While not pretending to be an upright citizen, Aaron Christensen dons his alter ego, Dr. AC, and has gone out of his way to bring us a second volume of great horror films that fans of the genre may have missed. Across the globe (not nearly as many countries as the Anti-Social Club,) he has gathered some of the most knowledgeable writers on the genre. Enough playing nice; he only included reviews that actually mattered.
Going through the contents page, films that helped to shape (or unshape) the young Insanislupus mind answered the role call: The Blob (1988), Dark Night of the Scarecrow, The Entity, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, The Hitcher, I Spit On Your Grave (1978), The Legend of Hell House, Psycho II, The Reflecting Skin, and Tombs of the Blind Dead, just to name several. Thanks to the previous book, as well as good company and even a few random picks, I would later be turned on to a new generation of horror films, some "underrated," others "overlooked": Brimstone & Treacle, The Company of Wolves, Frailty, Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural, The Mothman Prophecies, Season of the Witch, and Uzumaki, to name fewer. Yet there are still several in this book I have not seen.
The writing is top notch, as to be expected. The cover art and layout are nothing short of professional. The pictures within look great. Of course, I am obligated to point out flaws and luckily they are few and minor. Society, by Scott LeBrun, is on page 245, not 254. Not really sure how that was missed. The other is that some of the previous writers did not return. I know this isn't really a sequel to Horror 101, and there are many reasons why some would not return, including making room for new ones, but some of them still write and I would have loved seeing what films they would include here in Hidden Horror. Back to why you should buy this, there were two things that stood out to me, and probably only me. One, each entry has a block heading that includes the title, year of release, image from the movie, author, dialogue quote, and then it bleeds off the page, beautifully. Two, the dimensions of the book are the exact same height and width as Horror 101, which helps if you're slightly anal about the layout of your bookshelf.
Hidden Horror is like fan fiction, only it's not crap and not fiction; it's written by the student's of the genre, the ones you look forward to copying off of for the final, or borrowing records off of to seem hip. Don't believe me? I don't really care, but you can read several pages of it over at Amazon. Or you can buy Hidden Horror now!
The Huge Print Kitley Kut is available for
the nearly blind and those with large hands
(photo used without permission and under the
threat of getting hacked by Anonymous.)
Also, I made that part up about Society
being on page 245, but I bet a lot of people
checked before reading this far.