Savini: The Biography

I grew up wanting to be a monster makeup artist. Magazines like Fangoria and movies by Romero were staples of my household. Savini was, and remains, a hero to me. His life is almost too incredible to describe, in that it's so cool, it's hard to believe. He is a living legend in his field. His book is a great overview of a creative life hopefully still going strong. It's also surprisingly introspective and funny. Highly recommended.

I just received my Savini book and I am very pleased with the presentation. I read several reviews stating that it was cheaply made and not worth the price. I have to disagree. Although I wish it was longer it is very well made and even though the pages are not high gloss they are high quality matte. As for the price, as consumers, we have to realize that this book was published by a specialty publisher. That generally means a higher price tag. I wanted a brand new copy so I paid the money for it. If you don't mind a used copy, there are some around for $20 off the Publisher's Price.

Taking into account the high cost of this book (60 bucks!) the very, very poor choice of paper used is very disappointing...The majority of the photos have been published previously, but there are some great ones in here that I hadn't seen before which is a positive. Unfortunately the poor quality paper, again, doesn't do many of the pictures much justice leaving them looking rather "flat" and some a bit blurry. And for a "coffee table book" I guess that I was expecting to see a more colorful layout with more photos? The written content itself is good, I've always greatly admired and enjoyed the mans work. However, overall, I'm left feeling rather disappointed in this book. Perhaps my expectations were just too high?

The book is basically everything you would expect from a Tom Savini biography. Great stories, industry insights, behind the scenes photos, gore, etc. Unfortunately, as another reviewer mentioned, the poor quality of the paper used for the pages is inexcusable for this price point. A lot of the images feel washed out or grainier than they should be. It often looks like it was printed on a home printer. With that said, it is pretty much the definitive Savini biography. I'd still recommend watching his documentary on Amazon Prime over this, though it looks great on a coffee table.

Beautiful book

I ordered my hardcover Savini book in late December 2021, supposedly these are the “higher quality” prints. Still pretty bad, low quality images and printing, and my cover came unglued almost immediately after opening the book. For a book about a guy who has become famous for his visual effects, you’d think they’d want the images to be high quality to show off his work. Pretty bummed on it, worth $30 MAX.

Interesting stories (even though you've probably already heard most of them if you're even remotely interested in Savini), but the poor quality of the physical book is what gets it such a low rating. Sixty dollars for a step above newsprint simply isn't worth it. This is a $25 book all day long. Do yourself a favor and befriend someone who already owns it.

I didn’t believe the photo and print quality could be that bad, but it’s as if I printed it at Kinkos myself. It’s truly a huge shame for the price of this book. Thankfully I bought from a 3rd party for only 40, but even that was a huge waste of money. The layout is atrocious, most of the pictures aren’t labeled, and again the print quality is the worst I’ve seen from these sorts of books. Coming off the two volume Rick Baker books, this puts poor Tom Savini to shame which he does not deserve. One can only hope a better book will come along, but until them I would stick to reading about him old issues of Fangoria.

For the price I expected a little more the quality of the paper wasn't great and it just felt like a cheap book. However the content was great, but the price wasn't.

I would have gave it five stars if the photos was colour part from that a great read

La calidad del papel está por debajo de lo esperado, si tenemos en cuenta el precio de venta del libro.El contenido puede que no contente al fan del gore que busque un recopilatorio definitivo de los trabajos artesanales del maestro Tom Savini para el cine (para eso están los dos volúmenes de "Grande Illusions").Aquí, como cualquier otra biografia, se nos confiesan aspectos más intímos de su vida privada, combinando fotografías personales (niñez, familia, amigos, su actual mujer, su hogar, etc...) con imágenes entre bastidores, algunas nunca vistas antes, de los fantásticos maquillajes creados sobre los actores.Yo personalmente, lo he disfrutado muchísimo porque he podido ampliar aún más el material gráfico de sus fantásticas creaciones prostéticas y además he profundizado en el lado más personal de Savini, con sus experiencias y vivencias desde jovencito hasta la actualidad.

I'm a fan of Tom Savini. This book's more about what Tom is thinking about religion, violence, some stories about is life, etc. There's not many things about movies. Some diaries where we know how many times Tom makes love… But sadly for me, not a lot about the movies (FX or actor). When the book talk about Dawn of the Dead, we learn that by this time, M. Savini was in total love for Darth Vader and that he makes a costume at Halloween… An ok book, but really not great.

The content of this bio was good and worth a little more than your average book I suppose, but the hefty pice tag for the physical quality of the book is really not worth it. The paper is wavy, the binding is ridged and not well put together and I don't know if its just because my book was sitting at an angle but the hard cover is pretty twisted as seen in the picture.