HIGH PRAISE FOR THE INTENSE VISION OF STEPHEN ROMANO
For METRO:
"Holy hell. Nitro-charged, blood-thumping, brain-twisting entertainment."
---JOE R. LANSDALE, internationally best-selling author of COLD IN JULY and the HAP AND LEONARD series
"This dark and graphic rip of a ride is not for the faint of heart. But if you like books that force you to stay awake (at night), and you want something that will make my sentences look positively terse, then this is your book. Stephen Romano is amazing with words."
---TAYLOR STEVENS, New York Times Best selling author of THE INFORMATIONIST
"Metro is a bloodbath to remember. Stephen Romano writes the way an AK-47 fires, six hundred words a minute, all of them hitting their target and spreading for maximum damage. He's got a superhero trained from birth to reduce the scenery to shreds and kill guys you love to hate. When you get to an action scene - and there are enough to satisfy any gamer - strap yourself down because Romano has found remarkable ways to destroy life. He really is a high-energy killing machine, and if Red Bull is your drink then Metro is for you - heart-pumping mayhem performed by the bad guys of course, but also by people who speak well, nice people forced to do bad things."
---WILLIAM KOTZWINKLE, New York Times Best-Selling Author of E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STRET PART 4: THE DREAM MASTER
"If you're an aficionado of pop culture, paranoia, violence, Trivial Pursuit, and terrific writing, you'll love METRO by Stephen Romano."
---JOSS CODERO, acclaimed author of WEST PALM
For THE RIOT ACT:
"(Stephen's stories) have that kind of magic where you take something wild and wooly, and tell it in such a way that you just can't doubt it. They make you feel, and they make you think, even if they are for the most part, disturbing. Fact is, THE RIOT ACT may be the best new short story collection I've read in years. Stephen Romano isn't fucking around."
---JOE LANSDALE, best-selling author of THE BOTTOMS and BUBBA HO-TEP
This is a guy with a vision, a real narrative style, a dark and mesmerizing worldview. It's as if Joe Lansdale, Dave Schow, John Skipp, and Norm Partridge all had a long, wild weekend in Vegas replete with moonshine, .45s, snakeskin boots, twleve kilos of uncut Colombian coke, Five Thai hookers, and the dug-up corpse of Jim Thompson, spent three days out of their minds, and woke up the following morning to find little baby Steve Romano in the middle of the hotel room gurgling, "Daddy! Daddy!" And yes, that really IS the only way to explain how solid his fiction is. Brutal, full-on street-cred, sharp, insightful, human, authentic, bloody, savage, asskicking, but smooth and altogether pure. Seriously, you've got to check him out."
---TOM PICCIRILLI, best-selling author of THE LAST KIND WORDS
Stephen Romano writes like he's on fire. And I don't mean with some funny notion like The Muse, or the Lord. No, he writes like someone just SET HIM ON FIRE . . . THE RIOT ACT is some of the most urgent, blistering, breathlessly paced, microscopically observed, mordantly hilarious, heartbreakingly hopeless, and utterly devastating bloodbath fiction ever burned into print. These stories are like Bouncing Betties, blowing up at crotch level and firing shrapnel straight through the brain."
---JOHN SKIPP, best selling author of THE SCREAM and JAKE'S WAKE
"There are certain authors you will always remember reading for the first time. Stephen Romano is one of those authors. He brings a fresh, unique voice that is firmly rounded in the genre's history, yet different and daring than anything that's come before. His stories have weight. His words have impact. You will not be disappointed."
---BRIAN KEENE, best-selling author of GHOUL
"This is the hard stuff, folks. Horror in its purest form. And to see it in all its grisly, gory, fucked-up beauty, we can either look at the news, down into the shadows of the alley, or into the pages of THE RIOT ACT. Both scare me equally. Stephen Romano is Jackson Pollack and this book is a canvas dripping with blood-red energy. Herein lies a hyper-kinetic ricochet inside the technicolor skull of a true pioneer of urban nightmare."
--KEALAN PATRICK BURKE, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of CURRENCY OF SOULS
For RESURRECTION EXPRESS:
"Resurrection Express has the pacing, technical detail, and unshakable suspense to excite thriller fans, and even readers who typically retreat from the high-tech context will appreciate . . . A must read for followers of Andrew Vachss and Charlie Huston."
---BOOKLIST (Starred Review)
"The pace never slackens in screenwriter Romano's superior debut thriller . . . Extremely satisfying. Romano doesn't pull his punches."
---PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY (Starred Review)
"Resurrection Express moves like a bullet train on a twisting track. The result is a slick, satisfying thriller, in which the reader is constantly wondering, who is on whose side."
---MYSTERY SCENE MAGAZINE
"Romano plunges into a frenetic plot that doesn't slow down until the very last word, (investing) in sturdy characters who can make the non-stop action plausible."
