For One Night Only is fun. In a combination of plot summaries and desultory essays on sub-genres and the relationships between different films, this book rambles across the genre of exploitation films, containing more than a few insights on the social importance and history of grindhouse film, and film in general. As you might expect, it is not a book to read straight through; it’s best taken in small, fun doses (perhaps like the films themselves). He doesn’t include every possible example (how could he?) but he hits the more prominent examples, many less prominent ones, and a few cross-over examples from other genres (like Pasolini’s “Salo”). Ric Meyer’s style is breezy, knowledgeable and fun; and, as he says early on, reading about these films is much more fun than watching them. Great stuff! ( )

While Meyers obviously knows quite a bit about exploitation movies, you'd think that a guy who would write an entire book about the subject would like them a little more. This is a collection of plot synopses (the best part) and Meyers' dashed off personal opinions (the worst part) of a random collection of horror, sexploitation, and blaxsploitation movies of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The book has a nice name and title index, but would have risen above its negative qualities if the publisher had sprung for more illustrations. There are black and white collages of movie posters before each section, but the posters are half the fun with exploitation movies, and it is too bad they couldn't include more of them. The longer essays on individual filmmakers are better written and definitely worth reading, but Meyers slapdash writing style and negative attitude really bring this book down.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2012/03/for-one-week-only-world-of-exploitation.ht... ] ( )

For One Week Only is a reference book on the exploitation genre. I love reading reference books on b and cult movies and this is one of the best. ( )

I'm not exactly sure how to rate this. Probably because while it seems successful at what it does, collecting short summaries of exploitation film, it doesn't really seem like some thing that really needs to exist. Sure, a fair number of them are humorous, but they do tend to bleed together as many of the films described apparently fail to distinguish themselves from the crowd. As I nibble my way through (as indeed I've only managed to read the first third so far) I've come up with various purposes the book might serve, the two best being:

1. to find exploitation films worth watching
2. to find exploitation films worth avoiding

So while there's nothing really wrong with this book, and it is sort of noble to catalog the efforts of an oft overlooked genre, ultimately I'm left with a question. Who is this book for? I guess it's for people that adored reading the movie summary page in the paper and thought, "gee, this is great, but I wish there was more."

I'm not really a fan of the exploitation film genre but I find them and their culture fascinating so I always find books about them at least interesting.
Overall this book is pretty slight in any significantly detailed coverage of what makes up exploitation films but it does cover a large variety of films and I did find the descriptions of each at least intriguing and I did enjoy how he made some connections between such different topics as actors, writers, producers and themes with each movie and never really seemed to repeat himself.
As is my usual with books such as this, I wish there had been more photos but I did enjoy how each section had poster art from the movies as their front pages.
This book may be best for fans of the genres who are more interested in a casual reference book than for those looking to really delve into and understand the draw and appeal of movies such as this. ( )