With the approach of Halloween and the celebration of all things spooky, there’s no better time to celebrate the efforts of the prolific film historian Philip J. Riley.
His may not be a household name, but he has done more than most to preserve and promote classic horror films – especially their screenplays, production histories, and unrealized projects.
Riley is an archeologist of the dark corners of genre cinema. For more than 25 years, he has authored and edited a series of books which have reprinted the screenplays of classic films like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, and The Phantom of the Opera. Riley has some 20 plus books to his credit from various publishers including the Vestal Press, Magicimage Filmbooks, and most recently BearManor Media.
Silent film buffs should be familiar with Riley’s work. With the inspiration and help of Forrest J. Ackerman, Riley published the original shooting script’s of the lost Lon Chaney films A Blind Bargain (1922) and London After Midnight (1927), as well as the still available Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925).
Contributors to these illustrated titles include silent film stars Patsy Ruth Miller and Mary Philbin, grandson Ron Chaney, and contemporary writers like Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch. These resource-rich books are reclamation projects – and essential reading for anyone interested in early horror films.
For his “Classic Horror Films” series, Riley has also edited the original shooting scripts for Dracula (1931) and House of Dracula (1945), as well as Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943), House of Frankenstein (1943), The Mummy (1932), The Mummy’s Curse (1944),and The Wolfman (1941).
Riley also has similar series devoted to classic science fiction, classic comedy, filmonsters, as well as screenplays for never realized films, a kind-of what if seriers. He has also written numerous magazine articles and contributed to 12 other film related books by various authors. Riley has received the Count Dracula Society Award and was inducted into Universal’s Horror Hall of Fame.
In a recent interview on the Psychobabble blog, Riley explained how he got started. “During my research for the Universal Filmscript Series by MagicImage Filmbooks, I had the chance to meet all the great actors, producers, musicians, and crewmembers that were still alive at the time. I was one of the few authors to be permitted access to the Universal Vaults. I’d been trying to get into Universal for 10 years, but they wouldn’t even admit that they had a vault! Then one day I was having lunch at Universal with Patsy Ruth Miller (star of the 1923 The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and Leonard Maltin, when Patsy’s brother grabbed my arm and said he wanted me to meet someone. Well, that someone happened to be (Universal Studios owner) Lew Wasserman, himself, who said in a loud voice so all the lawyers could hear, ‘I like your work, kid. Give this kid anything he wants for his books’.”
Before he “got into” classic horror films, Riley was a professional musician and session artist who played on eight Grammy Award winning albums for the likes of The Isley Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Jeff Beck, Moby Grape, Stevie Wonder and others. While still a working musician, Riley encountered Forrest J. Ackerman - the legendary editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland. Ackerman encouraged Riley to pursue his interest in writing about early genre films.
And the rest, as they say, is history – or at least film history.
For more info: A comprehensive selection of Philip J. Riley’s books is available through his amazon.com author page. Not all are still in-print, though second hand copies can are generally available.
Thomas Gladysz is an arts journalist and author. Recently, he wrote the introduction to the new “Louise Brooks edition” of Margarete Böhme's classic book, The Diary of a Lost Girl (PandorasBox Press). He will speak about this new book at the San Francisco Public Library on November 14. More at www.thomasgladysz.com.
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