The revised and expanded sequel to Michael H. Price and George E. Turner's groundbreaking "Forgotten Horrors: The Original Volume--Except More So" covers the development of the independent movie studios' approach to horror, weird mystery, and science fiction during a period of banishment for the genre by the British and European boards of censorship. "The notorious Horror Ban of the late 1930s accounted for some dark days in Hollywood," says lead author Mike Price. "The British Board of Censors had been trying its level best since the late silent-era years to keep the creepier fare out of England, but the group had concentrated on individual titles, such as 1932's Island of Lost Souls and Freaks, until a coalition developed with the European censors. The foreign market was lucrative enough for the Hollywood studios that this embargo had some teeth. Strange that the censors neglected to notice the moral lessons implicit in classic horror fiction, usually in a warning about 'tampering with things man was meant to leave alone.' "The ban lasted from 1936-1937 until well into 1939, when the genre enthusiasts had become sufficiently fed up to make a major hit out of the simple reissue of 1931's Dracula and Frankenstein as a double feature," adds Price. "Universal Pictures challenged the ban by reuniting Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi for the entirely new 'Son of Frankenstein' in 1939, and the ban found itself broken." 'Forgotten Horrors Vol. 2: Beyond the Horror Ban' offers an in-depth study of how the prolific smaller studios made it through the ban and rallied in its wake. The new edition covers a stretch from 1938 through 1942, dovetailing with the recently published 'Forgotten Horrors: The Original Volume-Except More So.' New light is directed onto Lugosi's 10 starring features for the tiny studios of PRC Pictures and Monogram Pictures, Karloff's series of 'Mr. Wong' detective adventures, and an unusual series teaming Mantan Moreland and Frankie Darro as an integrated team of amateur detectives. Chapters new to this edition cover the haunted-house comedy 'Comes Midnight, ' the African expeditionary picture 'Dark Rapture, ' and a lowbrow wartime comedy, 'Hillbilly Blitzkrieg, ' that contains a surprising foreshadowing of Stanley Kubrick's 'Dr. Strangelove' (1964). A key chapter, "Beyond the Horror Ban," relates the little-known tale of how one theatre in Beverly Hills provoked Universal Pictures to challenge the censors. The book also shows how subversive elements of terror and creepy mystery insinuated themselves into otherwise conventional films during the span of the ban. Vol. 2 also unearths neglected items from the fabled Tyler, Texas, Black Film Collection at Southern Methodist University-Price was among the original discoverers of that trove of historic motion pictures-and resurrects forgotten performances by such celebrated figures of Old Hollywood as Peter Lorre, Dorothy Dandridge, and Franklyn Pangborn. The survey cuts across many distinct genres, from Westerns to comedies to crime thrillers and disaster pictures, all compiled from primary-source research and exclusive interviews. The Foreword is by Josh Alan Friedman, the author of such books as "Tell the Truth until They Bleed," and (with illustrator Drew Friedman) "Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental." The Forgotten Horrors books, which originated in 1980, have been designated as Standard Desk References by the American Film Institute. Five volumes have been completed, with revisions and expansions in place on the first two books, refinements in progress on Vol. 3 and Vol. 4, and additional volumes in preparation. Price and the late George E. Turner originated the series as an offshoot of their research on behalf of the American Film Institute. Price and Turner also are responsible for such books as "The Making of King Kong (Spawn of Skull Island)" (1975-2002) and "The Cinema of Adventure, Romance & Terror" (1989).

The 1940s is a lost decade in horror cinema, undervalued and written out of most horror scholarship. This book deconstructs persistent scholarly discourse by re-evaluating the historical, political, economic, and cultural factors of 1940s horror cinema to recover a decade of horror.

Welcome to the Forgotten Horrors cinematic world of weird mysteries and patent oddities, if not outright chillers, from low-rent, independent, North American filmmaking companies. Hold on to your hats as we cover gems such as: The Lion Man; Thunderbolt; The Leavenworth Case; Prison Shadows; Kliou (The Tiger); Robinson Crusoe of Clipper Island; African Holiday; Blake of Scotland Yard; Larceny on the Air; The Devil Diamond; Hit the Saddle; The Girl from Scotland Yard; It Happened Out West; Killers of the Sea; Angkor, or Forbidden Adventure; Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde; The 13th Man; Rod La Rocque's "Shadow"; Shadows of the Orient; Outlaws of the Orient; S O S Coast Guard; Sky Racket; Special Agent K-7; Safari on Wheels; Love Life of a Gorilla; Telephone Operator; Orphan of the Pecos; Wolves of the Sea; The Black Doll; Hollywood Stadium Mystery; Forbidden Adventure; Fury Below; The Adventures of Chico; Zamboanga; Life Returns; Durango Valley Raiders; It Happened in Chicago; The Night Hawk; The Karloff "Mr. Wong" Pictures; Shadows over Shanghai; Titans of the Deep; Mystery Plane; The Mystic Circle Murders; S.O.S.--Tidal Wave; Death Goes North; Daughter of the Tong; Adventures of the Masked Phantom; Torture Ship; Hitler--Beast of Berlin; The Devil's Daughter; The Invisible Killer; Son of Ingagi; Phantom Rancher; Drums of Fu Manchu; Sky Bandits; On the Spot; The Leopard Men of Africa; Haunted House; Billy the Kid Outlawed; The Ranger and the Lady; The Ape; Midnight Shadow; Phantom of Chinatown; The Devil Bat; The Blood of Jesus; The Lone Rider Rides On; You're Out of Luck; The Great Train Robbery; The Forgotten Village; Mr. District Attorney; City of Missing Girls; Adventures of Captain Marvel; Federal Fugitives; Bride of Buddha; Invisible Ghost; King of the Zombies; The Shark Woman; The Gang's All Here; Murder by Invitation; Criminals Within; Up Jumped the Devil; Saddle Mountain Roundup; Mercy Island; Jungle Man; Spooks Run Wild; The Devil Pays Off; I Killed That Man; Four Shall Die; Mr. District Attorney in the Carter Case; Private Snuffy Smith; Law of the Jungle; Lucky Ghost; Professor Creeps; Black Dragons; The Man with Two Lives; Spy Smasher; House of Errors; The Panther's Claw; Home in Wyomin'; The Corpse Vanishes; The Mad Monster; Jungle Siren; Tomorrow We Live; Phantom Killer; The Devil with Hitler; Criminal Investigator; Bowery at Midnight; Outlaws of Boulder Pass; Hitler--Dead or Alive; Valley of Hunted Men; The Living Ghost; Secrets of the Underground

