Tawdry Tales and Confessions from Horror’s Boy Next Door by William Butler

(oversized pb; 2021: nonfiction/memoir)

From the back cover

“In the last forty years, actor, director and former effects artist William Butler has easily lived three lifetimes. From his early beginnings creating super-8 horror shorts and working the circus midway to a blissful existence as a producer-director living in the Hollywood hills, he’s seen it all, gained it all and lost it all.

“Tawdry Tales chronicles the jaw-dropping, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking life an industrious young artist who started out with an unflinching determination to work in film and who’s somehow became ‘Horror’s Boy Next Door,’ appearing in dozens of movies along the genre’s most legendary villains, including Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13^th, Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the George Romero zombies from Night of the Living Dead. Butler chalks it all up to having a face you just want to hit with a butch knife.

“Butler lovingly has transcribed thirty-five years’ worth of journals he kept into one fascinating and heartfelt memoir that follows his story around the world as he worked with and, in some cases, lived with some of Hollywood’s most beloved and ‘colorful’ personalities including Viggo Mortensen, Leslie Jordan, Tom Sizemore and the legendary Prince.”

 

Review

Tawdry is a fast-moving, heartfelt, funny, smart, and relatable tell-all book about how Butler went from making backyard films and FX with his small-town childhood friends (including John Vulich, who later went on to become a legendary FX artist) to becoming an FX artist himself, as well as a successful, LA-based writer and director, one who struggled with chemical addiction and his sexuality.

There’s a lot of great stories in this, from his chance meeting with film director Joe Dante, working with FX legends Tom Savini and John Carl Buechler, as well as actors Kane Hodder, Malcolm McDowell, Barbara Crampton, Jeffrey Combs, Klaus Kinski, Royal Dano, Yvonne DeCarlo Christopher Reeve, Danny Trejo, and Madonna.

An excellent and hard-to-set-down read, this is worth owning, whether you’re a hardcore movie fan or a more casual reader who enjoys reading about celebrities and character actors.

The Howling by Gary Brandner

(pb; 1977: first book in The Howling trilogy)

From the back cover:

"Karyn and her husband Roy had come to the peaceful California village of Drago to escape the savagery of the city. On the surface Drago appeared to be like most small rural towns. 

"But it was not.


"The village had a most unsavory history. Unexplained disappearances, sudden deaths.
People just vanished, never to be found."


Review:

Howling is a waste-no-words, excellent read, one of my favorite werewolf works in the horror genre. It illustrates, in a cinematic, lycanthrophic and terror-toned manner, the disintegration of a marriage in the wake of a brutal, no-one-is-safe-anywhere rape, even as the husband and wife (Karen and Roy) change in startling ways.

At the time of this writing, this type of story has become common (with varying degrees of quality) in the horror genre. What sets Howling apart from other shape-shifter-based tales is Brandner's superb focus and editing, which keeps its storyline entertaining and palatable, without sacrificing the efficacy of its underlying, disturbing and personal themes.

This standout work is worth owning, one of the best furs-&-fangs genre entries of recent memory.

Followed by The Howling II.

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The loosely linked, resulting film was released stateside on April 10, 1981. Joe Dante directed it, based on a script by John Sayles and Terence H. Winkless.

Dee Wallace played Karen White. Christopher Stone played R. William 'Bill' Neill. Dennis Duggan played Chris. Belinda Balaski played Terry Fisher. Kevin McCarthy played Fred Francis.
Patrick Macnee played Dr. George Waggner. John Carradine played Erle Kenton. Slim Pickens played Sam Newfield. Elisabeth Brooks played Marsha Quist. Robert Picardo played Eddie Quist. Don McLeod played T.C. Quist.

An uncredited Roger Corman played "Man in Phone Booth". An uncredited John Sayles (mentioned earlier as the film's co-screenwriter) played "Morgue Attendant". An uncredited Jonathan Kaplan played "Gas Station Attendant".

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For those interested in the entire book series, all of the The Howling novels have been collected into one omnibus volume, The Howling Trilogy.