Junk Film

Katharine Coldiron dives headfirst into the mosh pit of trash culture and clears a bold new space for thinking and talking about the pleasures of cinematic crap... Junk Film is a smart and sneakily subversive read from a cultural critic with a magpie's eye for glittering swill. - Ty Burr, film critic ( Ty Burr's Watch List ) and author (Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame) I've always thought that if art is expression, can it fail? Katharine Coldiron does a wonderful job of examining this from both sides. She finds and analyzes a fascinating array of films. It made me laugh many times, and actually made me want to have a bad movie marathon! -- Greg Sestero, actor and author, The Disaster Artist Bad movies have been very good to me - I've watched hundreds as a writer for Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax, and even voluntarily. Katharine Coldiron's examination of such movies names why I appreciate them so much - it's smart, insightful, and entertaining, and it's for film aficionados and snobs alike. -- Mary Jo Pehl, comedienne (Rifftrax, MST3K) and writer (Dumb Dumb Dumb) Essayist Coldiron (Ceremonials) delivers an entertaining ode to cinematic duds. Bad movies are teaching tools for making and studying good movies, she contends, exploring what such films and television shows as Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), Staying Alive (1983), and Showgirls (1995) accidentally reveal about the techniques of quality filmmaking. ... Coldiron's analysis of some of the stranger footnotes in cinematic history unearths unexpected wisdom about how movies work. Cinephiles will enjoy digging into this. -- Publishers Weekly