8 Apr 2015
An old book, it was written about the early to mid 80's but still interesting. I'm not well versed in the horror genre in any format, radio, book, movie, television, and especially in the cases listed in this book as they were all from before I was born. To me this was a gold mine of things to put on my "To see/read" list. Many of the classics I recognized, but didn't know the stories behind.
The best part of this book was observing the deconstruction of the genre by another author of it. So often when I see critics reviews on a movie, I assume the opposite. The critics hated it? Must be awesome!
In this case, Stephen King is commenting on his forebears and contemporaries, not from the perspective of some lord, as outside critics do, so we see an more accurate description of the good and the bad. He is also very honest in his description of the bimodal pattern of quality seen in the horror from the eras discussed: when it's good, it's really good but when it's bad, it's really bad.
Pick up this book if you're looking for a quality list of 20th century horror to get your hands on, or if you enjoy the musing of a young, but popular fiction author.
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