The 3rd book in the critically acclaimed Forgotten Horrors series covers forgotten films from 1943 through 1946 and includes an extensive annotations, marginalia and addenda to prior volumes. Films such as Haunted Ranch, The Ape Man, Ghosts on the Loose, Women in Bondage, the Charlie Chan films, Fog Island, The Tiger Woman, etc. are covered as well as many other poverty row and low-budget films of the 1940s. This book is a must have for all fans of classic (and not-so-classic) genre cinema.

While you may think the old adage about oil and water being unable to mix applies perfectly to the cinema of terror and the craft of great acting, many a grease-painted scare and fluid performance have been combined in the strange alchemy that is the horror film. From the silent mastery of Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera to the cultured cannibalism of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, the genre has seen an impressive number of noteworthy portrayals, far removed from the stereotypical leering monster and terrified maiden. Part One of this work highlights the stars of this screen style—those whose numerous roles and outstanding performances made their names synonymous with horror cinema. Part Two covers actors who, although not normally associated with the genre, still contributed to its history. Part Three covers the great actresses in horror films and highlights their acting achievement. An appendix lists all the Academy Award nominations and winners in the horror genre.

The publication in 1980 of "Forgotten Horrors: Early Talkie Chillers from Poverty Row" launched a new direction in film scholarship by subjecting the weirder movies of Old Hollywood's low-rent district to the scholarly and critical attention customarily reserved for acknowledged classics from the big studios. Authors George E. Turner and Michael H. Price staked out a distinctive territory while rediscovering little-seen favorites and identifying early work from important stars-to-be and emerging major directors. "We intended the title, 'Forgotten Horrors, ' to be a challenge-a self-denying prophecy," says Mike Price in announcing a new edition, revised and expanded. "With very few exceptions, such as 'White Zombie' and 'The Vampire Bat, ' these Depression-era pictures had been popularly forgotten through neglect, careless archiving, and inconsistent copyright maintenance. We sought to make them less 'forgotten.' "George and I covered more than 100 such films from 1929-1937 in the original edition, and within a few years of its publication many of these pictures started cropping up on the home-video market," adds Price. "One large-scale video dealer went so far as to publish a catalogue called 'Forgotten Horrors.' Mission accomplished." The new edition, Forgotten Horrors: The Original Volume-Except More So, features many new chapters and an introduction by Mel Brooks-the filmmaker responsible for such horror pictures as "Young Frankenstein" and David Cronenberg's "The Fly." The expansion will serve both to unearth additional rarities and to restore much of the original manuscript. At the behest of the original publisher, the Tantivy Press of London, the authors had removed many chapters for the sake of brevity-including coverage of such significant independent films as Sam Goldwyn's "Bulldog Drummond" and Harold Lloyd's creepy comedy "Welcome Danger," both from 1929. These and others have been restored to the text, along with many photographs and advertising images previously unpublished. A key new discovery is a lost film by acclaimed director Edgar G. Ulmer, "The Warning Shadow"-made shortly before Ulmer's big-time breakthrough with the Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi starrer "The Black Cat" (1934). While "The Warning Shadow" remains a missing film, Price has traced its surviving footage to an unlikely location and reports accordingly on the find. More than 50 new chapters complete the package, ranging from weird Westerns to ghostly crime melodramas and offbeat comedies. The book's 370 pages cover the rise of such iconic stars as Boris Karloff, Ginger Rogers, and Gene Autry; the decline of many silent-era talents who stuck around through the arrival of talking pictures in the late 1920s; and significant relationships between such major studios as Columbia and Universal and low-budget companies including Tiffany, Majestic, Victory, and Monogram. Michael H. Price and the late George Turner, longtime editor of "American Cinematographer" magazine, also are responsible for such books as "The Making of King Kong" ("Spawn of Skull Island") (1975-2002); "Forgotten Horrors Vol. 2" (2001); and "The Cinema of Adventure, Romance & Terror" (1989). Price also has delivered Vols. 3-5 of the "Forgotten Horrors" series in collaboration with genre historians John Wooley and Jan Alan Henderson. A collection of Price's film reviews for the New York Times News Service (1985-1998) is in preparation.