Disposable Lit Reviews

Stomp Tokyo Books, 2002
198 pp.
ISBN 0-971-8356-0-8

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See also the official website

If you follow the ins-and-outs of the B-movie review world (oh, so you don’t have a life either?), you’re already intimately acquainted with StompTokyo.com. Chris Holland and Scott Hamilton’s little corner of the web has been around since 1996, making them the collective grandpappies of online bad movie reviewing.

And if you’ve been following really closely, you may have perceived a gentle, genial rivalry between yours truly and the Stompers, characterized largely by grudging admiration. In many ways, with their long and steady history and wide readership, Stomp Tokyo is the site that Cold Fusion Video Reviews wants to be when it grows up. (In otherwords, the rivalry and all are mostly one-way, from me; Chris and Scott certainly have nothing to aspire to in my footstps.) They also have been enthusiastic in bringing smaller, usually free-hosted, sites under their banner, giving those webmasters greater visibility in return for increasing the Stomp Tokyo market share. (Jokes about octopuses and vast domineering conspiracies are de rigeur when discussing the Stompers.)

Extending their kingdom into print media, Chris and Scott have put out their first book, Reel Shame. If the contents seem familiar, well, they should be — with some minor reworking and additional sidebars and resources, it’s mostly a compendium of the reviews you’ve already read (or at least could have, and still can) on their website. So the question is, why would you want to shell out fifteen bucks when you can have the milk for free?

Despite the fact that I’m a duly recognized and solemnized Cheap Bastard, I must cleanly admit that it’s money well-spent.

For one thing — print is cool. I’m a movie buff, and an Internet addict, but I was a book lover first, and there’s a certain “je ne sais quoi” about heftable, portable, flippable pages bound together in a self-contained unit which requires no external technology to experience it. (Great. Now I’m gonna have to write a book.)

And for another thing… these boys, they write well. Really well. Granted, the premise of the book is specifically “regrettable movies” (and even more specifically, “regrettable movies and the people who currently regret them”), and it’s always easier to lambaste and ridicule (more fun, too) than to praise without hyperbole (or worse, to have mixed feelings about a movie and still review it with a sense of consistent voice and theme). But even then, they do it well.

I hadn’t ever realized before seeing them in print just how short the reviews are. That’s short compared to some of the other online reviewers with whom we associate, mind you; for people used to “normal” newspaper-length reviews, these are just about right, and lack not a whit for the lack of cyclopean completeness; the word that bet describes them is “distilled.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with huge, monolithic, Ken Beggian prose — for movies such as Exorcist 2 or Sextette, no other approach will do justice, or lay the demons to rest so well).

Kudos for a job well done. Dammit.

Post-Note: I just have to point out that, most likely by complete accident, Chris and Scott have managed to put together the ideal back-of-the-toilet book. Entries are just long enough to be enjoyed in their completeness during a typical trip, as I discovered far too well the evening I was suffering from some bad Chinese. (Did I just share too much? Oh well.) And the book’s dimensions, 5½”x8½”, makes it just the perfect size to balance on the back of the commode. (Not that I actually left it there. I just set it there for a second to confirm its suitability.)

Nathan Shumate