REVIEW: Shadows in a Phantom Eye (book series)

Herein is a detailed, enthusiastic endorsement of the book series "Shadows in a Phantom Eye", authored by the anonymous Nocturne Group. Here's a summary:
Overview:
The series is a multi-volume exploration of "attractions and aberrations" in cinema, focusing on early films and their impact on audiences from 1872 to 1949. It includes rare, uncensored imagery and documentation on thousands of films, with comprehensive historical context on various cinematic phenomena, genres, and technologies.
Key Features:
1. Chronological Coverage:Each volume spans specific timeframes in cinema history. Examples include:
Volume 1: 1872-1907
Volume 3: 1914-1916
Volume 10: 1932-1933 (Pre-Code Era) The series potentially concludes around 1949, encompassing the film noir period.
2. Unique Content:
Rare films from countries like Japan and pre-revolutionary Russia.
Documented themes like magic tricks, ethnic stereotyping, drug abuse, voyeurism, horror, and war atrocities.
Technologies like Kino Plasticon, early attempts at 3D projection, and Pepper's Ghost techniques.
3. Methodology:
Reconstruction of lost films using synopses, posters, photographs, and other archival materials.
Films are organized alphabetically within yearly chapters, with references to related works.
4. Historical Significance:
Draws parallels between cinema and human history, showing how societal events like wars and art movements shaped early filmmaking.
5. Cinematic Contributions:The Nocturne Group-a collective of 13 anonymous film historians-aims to preserve cinema's legacy. They operate a blog, Black Gas Entertainment, and contribute to film restoration.
Author's Praise:
The narrator, Frank Coleman, commends the series for its scholarly value, comparing it to foundational works by William K. Everson. He emphasizes the importance of purchasing the hard copies due to the unreliability of digital preservation.
Content Warnings:
The series includes graphic imagery of real-life violence, nudity, and morbid subjects. It aims to provoke "grown-up" discussions about historical truth in cinema, but some topics might be upsetting to certain readers.
Notable Anecdotes:
The discovery of early, forgotten films like a pre-Lon Chaney Hunchback of Notre Dame or Maurice Tourneur's The Blue Bird.
Experiments with surrealist technologies like Kinoplasticon and early anaglyphic 3D.
Recommendation:
Frank strongly encourages students of cinema to explore the series and preserve its physical editions. He views it as a critical resource for understanding the evolution of moving images and their intersection with societal trends.