101horrorscifi101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die & 101 Sci-Fi Movies You Must See Before You Die
General Editor: Steven Jay Schneider
Apple Press
Reviewed by Brian M. Sammons

These are two updated and reevaluated books originally published in 2009 and I love little list books like this. And little is a good word for these, since they both measure just five inches by six and a half inches. I would say that means they officially fall into the “cute” category, however they are chock-full of B&W and color pictures, and amusing, informative, if somewhat brief write-ups of 101 of the best films from their respective genres. And yes, “best” is, as always, subjective. Case in point, in the 101 Horror book, the amazing and literally genre changing zombie movie (don’t believe me? Where do you think zombies get their love for brains?) The Return of the Living Dead is nowhere to be found. Sorry, editor Steven Jay Schneider, that’s a bit of an oversight by any serious horror fan.

Then there is a bit of oddness of where some movies fall between these two books. As an example, when I first got these in for review, I picked up the 101 Horror book and naturally turned to the section covering movies from the 70s and 80s (my favorite two decades in cinema), and I quickly discovered that John Carpenter’s classic and now highly lauded remake, The Thing, wasn’t in the book at all. Okay, I said to myself, this book is clearly invalid and must have been written by a room full of monkeys bashing away at keyboards. Then I looked for Alien, and that was also not in the horror book despite quite clearly being a horror movie. So then I played a hunch and checked out the 101 Sci-fi book. Yep, both are in there. So I guess the author didn’t want to double dip between the two books, and I guess that’s commendable, but NOT accurate — and both The Thing and Alien ARE horror movies; two of the best ever made. Okay, okay, arguments can be made that they are sci-fi films, too, but then what the hell is David Cronenberg’s Videodrome doing in the sci-fi book and NOT in the horror book? Who, other than this author, can argue that Videodrome is far more a sci-fi flick than a horror movie? My guess is that Mr. Schneider was short on material for the 101 Sci-fi book and so he poached titles from 101 Horror book. That’s fine if you get both books together, but if you are just a horror fan and only get the horror book, then you are going to miss out on a bunch of amazing horror movies. So again, that’s a bit of an oversight.

That said, these books are fun and often funny. What I plan to do with them is watch all of the movies in the 101 Horror book, as they are presented from the earliest to the most recent (which, in this case, is last year’s It Follows) just for fun and get my horror on, which admittedly, I never really need an excuse to do. When I’m done with that, I’m going to jump on the 101 Sci-fi book and do the same because while some movies are missing, and some have been put into the wrong book, I have yet to find a stinker in either book. So if you want to bone up on your genre cinema history, find some movies you might have overlooked, or you’re just the over obsessive movie fan like me, these books are for you.

 

 

About Brian M. Sammons

Brian M. Sammons has penned stories that have appeared in the anthologies: Arkham Tales, Horrors Beyond, Monstrous, Dead but Dreaming 2, Horror for the Holidays, Deepest, Darkest Eden and others. He has edited the books; Cthulhu Unbound 3, Undead & Unbound, Eldritch Chrome, Edge of Sundown, Steampunk Cthulhu, Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Atomic Age Cthulhu, World War Cthulhu and Flesh Like Smoke. He is also the managing editor of Dark Regions Press’ Weird Fiction line. For more about this guy that neighbors describe as “such a nice, quiet man” you can check out his infrequently updated webpage here: http://brian_sammons.webs.com/ and follow him on Twitter @BrianMSammons.

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