Welcome back Scream Scholars!
The last time the academy met we looked at Wheeler Winston Dixon’s A History of Horror and found it to be a rather disappointing volume. While the earlier part of the history it presents is quite enlightening, the later half demonstrated a clear bias against modern-day horror that was riddled with errors. For those would consider purchasing a volume with a title such as this, I instead offer up Kim Newman & James Marriott’s Horror! The Definitive Companion to the Most Terrifying Movies Ever Made.
There have been quite a few versions of this book released over the years. I own the 2013 release and therefore my review may misrepresent previous or subsequent versions of the book. The first thing that anyone sees when they pick up the book is that it is jam-packed with photos: almost every single page has a movie still on it and many have more than one. The visual presentation of the book really helps to keep it quite fun, flipping pages to discover new horrors waiting.
But where this book really shines is its presentation of horror history. It is broken up into ten chapters. The first chapter is written by Kim Newman, who then contributes the introduction for each subsequent chapter, and it serves as a brief history of the genre itself. Chapter two looks at the birth of cinema and brings us through to the end of the silent era. From there on out every chapter is dedicated to another decade: 1930s; 1940s; 1950s; 1960s; 1970s; 1980s; 1990s; 2000s. The final chapter actually goes a bit past a decade to include fresh releases at the time of this edition. The introductions to the chapters really serve to ground the historical framework of the movies discussed within.
The core content of each chapter is written by James Marriott. The book is essentially a collection of 348 different films which Marriott has selected for their importance to the genre and then reviewed. The reviews are quite wide-ranging in their focus; one may highlight the production of the film in question while the next sticks to conveying the tone or mood and yet another discusses how the public received the film. These are broken-up periodically, though randomly, by one or two-page essays on certain sub-genres (such as slashers) or creators (like Stephen King). These essays are also penned by Marriott and they serve as great introductions into the subjects at hand, though they should only be taken as a starting ground for further exploration as they are far too brief to do more than tease the topics.
When I decided that I wanted to learn more about horror film scholarship and the genre, it was this book that helped me the most. My copy has a date signed next to every film listed. Even if I had seen the film before, I had to re-watch it and mark the date when I did. Mr. Newman and Mr. Marriott’s book served as a horror-studies bootcamp with one major advantage over any of the film courses I’ve attended: They point you towards the films that matter but then they get out of your way so that you can experience them for yourself; rather than overly examining the genre, Horror! The Definitive Companion to the Most Terrifying Movies Ever Made functions best as a syllabus for Fear Scholars.
If you’re interested in exploring the films in this volume yourself then you can find them all on this handy Letterboxd list that I made. If you don’t use Letterboxd, well then, Fear Scholars, check out this article I wrote on why you totally should.
