Either Blacklight is total genius or had a moment of blinding clarity from the gods. What else would prompt an”Oh God, you’re going to watch tons of stupid old movies with your dead boyfriends right?” as he poked through the stack of library books spread on the dining room table? I swear I know NOTHING about none Vincent Prices and Basil Rathbone movies in my Netflix queue…nothing! Someone must have hacked my Netflix account and put Blacklight’s longed for Eagle Eye at the very bottom of the DVD queue!

Don’t believe me? Neither did Blacklight gosh darn it! (Eagle Eye is back to the next DVD on the queue after I return Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown!) Now given Valentine’s Day is breathing down our necks, chances I would have decided to watch say….Leave Her to Heaven or Robin Hood (the Errol Flynn version of course!) were good. It didn’t take James Robert Parish’s The Hollywood Book of Love: An Irreverent Guide To The Films That Raised Our Romantic Expectations to push me over the edge.But it sure eased the path! 🙂

Divided into categories (The Lure of Bad Boys, Till Death Do Us Part, Young Love, etc) Parish cherry picks movies from the 1930s to 2003 giving a brief synopsis, a few stills and a nibble or two of gossip. Not everything is say Gone With The Wind or Camille or ughhhhh Pretty Woman or double ugghhhh Sleepless in Seattle. There’s a few clunkers in the bunch (hello The Sandpiper!).

If you already love classic Hollywood movies, chances are you’ve seen the bulk of the films Parish selected. But sometimes re-watching an old favorite can give you new perspective. Or you might discovered a new favorite in the making. Either way, The Hollywood Book of Love is worth a read, even when you’re the girl who turns her husband during a Kay’s commercial and says “if you waste your money on that crap you’re a dead man!”…