101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider

That said, these books are fun and often funny. 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. Schneider was short on material for the 101 Sci-fi book and so he poached titles from 101 Horror book. 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. 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. So then I played a hunch and checked out the 101 Sci-fi book. Then I looked for Alien, and that was also not in the horror book despite quite clearly being a horror movie.

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. 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. Then there is a bit of oddness of where some movies fall between these two books. Sorry, editor Steven Jay Schneider, that’s a bit of an oversight by any serious horror fan. 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.

And yes, “best” is, as always, subjective. 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 little is a good word for these, since they both measure just five inches by six and a half inches. These are two updated and reevaluated books originally published in 2009 and I love little list books like this. 101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die & 101 Sci-Fi Movies You Must See Before You Die

101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider