With a career that stretches back 50 years, Charles Band is one of the most well-known names in genre filmmaking. The head of companies like Empire Pictures and Full Moon Features, Band has over 400 producing credits, nearly 90 directing credits, and over 60 writing credits. A few years ago, he started telling the story of what it has been like bringing all of that entertainment into the world with his autobiography Confessions of a Puppetmaster: A Hollywood Memoir of Ghouls, Guts, and Gonzo Filmmaking (you can pick up a copy at THIS LINK) – and now he has revealed that he’s currently working on a second autobiography, titled Horror Puppet!
Band told PopGeeks, “I don’t want to step back (from filmmaking) until I’m forced to, by end of life. I enjoy what I do and, yeah, I’ve done it for a long time. Sometimes I feel like I’m the puppet and someone else is sort of pulling the strings. Like, ‘Keep making movies, Charlie.’ As a matter of fact, I wrote a book a few years ago that did quite well, published by Harper Collins, called Confessions of a Puppet Master, and it ended where I stopped telling my story around the beginning of COVID and so much has happened since then. I’ve gone back with the biographer, and we’re halfway through a new book called Horror Puppet, which is exactly how I feel these days. Sometimes it’s like, ‘Okay, now what?’ But I love the process …“
Written with Adam Felber, Confessions of a Puppetmaster had the following description: Renowned producer, director, and “B movie” showman Charles Band takes readers on a wild romp through Hollywood’s decidedly un-Oscar-worthy underbelly, where mayhem and zombies reign supreme, and cheap thrills and entertainment are king. Zombies, aliens, a little skin, lots of gore — and even more laughs — the cinematic universe of Charles Band is legendary. From the toilet-invading creatures of Ghoulies to the time-travelling bounty hunter in Trancers to the pandemic-crashed Corona Zombies, Band has spent four decades giving B-movie lovers exactly what they love. In Confessions of a Puppetmaster, this congenial master of Grindhouse cinema tells his own story, uncut.
Born into a family of artists, Band spent much of his childhood in Rome, where his father worked in the film industry. Early visits to movie sets sealed young Charlie’s fate. By his twenties he had plunged into moviemaking himself and found his calling in exploitation movies — quick, low-budget efforts that exploit the zeitgeist and feed people’s desire for clever, low-brow entertainment. His films crossed genres, from vampire flicks to sci-fi to erotic musical adaptations of fairy tales. As he came into his own as a director, he was the first to give starring roles to household names like Demi Moore, Helen Hunt, and Bill Maher. Off set, Band’s life has been equally epic. Returning to his beloved Italy, he bought both Dino De Laurentiis’s movie studio and a medieval castle. After Romania’s oppressive communist regime fell, he circumvented the U.S. State Department to shoot films in Dracula’s homeland. He made — and then lost — a moviemaking fortune. A visionary, Band was also at the vanguard of the transition to home video and streaming, making and distributing direct-to-video movies long before the major studios caught on.
In this revealing tell-all, Band details the dizzying heights and catastrophic depths of his four decades in showbiz. A candid and engaging glimpse at Hollywood’s wild side, Confessions of a Puppetmaster is as entertaining as the movies that made this consummate schlockmeister famous.
As a longtime fan of Band’s movies, I found Confessions of a Puppetmaster to be a fascinating read, and I was surprised that he was able to cover so much ground in a book that’s just under 300 pages. His childhood, business endeavors like selling leatherbound copies of the New York Times and getting into video distribution, wacky adventures, illnesses, love and loss. Starting movie companies like Empire and Full Moon. The ups and downs of those companies. The time his house was firebombed. What it was like to own a castle in Italy. From 1951 (the year of his birth) to 2020 (when he didn’t let the pandemic stop him from continuing to make new Full Moon content), it’s all in there… But I’m sure he has a lot more stories to tell, so I’m glad to hear there’s going to be another book. I’ll definitely be reading Horror Puppet.
Have you read Confessions of a Puppetmaster, and will you be reading Horror Puppet? Let us know by leaving a comment below.