---CHICAGO SUN-SENTINEL
"Compelling, devastating and brutal, with battle-hardened prose and relentless energy, Stephen Romano has crafted one hell of a first novel. A juiced-up, whacked-out, back-to-the-wall book that reads like a ride through the Knife and Gun Club on the night of a full moon, riding the Resurrection Express will leave you dizzy from betrayal, speechless from reversals, and quite possibly battered and broken by its revelations."
---GREG RUCKA, New York Times bestselling author of the Queen & Country series
"A high-voltage blast! Romano's action scenes are light years ahead of the pack, fueled by muscular prose, terrifying villains, and Elroy Coffin--a protagonist for the ages. RESURRECTION EXPRESS is one of the finest examples I've encountered of noir's evolution into the 21st Century."
---BLAKE CROUCH, best-selling author of the WAYWARD PINES series
"RESURRECTION EXPRESS is a rip snortin' white knuckle ride. Highly recommended!!"
---DON COSCARELLI, director of Phantasm, The Beastmaster and Bubba-Ho-Tep
"RESURRECTION EXPRESS is a cinematic, hyperkinetic, action-packed thriller."
---JEFF ABBOTT, New York Times bestselling author of THE LAST MINUTE
"Stephen Romano's imagination is so scary-brilliant, you should be required to obtain a controlled dangerous substance license before opening RESURRECTION EXPRESS."
---DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI, New York Times bestselling author of Fun and Games.
Stephen Romano's taut prose is as unrelentingly violent and brutal as the story he tells. Resurrection Express is a killer debut that demands attention. A scorching read.
---BRIAN AZZARALLO, New York Times bestselling author of BATMAN: JOKER
"Horror scribe Stephen Romano makes his crime fiction debut in the sci-fi tinged thriller Resurrection Express . . . a compelling mystery that marks an auspicious crime fiction debut."
---CRIME FICTION LOVER.COM
"The book has the heightened freneticism of a drill-quick action film. It's long, over 400 pages, but the momentum keeps you always on edge."
---GRIFT magazine
"From noir to apocalyptic at the speed of sound! This book is relentless. It has the feel of a grind house auteur working with a two-hundred million dollar budget . . . you feel pummeled by the end of the novel. That said, RESURRECTION EXPRESS questions ideas of love and hope. Just don't expect any happy answers.
---MYSTERY PEOPLE.COM
FOR SHOCK FESTIVAL:
BOOK OF THE MONTH, OCTOBER 2008! "One of the greatest homage to B-cinema ever undertaken . . . SHOCK FESTIVAL is a breathtakingly thorough overview of over 100 movies and a slew of filmmaker and actors who never existed -- but which you'll believe actually did by the time you finish reading. And your eyes don't even have to touch the words to be convinced, thanks to the down-to-the-smallest-detail perfect collection of posters, newspaper ads, still photos and other visuals Romano and his art team have created."
---FANGORIA MAGAZINE
BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2008! "While the term mockumentary practically wrote itself, it's going to take a clever writer to describe Stephen Romano's fictional alternate history of exploitation films... (Romano) has created a vivid universe filled with films you'd love to see and personalities you'd line up at a convention to meet, lavishly illustrated with a plethora of eye-popping posters, lobby cards, on-set still and ad mats for such ficional films as THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS WIFE and STARFIRE BEYOND THE GALAXY. Fans swept up in the recent wave of grindhouse nostalgia NEED to buy this book!"
---RUE MORGUE MAGAZINE
“Hilarious, crude, incisive, exploitative . . . Romano’s pseudo-journalistic Endeavour (is) a genuine revelation, an event that’s rarely, if ever, been done before . . . the merging of fact and fiction into something too outrageous to be the truth, and too disarmingly ghastly/gorgeous to be anything but.”
---THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE
“One of the greatest tomes since the Bible—at least for hardcore disciples of horror! An absolute must-own for any horror fan worth a damn!”
---JOE LYNCH, director of Wrong Turn 2: Dead End
"Among the most impressive feats of sustained imagination I've encountered in quite some time, if not ever."
---FRIGHT.COM
"Take a drop of Joe R. Lansdale's blood. Then a slice from David J. Schow's scalp. Scrape some phlegm off Tarantino's tongue. Inject some of Robert Rodriguez's sperm. Pour in some Karo syrup. Mix it in a blender. Pour. These are just some of the ingredients of Stephen Romano's unique work . . . If the buzz surrounding his new book, SHOCK FESTIVAL, is any indication, Stephen Romano's work will not only turn heads, it's going to make heads roll . . ."
---CHUCKPALAHNIUK.NET
“A stone groove and as badass a tome as you're likely to come across this year or the next. If you lovegrindhouse, sleaze cinema, or B-movies in general, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy.”
