In case anyone is interested in a description of the Maxford Hammer Complete book, given that, as I said, the amazon links don't include a peak into the contents, I did splurge for and received it. I was a bit disappointed to see that it is very much an A-to-Z encyclopedia, whereas I was expecting something like a narrative history, chronological, with more in-depth articles. That being said, I'm not seeing what you're describing, including the capsule reviews with star-ratings. Film entries get 1-to-5 (large) page descriptions (3 columns of text per page). I see there are critique elements as well production history content in those articles, but again no star-ratings. Also info on dvd/BR availability, although that is already lacking information on releases in 2019 and upcoming. So this appears to be a very differently formatted book that the 90s book you're referring to.Dr Amicus wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 6:18 amI've heard very patchy things re the Maxford, indeed his earlier book on Hammer from the 90s is very average - a surface level (without any obvious howlers that I can recall) narrative history with a redundant appendix with capsule Halliwell / Maltin-esque reviews (most films getting 0 stars!). I haven't got either - they might be tempting at a much lower price but certainly not at their current prices...
It does seem to contain small articles on every single person ever associated in some capacity with Hammer. Huge, near coffee-size table book, but very text-heavy (occasional black-and-white pictures, but not glossy) that is almost 1000 pages. It does indeed appear "complete" in this sense, but probably not the sort of thing you'd like to read cover-to-cover (although I've been known to do that with certain encyclopedias, so I'll see what happens here). I did also purchase the Meikle, a used copy of the first Kinsey volume (Bray Studio years), and Rigby's English Gothic, so I should get my narrative fix among those!
*EDIT: The content of the book's appendix here are film titles that were supposed to get made by Hammer but didn't.