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.

Unmasked, by Kane Hodder and Michael Aloisi

(hb; 2011: biography/nonfiction.  "Foreword" by Adam Green)


From the inside flap:

"Kane Hodder.  To fans, this name is synonymous with horror, an icon on the level of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Vincent Price.  Kane has appeared as a stunt man and actor in more than two hundred television shows and movies, in a career spanning over thirty years.  His role as Jason Voorhees in four consecutive films of the Friday the 13th series came to define the character feared by millions of fans the world over.  The man behind the hockey mask would seal his fate as horror royalty years later by starring as the monster Victor Crowley in the Hatchet series.

"Unmasked documents the unlikely true story of a boy who was taunted and beaten relentlessly by bullies throughout his childhood.  Kane only escaped his tormentors when he moved to a tiny island in the South Pacific where he lived for all of his teen years.  After living shirtless in a jungle for  awhile, he headed back to America where he fell in love with doing stunts. . . only to have his love burn him, literally.  For the first time ever, Kane tells the true story of the horrific burn injury that nearly killed him at the start of his career.  The entire. . . story of his recovery, the emotional and physical damage it caused and his fight to break back into the industry that almost killed him. . . and triumphant rise to become a film legend are told in Kane's own. . . voice."


Review:

Fun, interesting, warm and blunt read that may disturb readers who aren't into horror films (particularly slasher films) or are afraid of their own darkness - it may, however, prove engrossing for those who are into Kane's oeuvre, gore and monster flicks, and behind-the-scenes takes on cinematic stunt work. 

Worth owning, this.