available to Canadians).

And this has been the selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.

Because even though I'm considerably more picky about my sci-fi watches than my science fiction reads, this is actually a pretty nifty guide to some of what's out there, and if the other books in the upcoming series are also equally nicely and interestingly done, I might even consider picking them up when the good discount codes are floating around (especially since they're already set at a relatively low cost and also couponable @ Kobo), which is the entire point of offering an official publisher promo freebie to begin with.

So, (maybe) mission accomplished, Workman!

Enjoy!

Description
Cult Sci-Fi Movies is a collection of 10 essays that examine, dissect, defend, and exalt the greats of classic cult sci-fi films. Film geeks, cinema snobs, VHS collectors, and anyone else who likes their entertainment a little on the weird side will appreciate author Danny Peary’s in-depth approach to their favorite sci-fi films ranging from Barbarella to Liquid Sky.

* If you have somehow managed to miss seeing the one screenshot of this which has been making the rounds for years as an example of Why You Shouldn't Design Costumes On Drugs and/or It'll Take A Lot More Than That To Disassociate Yourself From Your James Bond Role If That's What You Were Aiming At and/or The 70s Were A Bad, Sad Time For Anything That Wasn't Rock Music, there's a handy pic of it in this review of Zardoz, along with Sean Connery wearing a wedding dress.

Also, after seeing those and being baffled as to how they came to be, don't miss The Onion AV Club's excellent Commentary Tracks of the Damned feature† which analyzes the Zardoz DVD commentary, among others, for just what seems to have gone wrong.

† I really, really wish they'd do more of these things, which are some of the most enjoyable media-related reading I've ever done.

[TrevorViking]

Looks great, looking forward to reading this one. Thanks ATD!

[crich70]

I recognized all but 2 of the movies mentioned in the book.

[Xanthe]

Thanks!

[Dr. Drib]

Got it.

Thank you!

[ATDrake]

Now also free @ B&N (also UK).

I'll add that the 1st of the full-length books is out, Cult Horror Movies: Discover the 33 Best Scary, Suspenseful, Gory, and Monstrous Cinema Classics, which I bought via Kobo last week (pre-discounted to $4.99 and further couponable!) and I can give it a definite recommend.

There's a good range of stuff from the very well-known (e.g. Psycho and Night of the Living Dead), to the rather obscure (e.g. I Married A Monster From Outer Space and Martin, an early George Romero work about a maybe-vampire), to foreign film classics (e.g. Godzilla and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), and the essays which I've read thus far have been very informative and interesting and insightful regarding not just the stuff in the actual films, but also what influenced or went into the making of them (e.g. for An American Werewolf in London, he also talks a bit about the impact of other then-popular werewolf depictions in novels such as Gary Brandner's The Howling, which IIRC we've received as a KDP Select freebie in the past) and also how they were received by audiences and critics at the time.

It turns out that these are mostly excerpted from Peary's classic "Cult Movies" books from the 80s and 90s (Wikipedia entry), moderately updated (there's a mention of the Twilight film franchise), and he himself was a apparently a key figure in popularizing the notion of cult cinema.

Even though horror is really not my thing, I really liked this volume, enough that I've decided I'm definitely picking up the two others upcoming (for Crime and Midnight movies, which are much more the sort of stuff I'd actually watch), and I'm intrigued enough by his comments on some of the more suspense/sfnal-tilted films included in the Horror volume that I might actually go look some of them up.

[ATDrake]

At some point this also showed up as a freebie @ iTunes (available to Canadians). Linkage edited into the OP, since it's been a while.

I'd also like to point out that all 3 volumes of the Danny Peary film essay books that this freebie was meant to promote are currently on sale for $1.99 each at Kobo (couponable), where they seem to be a lingering price-drop from a previous promotion (varying state of price-match in other stores).

• Cult Crime Movies: Discover the 35 Best Dark, Dangerous, Thrilling, and Noir Cinema Classics
• Cult Horror Movies: Discover the 33 Best Scary, Suspenseful, Gory, and Monstrous Cinema Classics
• Cult Midnight Movies: Discover the 37 Best Weird, Sleazy, Sexy, and Crazy Good Cinema Classics

Anyway, I highly recommend all of these, as even though I haven't read all the essays in them because of heavy spoilers for the films I'm intending to watch first, I have read enough of the films I've already/don't intend to watch, and they're very insightful and informative and were well worth the price I paid when they came out, and now they're even cheaper for you to enjoy (for a limited time).