Back in 2011 I hatched a plan…review movies both old and new because I love movies and wanted to improve my writing skillz - skills. Between Netflix and the local theater I was able to put out 103 reviews and 34 ‘opinion’ pieces over the course of three years. Though I (mostly) focused on new films I always found myself most excited about horrors. Whether they were good or bad, I was happy to discover if what they brought to the genre table. Even after I stopped updating my blog I continued to pursue my love of horror for both Drunk Monkeys and a YouTube channel.
Wait, why am I talking about myself when this is a book review? Oh, that’s right. ‘Setting the scene.’ Because you see, Mr. Brian Collins has also been reviewing movies. But unlike my lazy self, he reviewed a horror movie every day for SIX YEARS, missing only one single day early in the run.
Naturally, this huge catalog of films begged for a book release, but Mr. Collins had an even better idea than the usual ‘best of’ book collections many blogs put out. He took is initial idea of a horror movie a day and broke it down into 366 separate entries, organized by monthly themes. Enter Horror Movie A Day: The Book.
For example, March’s theme is ‘Killer Kids’ and each entry in that month is a movie that has killer kids as the antagonists. With 12 months in a year, that means 12 different themes, and I must give Mr. Collins credit for not going with a dozen ‘standard’ horror tropes.
Each individual review is pretty cool too. Rather than a copy/past rehash of his original online reviews, he gives a ‘review from memory,’ a smidgeon of the actual original write-up and then a discussion that usually has something to do with the film. Since the author clearly understands the genre, he also does something cool to prevent horror newbies from getting the wrong idea about the genre. He not only admits several times throughout that some movies are cheesy bad, he also posts a review for a legitimately bad, irredeemable film for the 15th of every month.
Because none of the reviews are for blockbuster horrors this book is a must read for anyone who thinks they are a horror fan. I thought I had seen a lot of films, but ended up only having viewed about twenty of the movies mentioned in this book. It got to the point that when I did encounter a review of a movie I had seen I became far more excited than I probably should have.
What really makes this more than just a rehash of an online blog are the personal anecdotes and stories scattered throughout. It’s cool to read about a movie that that sounds interesting, it’s even cooler to have it compared to other films or have the author talk about the time he spoke to the film’s director.
Basically, I loved this book. Between the reviews, trivia and personal stories, not only did I devour this book but now I’ve got a list of over 300 movies I cannot wait to get my hands on.
