One Hundred Violent Films That Changed Cinema

Having alternately shocked, perplexed and fascinated viewers for years, the most violent films in American cinema--from Reservoir Dogs to Apocalypse Now to Raging Bull--get their proper due in this volume from the author of The Films of Sam Peckinpah. (Peckinpah is the notoriously gore-loving director of Westerns.) Fulwood fairly races through a smorgasbord of gruesome flicks. Thankfully, he chooses well, although minor footnotes like Executive Decision somehow sneak in with all-time classics like Psycho. Fulwood's fervor for the genre is addictive, and it should make readers forgive the book's hopscotching structure, which can haul them from John Woo to Tarantino to Scorsese and back in a blink. The author has an obvious facility with cinematic criticism, and is able to put works in their proper contexts without sounding densely academic. For that reason, a more thoughtful introduction about violence and its critical role in film culture would have been welcome. But even without one, Fulwood's giddy reverence of the films he chooses makes for a highly readable tour of the dark side of Hollywood history. 50 b&w illus.