Book Review: Cinema Macabre by Mark Morris

Cinema Macabre is 233 pages long and is the brainchild of best-selling author Mark Morris. Basically it is a collection of essays, written by writers and editors etc from within the horror, sci-fi and fantasy genres, and about their favourite horror movies.

Some of the contributors to the book include: Ramsey Campbell, Simon Clark, Neil Gaiman, Stephen Laws, Christopher Fowler and, of course, Mark Morris—who also edited the book. That names just six out of 50 contributors.

I must admit that I found Cinema Macabre a little boring in places; so there were parts of the book that I just skimmed through rather than read properly. The book contains a wealth of interesting information though, and I learnt a quite a bit from it.

As I read Cinema Macabre I was surprised at how many of the movies mentioned were unfamiliar to me and I now have quite a list of movies that I want to see at some point. I also discovered a lot of new things about the movies that I was already familiar with. This is a useful book and I am sure that many fans of the horror genre could benefit from having a copy of it on their bookshelves. Some people may, just like me, find the book a little boring if they try to read it from cover to cover, but if they refer to it as a reference book it should prove very usefiul indeed.

The movies discussed are:

• Nosferatu (1922)
• The Unknown (1927)
• The Old Dark House (1932)
• King Kong (1933)
• The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
• I walked With A Zombie (1943)
• Orphee (1949)
• Les Diaboliques (1955)
• Carousel (1956)
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
• Night of the Demon (1957)
• Psycho (1960)
• The Haunting (1963)
• Repulsion (1965)
• The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
• The Reptile (1966)
• Night of the Living Dead (1968)
• Pretty Poison (1968)
• Witchfinder General (1968)
• Daughters of Darkness (1971)
• Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
• The Omega Man (1971)
• Don’t Look Now (1973)
• From Beyond the Grave (1973)
• The Wicker Man (1973)
• The Omen (1976)
• The Tenant (1976)
• Eraserhead (1977)
• The Last Wave (1977)
• Suspiria (1977)
• Dawn of the Dead (1978)
• Halloween (1978)
• Alien (1979)
• The Changeling (1980)
• The Fog (1980)
• The Shining (1980)
• The Thing (1982)
• Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
• Videodrome (1983)
• Razorback (1984)
• Demons (1985)
• The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
• Hellraiser (1987)
• Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
• Braindead (1992)
• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
• Lost Highway (1997)
• Ringu (1998)
• The Blair Witch Project (1999)
• The Sixth Sense (1999)