---FILM THREAT.COM
For BOTTOMFEEDER:
As another year comes to an end, it’s time once again to look back and ask, “What was the best horror movie of 2018?” Well, if you’re an unrepentant gorehound, creature feature fanatic, or exploitation film addict, you might be surprised to find that this year’s best horror movie wasn’t actually a motion picture at all. It was a comic book. . . . (there's a) depraved mayor with a dark secret. An apocalyptic mad-science master plan that riffs on H.P. Lovecraft’s Deep Ones. And a shockingly hard-hitting, surprisingly philosophical ending that ties it all together with one final bleak, lyrical note . . . as mainstream news outlets trip all over themselves with fawning praise for the recent upswing in “elevated horror,” Bottomfeeder offers an uncompromising indulgence into raw meanness for those who still like their horror stories grisly, shocking, raunchy, and disturbing. It’s the hardest of hardboiled noir nihilism mixed with the most exploitative of exploitation film hedonism . . . an experience that will make your skin crawl, but you won’t forget it any time soon."
---William Tea, DREAD CENTRAL
"I felt like a filthy tourist, watching a broken city being consumed by these primordial abominations crafted through human waste. It made me feel uncomfortable, disgusted and repulsed – I loved every moment of it. If you are a fan of extreme narratives in horror and have a love of comic books, this one is a no-brainer. You will want to dive deep into the putrid muck to see what it holds."
---Adam Symchuck, GRIMORE OF HORROR
For GATES OF HELL:
"Artist, writer and comic visionary Stephen Romano uses the original film as a template to expand the story, inventing a perverse mythology only hinted at in Fulci and co-writer Dardano Sachetti’s magnum opus. . The depravity and ugliness is beautifully drawn by Rook and delivered in an abstract, lyrical way by Romano. It’s as if one has watched The Gates of Hell, drank Mescaline, fallen asleep and hallucinated an entirely new version of the movie. Remarkable stuff."
---Chris Alexander, COMINGSOON.NET
For HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY:
"(Romano) approaches these cult-classics with integrity and a genuine love for Fulci’s original material. That passion flows through...just like the spilled fleshy piles and steaming blood splattered across each gruesome page. Speaking as both a Fulci fan and lover of horror comics, my expectations have been exceeded and it seems as if Eibon (Press) is the standard bearer of the ghastly wonders first introduced by EC comics many decades ago... They brought on genre legend Vince Locke to sodden the pages with his master-class detail for the macabre... Locke is the celebrated artist behind Deadworld, A History of Violence, and the grotesque album covers for Cannibal Corpse. He alone would be reason enough to rush out and buy a copy of this comic! He just has a way with anatomy, very eerie and uncomfortable stuff, which we love!"
---iHORROR.com
For Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE
"The brainchild of author/screenwriter Stephen Romano and Rotten Cotton owner Shawn Lewis, Eibon Press launched in 2016 with an adaptation of Lucio Fulci’s 1978 masterpiece, Zombie. Under the sub-imprint of Fulci Comics, Eibon have released four issues of Zombie covering the entire movie. The Romano scripts adapt the film perfectly, even going beyond the plot and filling in blanks that really flesh out the characters. This adds a huge amount of depth to a story that could otherwise be all about the gore. But it’s not just the book itself that provides those little extras. In most genre fandom, there is always potential for huge crossover to the comic book medium, and oh my do these boys get this. Each book comes packaged in an Eibon Sleeve, essentially a vinyl album cover for your comic. These sleeves come with exclusive art, and a whole bunch of goodies inside, from stickers of Wormhead, to bookmarks of key scenes, trading cards, and there’s the option to buy more limited edition versions that come with variant covers, mini-prints and posters.... Not content with one superb adaptation, Eibon have also released a fifth issue of Zombie, carrying on the story as Romano imagines it would have unfolded, taking the nightmare to New York... If there’s a text book way to do this properly, Eibon Press have nailed it like an eyeball to a broken door."
---HORRORNEWS.NET
"Brings elements of the Lucio Fulci film as well as original plots from the mind of writer Stephen Romano! ... the comic does not shy away from blood, guts, gore... and each kill is done in a glorious splatter fashion... fans of comics like The Dead (Arrow Comics) and the original Walking Dead (Aircel Comics) will surely be pleased in the gore department... a very solid horror comic that is doing the film its based on justice... and the creators adding their own touches makes it feel fresh and new."
---ROTTEN INK.COM
For INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD:
"Tantalizingly creepy and scary good!"
---New York Daily News
"An old-fashioned horror-survival tale delivered with crisp, efficient storytelling."
---The AV Club
"The gore is good, the set design is excellent, and the movie is never boring. Add on a story with depth and layers, and you have a very strong start to an excellent series."
