In a book we highly recommend, former NASA employee Thomas Kent Miller takes us on every cinematic journey to the red planet, film by film, from the silents to today. And now, for his hat trick of a Flick Attack Guest List, the author takes us on yet another cinematic journey of a different kind: through the photos and illustrations that you won’t find in the finished book! Once more, the volume’s loss is your eyes’ gain. Time to blast off!

My book Mars in the Movies: A History is a ship that has sailed. Still, I can daydream. This is my third Guest List for the site of coulda/woulda/shouldas for graphics that I would have liked to have included in the book, but it was not practical.

Continue reading Guest List: 22 More Posters and Pics That Did Not Land in Mars in the Movies →

My foray into the world of pinup photography began way back in the mid ’90s. Now, some 20 years later, a collection of my work has been turned into a coffee-table book, Retro Glamour Photography of Mark Anthony Lacy, by Schiffer Publishing. The journey has been long and arduous, but well worth it. I’ve worked hard at my craft and love creating authentic looking images of vintage vixens for the world to enjoy.

Back when I started, my knowledge of pinup imagery and the whole midcentury aesthetic was next to nil. So, unlike my schoolboy days, I relished doing homework and learning all that I could about the era and its styles. One avenue that I took was to watch films made back then to study the hairdos, wardrobe, styling and settings. But not just any films. Those Doris Day/Rock Hudson pictures were cute, but not quite what I needed. So I dove deep into the murky waters of ’60s sexploitation!

Continue reading Guest List: Mark Anthony Lacy’s Top 12 Sexploitation Films of the 1960s →

I turned in 69 graphics to potentially use in my new book, Mars in the Movies: A History; the publisher used 43. My previous Guest List for Flick Attack shared 13 that sadly didn’t make that cut, mainly due to resolution concerns. Here are 11 more, kicked back mainly for the same reason. However, unlike the last batch, it is probably just as well that these were not used, as nearly all are not as clearly focused on Mars as the ones that did get printed in the book.

1. From the 1918 Danish film A Trip to Mars (Das Himmelskibet). Unavoidably blurry, once the spaceship Excelsior lands on Mars (see my previous Guest List) and the crew emerges, they are fêted by throngs of happy Martians. The costuming and production design are impressive.

Continue reading Guest List: Thomas Kent Miller’s Top 11 Other Graphics Left Out of Mars in the Movies →

Bryan Senn’s latest book, The Werewolf Filmography: 300+ Films, covers every lycan-centric movie you can think of, and scads more you otherwise never would have heard of. But maybe you should — at least the ones that are good. In this Guest List for Flick Attack, Senn tracks down seven little-known were-flicks well worth your attention.

When horror buffs turn their attention to werewolves (and who among us hasn’t done that on occasion?), a number of tried-and-true titles invariably spring to mind: The Wolf Man, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Curse of the Werewolf, The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, etc. But alongside these well-known classics lurk a pack-ful of impressive beasts prowling mostly unseen through the darkness of obscurity. So I thought it’d be (ahem) illuminating to shine a full-moon light on a few lesser-known and underappreciated specimens of lycancinema. Folkore dictates that the seventh son of a seventh son is destined to become a werewolf, so here are seven werewolf movies (in chronological order) you didn’t know you needed to see, but you do …

Continue reading Guest List: Bryan Senn’s Top 7 Unsung Were-Gems →

In Essel Pratt’s new novel, Sharkantula, a genetically modified tarantula finds its way into the Great White exhibit at Shark World. Frightened, the arachnid digs its fangs deep into the shark, fast-tracking an evolutionary hybrid into existence that becomes hell-bent on taking over the park, and possibly the world. Sound like a Syfy movie? That’s not accidental! In his Guest List for Flick Attack, Pratt breaks down the movies — and one TV series — that informed his monster mash-up on the page.

Sharkantula was originally the product of a lighthearted brainstorming discussion between multiple indie authors, each jokingly contributing ridiculous ideas. At one point, while discussing the plethora of cheesy science-fiction movies on television, I chose to “claim” Sharkantula as my own. The joke became more serious as I thought the concept over, wondering if a novel written in the styling of those popular movies would be possible.

Continue reading Guest List: Essel Pratt’s Top 5 Inspirations for Sharkantula →