Warning: it's best to be a John Landis fan to read John Landis. Don't get me wrong, Giulia D'Agnolo Vallan's tome on one of the US' most original filmmakers is very well written and researched, plus the contributions by Landis himself and people like Joe Dante and Guillermo Del Toro are welcome as well.

Landis has, is, and will be a unique filmmaker who's great at blending genres but is not exactly a Master of Horror (besides having directed two episodes of the famous anthology, and one for the "spin off" FEAR ITSELF). Not all of his films are horror and, to be honest, more than half of them are straight comedies. So if you're a gore hound or an "I only like horror films" kind of fan, then a book about all of John Landis' films might not be your cup of tea, since it covers with equal insight stuff like AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE and BEVERLY HILLS COP 3 or the Sly Stallone comedy OSCAR (ouch...). In fact, it covers all of his films, including THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE, THE BLUES BROTHERS (and its sequel), AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, TRADING PLACES, COMING TO AMERICA, THE THREE AMIGOS, and even the famous video clip/short film MICHAEL JACKSON'S THRILLER.

The book features a really long chat with Landis that discusses with tremendous honesty his films, their making, his thoughts on them and a lot of extra info. The good thing is it's not a "kissass" kind of bio, since it also covers the dark stuff. For example, he talks about the fatal accident that ended Vic Morrow's life during the shooting of his segment of TWILIGHT ZONE, and even his collaboration with Eddie Murphy on the not-so-good sequel BEVERLY HILLS COP III. It's also cool that he discusses the fact that AMERICAN WEREWOLF came out at the same time as THE HOWLING did, and everything related to it. It's never condescending and you can tell D'Agnolo Vallan really knows her subject. It's mostly about Landis's career than about the story of his life (maybe a better title would have been "The Work and Films of John Landis"), and you might find some stuff you won't be interested in but then again, the title says it all. And either you're into Landis or you're not.

Plus, let's face it, it's also better to read about BEVERLY HILLS COP III than to watch the thing (I don't especially have anything against it, but Landis himself says in the book that he doesn't exactly know why he did it). So you have a lot of reasons to buy this book, the main one being that it's cool to read about an unusual filmmaker like Landis. How many books are there about Welles, Kubrick or Tim Burton? Well, I'm sure there won't be two books on this one.

JOHN LANDIS (edited by M Press) is available now and costs $29.95 (it's a big book with color pics, so it's a good price, folks.