History of Horror

Your mileage may vary between episodes, but for a horror fan, this series is outstanding. And if you are not a horror fan, it is suggested strongly that you stop reading or watch and turn to something else.

Each episode, Eli Roth focuses on the most classic movies in a specific sub-genre while getting commentary from that movies director/writer/actor or a deep bench of horror/film aficionados such as Stephen King and Quentin TarantinoBe warned, If you are new to horror, or haven't seen all the movies featured, it will spoil everything. It showcases the most famous and/or best scenes of each referenced movie.

For the rest of us horror peeps, its a great hour long recap / analysis of what should be our favorite films.

First off, I gotta oppose to those reviews that give 1/10's because "it's political". I understand exactly why they call it that, but the political stuff is ultimately not that biased & there's not much of it, it really does not "sit on the nose". As a life-long devoted horror cinema & literature fan, I can only enjoy 40 minutes of awesome, known horror people talking about their favorite thing passionately. I have to admit, that some of the information the series provide is already an average horror geek's general knowledge, but it does not lessen the excitement to watch the series. Each of the 40minutes-long episodes is dynamic and consistent enough for the episode to feel like it's only 20 minutes long. An easy, informing, entertaining, laid-back watch. And If you're not much into the horror genre, then, well, you won't find any of this interesting. My rating after seeing 4 episodes: A solid 7/10.

Watched the whole thing through the AMC app and I am seriously impressed. I'm not a big fan of Eli Roth's films, but he definitely knows his horror/thriller history and you can see his love for them and for movies in general. The quality of this series is way above similar efforts, from the camera work on the interviews to the writing and editing -- really slick and fast-moving. Way, way better than James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction, which was slow and boring. There are tons of different experts, most of them big-time filmmakers and actors but also horror scholars who have some really interesting takes on what made these films classics. The segment on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is particularly great: it puts the shock and gore in context of Vietnam and slaughterhouse workers who lost their jobs to machines. But there's also lots of cool stuff about makeup effects, etc. And plenty from Stephen King and his horror writer son Joe Hill, who along with John Landis and Quentin Tarantino always have something funny or interesting to say.

Most everything about the series is good: topics, interviews, clips. The only reason to remove a star is that each episode picked one film to do a deep-dive on, and it chewed up too much time for the episode.

I'm a huge fan of horror movies, and I knew pretty much everything that was said in terms of history and what not, but I was still throughly glued to the series during the show. Each episode is done well, we get great speakers, and the show doesn't feel biased. My personal favorite sub-genre of horror is slashers, so I was pleasantly surprised it was a 2 part episode. I highly recommend this for horror movie fans, people who are curious about horror movies, or any movie fan in general. It's very informative, entertaining, and flows nicely. It doesn't drag on and never feels repetitive. A very fresh and exciting documentary.