John Wooley

Michael H. Price's FORGOTTEN HORRORS series of film encyclopedias lurches along through the 1950s with FORGOTTEN HORRORS VOL. 6: UP FROM THE DEPTHS -- a chronicle of the horror-movie revival of 1955-1957, with insightful contributions from Jan Alan Henderson and John Wooley. The rise of Roger Corman and Ray Harryhausen, the trendsetting teenage-monster cycle of Herman Cohen, the obsessions with gigantism of Bert I. Gordon, the emergence of Hammer Films, the unheralded genius of monster-maker Paul Blaisdell -- all are here, along with studies and sketches of numerous films of both prominence and obscurity. Price's unique study of the relationship between the horror-comics scare of the post-WWII years and the resurgence of horror in film rounds out the package -- a 300-page marvel of pop-cultural insights, perceptive social criticism, and irresponsible cheap thrills.

Michael H. Price and John Wooley continue their exploration of the Badlands of Grindhouse Cinema with "Forgotten Horrors to the Nth Degree" -- an expanded compilation of their acclaimed "Forgotten Horrors" columns for FANGORIA magazine, and a continuation of the long-running FORGOTTEN HORRORS series of movie-history books, spanning from 1929 into times more recent. The Afterword is by artist and film theorist Stephen R. Bissette, who chronicles a wealth of chillers with origins in his native Vermont. The cappers include a comprehensive survey of the bizarre filmmaking career of Larry Buchanan (of "Mars Needs Women"), a sampling of Mike Price's long-out-of-print newspaper and New York Times News Service columns, a primary-source history of the Gore Film Trilogy of Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman, and a study-in-depth of Leo Fong's career in martial-arts thrillers.

The acclaimed FORGOTTEN HORRORS film-history series yields its first graphic novel in FORGOTTEN HORRORS COMICS & STORIES -- a collection of comic-book novellas inspired by the low-rent chillers covered in the first five volumes of FORGOTTEN HORRORS, from the Depression years into the Atom-Age 1950s and '60s. From riffs on THE MAN FROM PLANET X and DESTINATION MOON, to takeoffs on THE VAMPIRE BAT and THE BLOB, to the long-unseen TOR JOHNSON--HOLLYWOOD STAR, here is a collection to delight the lover of maverick movies and offbeat comics. The book also marks a decisive tie-in between the FORGOTTEN HORRORS series and Mike Price's COMICS FROM THE GONE WORLD series of graphic novels.

When inventor and movie studio pioneer Thomas Edison wanted to capture western magic on film in 1904, where did he send his crew?To Oklahoma's 101 Ranch near Ponca City. And when Francis Ford Coppola readied young actors Tom Cruise and Matt Dillon to portray teen class strife in the 1983 movie The Outsiders, he took cast and crew to Tulsa, the setting of S. E. Hinton's acclaimed novel. From Edison to Coppola and beyond, Oklahoma has served as both backdrop and home base for cinematic productions. The only book to chronicle the history of made-in-Oklahoma films, John Wooley's Shot in Oklahoma explores the variety, spunk, and ingenuity of moviemaking in the Sooner State over more than a century.Wooley's trek through cinematic history, buttressed by meticulous research and interviews, hits the big films readers have heard of - but maybe didn't realize were shot in the state - along with lesser-known offerings. We also get the films' intriguing backstories. For instance, President Theodore Roosevelt's fascination with a man purportedly able to catch a wolf in his hands led to The Wolf Hunt, shot in the Wichita Mountains and screened in the White House in 1909. Over time, homegrown movies such as Where the Red Fern Grows (1974, 2003) have given way to feature films including The Outsiders and Rain Man (1988). Throughout this tale, Wooley draws attention to unsung aspects of state and cinematic history, including early all-black movies lensed in Oklahoma's African American towns and films starring American Indian leads.With a nod to more recent Hollywood productions such as Twister (1996) and Elizabethtown (2005), Wooley ultimately explores how a low-budget slasher movie created in Oklahoma in the 1980s transformed the movie business worldwide. Punctuated with photographs and including a filmography of more than one hundred productions filmed in the state, Shot in Oklahoma offers movie lovers and historians alike an engaging ride through untold cinematic history.