---Cinematicdiversions.com
"The rapturously fiendish Incident... plays out like a one-woman Texas Chainsaw Massacre set in Wrong Turn’s Southern backwoods. Ellen (Bree Turner) finds herself pursued through the tangled forest by a giant knife-wielding albino freak dubbed Moonface (John de Santis) who makes it a habit of removing his “naughty” female victims’ eyes with a power drill. ... (a) clever inversion of right-wing survivalist philosophy for proto-feminist ass-kicking. Yet such weightier concerns rarely hinder the ghoulish genre pleasures derived from Incident’s swift pacing, unnerving Edward Shearmur/Chris Stone score, and the sight of the always-sinister (Angus) Scrimm performing a disturbing rendition of “Dixie.”
---Slant Magazine
"What makes Incident On and Off a Mountain Road so fun and exhilarating is how it takes the common tropes and clichés of a horror movie and turns them around without feeling like a parody. Moonface is a very generic movie monster, but he's threatening enough and his eye-drill is crazy enough to make the audience fear him. Equally so, Ellen's fighting back is clever, but never feels like she's MacGuyver or invincibly brave ala Ridley. Rather, Ellen is a simple woman using what she knows to fight back against imminent death.This is an angle of horror that's rarely shown: the characters are all on equal footing. There aren't teams of teenagers slaughtered by one dude, and the hero isn't somehow more pure or smarter than anyone else. Both Moonface and Ellen hurt each other, fail, and keep trying to out wit one another. There's even an amazing shot in the movie of Moonface examining one of Ellen's traps and having a look of pure respect on his face... I also have to give credit for the no-holds-barred ending. There's one point in the plot that almost every other horror movie would end. Think about the most generic ending and you've got that. But then we have ten more minutes that are even more gut-wrenching than before. And it's not due to some cheesy twist or "surprise" ending where the monster jumps out and says "boo." But rather, and I'm not going to spoil it, we see just how deep the well goes.Incident On and Off a Mountain Road is easily my favorite entry in the Masters of Horrorseries."
---IGN.COM
"My memory of "Incident" was that it’s one of the strongest entries in (the series), and this rewatch confirmed that it’s a particularly good hour of television... there’s a shot of Moonface attacking with the moon behind him that, obvious use of green screen aside, is one of the more striking and memorable images in the entirety of Masters of Horror... It’s an excellent hour of television and a cool variation on the traditional “backwoods slasher” archetype..."
---DAILY DEAD
"I remember ‘Incident On and Off a Mountain Road’ being a strong entry in the series and my recent re-watch did nothing to displace that notion. Bree Turner does great work in this episode, especially impressive when she’s onscreen with such well known horror talent, and this is important because so much of this episode’s success relies on Ellen, who goes through massive shifts in personality and demeanour in the 50-minute runtime. The effects hold up surprisingly well for what is effectively a fifteen-year-old made for TV movie and the story does go in some genuinely surprising directions."
---GINERNUTSOFHORROR.COM
For ESCAPING MY STALKER:
"Plenty of drama and tension, a strong cast, and a script that brings depth and emotion to its well-written characters. Add in a memorably despicable villain and an ending that wraps everything up on an appropriate note for the film that precedes it, and you have yourself a Lifetime film you'll come back to and one that is perfect for ringing in the new year."
---Vocal.com
For DEADLY INFLUENCER:
"Serves as a mixture of two popular Lifetime subgenres: the large encompassing "Teen Drama" genre, and the narrower "Perils of Technology/Social Media" subsection. What sets Deadly Influencer apart from other Lifetime films that use social media as a catalyst for their plots is that it not only subverts the "Social Media is the Root of All Evil" fallacy, but openly defies it. While much is said about the dangerous side of social media and its effects, the film makes it clear there is just as much good to be found in cyberspace as bad, and the dangers take hold only if one allows it to consume their life. It's a progressive message that will surprise those that view these sorts of movies in the same light as 80s PSAs... Like the best of Lifetime's teen drama films, Deadly Influencer delivers top notch drama that Lifetime fanatics will flock to, maintained by (Morgan Taylor) Campbell's brilliant portrayal of the film's deranged villainess. Add in strong performances from the rest of the cast, and a lot of heart that permeates throughout the film thanks namely to the performances of Ross and Dudek, and you have a movie that makes up for its faults and stands up as a Lifetime thriller at its best."
---Vocal.com
For WEB CAM GIRLS
"This is a fun, melodramatic Lifetime thriller that even has some mild horror movie vibes at times... a well crafted thriller that is packed with little details, interesting characters, and a terrific cast. The narrative is effective and is able to keep you hooked, thanks to a brisk pace and a lean approach. I love when Lifetime hits the panic button on internet themes, so I appreciated the web cam thread and to the script’s credit, it builds the narrative around that premise, rather than just toss the online trend into an unrelated plot... So we have a good, game cast, great slimy villains, and melodrama, so of course Web Cam Girls earns a recommendation."
---Marcfusion.com