Bela Lugosi Books

In a world of modern technology and advancements that could ask the questions of God and life there is Dracula. whos mere prescence declares that there are things which could not be explained by science. The book is well written and leaves the reader largely unaware of the terrors lurking in the night. I read this book to get a feel of the vampire roots. i was not let down. That was until the end. when dracula and all the demonic creations were finished off so quickly that it felt more like a cop out rather than the ending to a masterpiece. that i was expecting. On the whole the book was fantastic. Until the end.

As the title implies, this book focuses on the films of Bela Lugosi. It has a 30 page biography which gives a good overall idea of Lugosi's carreer without going into much detail. The rest of the book is a list of all of Lugosi's movies, with cast and crew details, contemporary reviews and the author's comments about each of his American sound movies, and also a list with brief descriptions of all of his European films and American silent films. The book also contains literally hundreds of pictures.

This is not a book that you would read cover to cover but rather a book for the Lugosi fan to come back to whenever you want to read about a specific Lugosi movie. So if you are just looking for a Lugosi biography, you may want to borrow this book in a library and read the biography section and also look for other books or articles, but if you're a Lugosi fan, this is a nice book to own.

As a co-author of the book, I can only reiterate what my colleagues write regarding the modern fascination with Lugosi and his films. With his dark good looks, his piercing blue eyes, his commanding presence and his deliberate manner of speaking, audiences are still mesmerized by the man's presence. This book is an overview of his long career, analyzing the good and the bad movies (and there were plenty of both) he starred in. It is written with warmth and humor, and is a must for any film fan.

Despite the presence and Gary and Susan Svehla, some good material makes its way onto the page. As the "editors", though, the couple might have made another pass at Susan's shabby as hell "Son of Frankenstein" section. As it stands now, it's as self-satisfied and disorganized as their conventions . . .

While later books in the MM Actors series, such as the recent one on Peter Lorre, do not have such a problem, the earlier books on Karloff and Lugosi suffer from "chapters" that are too often illiterate or semi-literate plot summaries rather than knowledgable review and commentary on the film to which the chapter is supposedly devoted. I'd say the batting average here is about 50%, making the book worth buying, with a bit of reservation.

A good book but I noticed some obvious mistakes from the "get-go" like in the opening statements when it was said that Lugos was formerly Romania but now Hungary but it is actually the opposite- formerly Hungary but now Romania! Also, there was much repetition in the quotes in the book. Other than that it was actually one of the better books on Bela that I have read. I am Canadian but speak Hungarian and love Bela so I am always looking for a good biography of his!

This book is a good overview of Lugosi's career, but I have some doubts as to its accuracy because it was so poorly edited. It almost reads like a first draft.
I mean, this thing, has extra commas, just dropped in, like pepper!
Oftentimes names are spelled one way at the opening of a paragraph, and another way at the end. Sentences are repeated from page to page as though the author pasted but forgot to cut.

At one point a paragraph even begins by announcing a "Film review of Spooks Gone Wild:"
This is then followed by four paragraphs about another film entirely, "Black Dragons."

Did anybody read this thing a second time before going to press? So incredibly sloppy!

How can I even believe the basic facts the author presents if he and his editor can't even get sixth grade composition down?

This book made an instant fan of Bela Lugosi,from it i learned that he did more films than just 'Dracula'but he did lots of other things too.the book made hunt out more of Bela's iilms and i'm sure i drove my wife mad getng them,but i enjoyed every singe one of them,all thanks to this book.my favouites are "Scared To Death' and"Invisible Ghost".i would tell all new ela fans to hunt out this book as so much i crammed to it on just a small page count.Larry Edwards did a great job for the master of terror.i love this book.

Only Lugosi completests should purchase this book. It is filled with numerous factual errors and offers absolutely nothing new that has not already been covered by other books. Lugosi fans would be better served to buy Gary Don Rhode's or Greg Mank's books or any of a number of other Lugosi related works.

"Nightmare of Ecstasy" is the only existing chronicle of
Ed Wood, Jr.'s body of cinematic and written work. The problem with it is that the interviews used to tell the story make George W. Bush's oratory skills sound like Shakespeare. In other words, the comments are not very well articulated and thought-out. At times, "Nightmare of Ecstasy" reads like a comic book: full of sentence fragments and incomplete thoughts.

The book's saving grace is that as a whole it paints a complete picture of Mr. Wood's career and personal life. The writer/director's career is extremely complex and has lots of sidebars, but everything seems to be covered. I just wish someone bothered to write a book about Ed Wood, and not assemble a bunch of jibberish.