by Bob Basalla, 422pp. (2006 Thinkers’ Press)
 
Crazier than an Outburst from an Exiled World Chess Champion!
 
It’s all here, entertainment and fun about one of everyone’s favorite topics–movies–only this book on flicks is about how chess is sued and abused as a “prop/plot.”
 
Sure there are great movies such as The Thomas Crown Affair, The Most Dangerous Game, The Seventh Seal and The Bishop Murder Case. But, there are also some lulus from terrible movies, science fiction, documentaries and anachronistic playing styles (would you believe the ancient Romans?).
 
Author Bob Basalla goes through more than 2,000 to find the howlers, the silliness and some of the most amazing conversations you wish you had never heard.
 
There are funny moves (Blazing Saddles), sad movies (Death Be Not Proud), foreign movies (Les Creatures), and chess movies (Chess Fever). The range is nearly endless with Sherlock Holmes playing chess (although he never did), to outer space, war and romance.
 
Unfortunately, many directors get it wrong. There are illegal moves, checks that aren’t checks, positions that are impossible according to the rules of chess and plots that are off the charts (or in this case, the chessboard) with continuity problems being tougher than chess problems. If the positions of Fischer’s “Random Chess” look startling to you, you haven’t seen anything until you see what the people in Hollywood have designed.
 
Many alternate and foreign titles are given as well as the names of directors and main actors – for chess for show, chess for real and chess for weird. Over 200 diagrammed board positions.
 
From the author’s Opening Remarks: “The purposes of this book are threefold. The first is to inform the chess public of the amazingly widespread and often symbolic use of chess in films the world over. The second is to chronicle these findings about the who, what, when, where and why of film references to chess all in one place, the first time such easy reference to so many chess movies has been afforded. And the third purpose of this tome, not inferior in any way to the previous two, is to unabashedly entertain the reader. I want you to enjoy finding out about these movies at least as much as I did writing about them.”