So many I began to giggle and couldn't help but remember this scene from Seinfeld. Seriously, this book has A LOT of exclamation points. Landis's characteristic exuberance pours across every page captured in about 1000 exclamation points. This entire book really does read like a love letter from a fanboy. Landis hasn't made a lot of monster movies, but what makes him the perfect person to put together a book like this is two-fold: 1) he's a screaming fanboy for the genre and 2) he's best friends with a lot of the directors - and more significantly, special effects masters, who make the monsters come to life. He's also famous for Animal House and The Blues Brothers (and a plethora of cheesy stinkers that I won't mention here). Landis, who wrote and directed one of my favorite movies of all time - An American Werewolf in London. I have a bit of fangirl squee going on for Mr. This is just a really, really funny film.How could I resist a behemoth, colorful coffee table book about cinematic monsters put together by the legendary John Landis? I couldn't of course, it would have been impossible, which is why I'm writing this review. Some beautiful bits of background business too - the hippie in the background of the 2001 scene, just ignoring the portentous foreground action while eating his frozen custard is worth a look. Set-pieces - like the 2001 parody, the bar scene where the monster 'Schlock' observes a Jose Feliciano-like blind musician playing a piano boogie and ends up joining in, and a very funny scene where the allegedly fearful Schlock goes into a cinema to see a horror movie, and is terrified - all come off perfectly. What sets this one apart is its sustained comic atmosphere, which is goofy, laconic and giddy. (Others like this were sketch comedy flicks like Landis's 'Kentucky Fried Movie' plus the Mel Brooks and Woody Allen movies of around the same time). 'Schlock' falls in neatly with other 'progressive' US comedy movies of the early 70s, which kicked around genre conventions and added a new frankness in language and toilet humour to US film comedy vocabulary. John Landis's first movie may be as good as anything he made.

John landis monsters in the movies