it’s Antonio Margheriti’s THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964), which features the burning of an effigy. Educational and cute.
A YEAR OF FEAR A Day-by-Day Guide to 366 Horror Films
By Bryan Senn
2007, McFarland & Co., Inc.
www.mcfarlandpub.com Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640 560 pages, Softcover, $35.00 Reviewed by Tim Lucas
This latest book by Bryan Senn, the author
of GOLDEN HORRORS (the most comprehensive history of 1930s horror films published to date), is not his long-awaited companion overview of 1940s terror cinema, but it’s formatted around an irresistibly clever idea: Go through the calen- dar year, find historical events for each day, and write about a horror film somehow relatable to each event. For example, Senn’s May 21 selec- tion is THE MAZE (1953), because it was on that day in 1977 that the longest leap by a frog (33 feet, 5 ½ inches) was recorded. On November 11, the date of the first fatal train wreck in the US (in 1833) is DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HOR- RORS (1965), a trainbound anthology film that ends with the deaths of all passengers. Septem- ber 16’s pick is WHITE ZOMBIE (1932), because on that day in 1915 Haiti became a US protec- torate. And the movie for November 5, Guy Fawkes Day? No, not V FOR VENDETTA (2006);
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It’s a rare movie fan who could resist at least thumbing through this book looking for the movie assigned to their birthday. (Lucky me: I get MARS NEEDS WOMEN for my birthday viewing.) What would have likely become an instant White El- ephant item if produced as an actual calendar becomes an infectiously browsable book (whose use is not limited to a single year, either). Senn’s entries for each film are smart, literate and inter- esting, and often leavened with quotes from vari- ous published sources related to the films. In case you have any doubt that Tom Weaver is the most valuable researcher classic horror films have ever had, just flip through this book at random; his name appears on so many pages, crediting the sources for quotes and background information, he probably deserved co-author credit. Yet not all the data came from Weaver; there are also cita- tions for works by David J. Skal, Mark A. Miller, Richard Bojarski, Robert Tinnell, David Del Valle, Dennis Fischer, Alan Upchurch, Bob Madison, Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio, as well as other articles from the pages of FANGORIA, FILMFAX and SCARY MONSTERS. (Your reviewer is not so fortunate; a few Mario Bava films are included herein, and the entries for BLACK SUN- DAY [December 29, Barbara Steele’s birthday] and BLACK SABBATH [March 7, the day the telephone was patented by Alexander Graham Bell!] tap into my research and use at least one quote I obtained directly from Lamberto Bava, yet other writers are cited as the go-to people for Bava information.)
Generously illustrated with 218 stills and ad
mats, A YEAR OF FEAR isn’t exclusively about hor- ror. There are also several entries for science fic- tion films (WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE) and the odd marginal title like RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS. Some may con- sider it a drawback that only one silent film is in- cluded: 1923’s THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, an odd inclusion when you realize that neither NOSFERATU or PHANTOM OF THE OP- ERA are represented, while a second version of HUNCHBACK (Charles Laughton’s) is. Nevertheless, A YEAR IN FEAR is commendable for providing a welcome structured curriculum for studying a well-considered cross-section of genre fare ranging from the early sound classics (like DRACULA, 1931) to 21st century releases (like DOG SOLDIERS, 2002). And you just might learn some fun things about history in the process.
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