In delivering his drubbing to George Lucas, Westfahl makes one amusing error:

But what Lucas did to Richard Marquand's Return of the Jedi was particularly reprehensible: recognizing that the film's outcome was a less than happy one for the isolated Luke Skywalker, now bereft of family, friends, and lovers, Marquand evocatively crafted a subdued conclusion, with the victorious forces quietly celebrating around a campfire as Luke wanders off for the cold consolation of friendly waves from his ghostly departed companions. But Lucas, feeling that there was something insufficiently gee-whiz about all of this, added some colorful new scenes of spontaneous celebrations on various other planets and re-edited the old footage to make things zippier and more cheerful. Marquand should have sued to have his name removed from the credits.

He might well have done, had he not actually been dead for ten years by the time Lucas released his retooled trilogy. But we'll let that pass.

Leaving aside the issue of the justness or otherwise of the above statements (be honest: how many people would make a case defending Keanu as an actor?), I'm kind of irked by them. Lest I be accused of misrepresenting Westfahl, the negatives are probably outweighed by the positives and some of his good judgements (particularly his appraisal of Adam West) are also memorable. Even so, for me the negative judgements--most notably his seeming bottomless loathing for Spielberg--seem to remain more prominent.

Perhaps the key to what irritates me about Westfahl's Encyclopedia is this passage from his entry on Lon Chaney Jr.:

Because it is impossible to fabricate any arguments regarding his importance to science fiction films, Chaney must rather serve as the occasion for a critique of the literature surrounding horror movies. Blinded by their catholic fondness for the genre, these authors regularly offer effusive praise for all the prominent actors who ever labored in its films; yet words of appreciation for genuine talents like Karloff or Peter LORRE become meaningless when exactly the same compliments are bestowed on the likes of Lon Chaney, Jr. And I am tired of reading that bad horror movies occur only because these wonderfully gifted performers are being abused by terrible scripts and inept directors; in some cases, the actors themselves must shoulder some of the blame. Lon Chaney, Jr. made every movie he was in worse; that is the unvarnished truth, and people who call themselves film critics should be able to recognize that.

Here, methinks, we have it. Westfahl seems never to have been part of a cult audience for a film or genre, which is odd because SF is a genre which attracts cult followings if ever there was one. After all, the fantastic genre has always enjoyed a certain level of critical disrepute, and historically SF and horror films have been the preserve of the smaller companies (cf. the Universal horror films of the 30s, and the American International films of the 50s and 60s; cf. also the predominance of fantastic fiction in pulp magazines). This rule has always had exceptions and things have changed in recent decades, but even so the genre still retains a strong cult appeal.