This documentary is not what it claims. It can hardly even be called a documentary. For starters, it is merely a montage of promotional footage and movie-excerpts roughly edited together with a silly voice-over that has absolutely NOTHING to say, except what can be seen on the screen. And I severely doubt that Stephen King has had any input at all, since he has about 15 minutes of total screentime. His commentary has nothing to do with the history of the horrormovie, and is basically some excerpts from two different interviews. The docu is clumsily divided in 13 so-called chapters with frequent commercial break blacks. The chapters are each dealing with a different aspect of the horrormovie. The first three are really terrible, some info on mid-80 exploitation junk, and another one claims one Leanna Quigly to be the only scream-queen. Hello ? Excuse me ? Jamie Lee Curtis, anyone? But I bet they've never heard of her, she doesn't even get a proper credit. There also is a section on movie-maniacs, but it is utterly worthless since it fails to mention Norman Bates, Jason Voorhees (and now I come to think of it, the Friday The 13th series never gets mentioned throughout). The middle section, I have to say, is ranging from moderately to quite interesting. It features footage and interviews with Sam Raimi, The Coen Brothers and Brian Yuzna, a section on the movie-gimmicks of William Castle, interviews and on-set footage of Dario Argento's Suspiria and some on-set footage of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre III shooting. But from there is falls apart again. The footage is boring, the excerpts are too long and the commentary is really dull. The only highlight in the last 80 minutes is the promotional trailer of Psycho, in which Alfred Hitchcock himself gives the grand tour of the house and motel. That was really cool and tongue-in-cheek. Apart from that, this docu is only of limited interest to horrorfans and it is way too long, clocking in at almost 270 minutes, with some tragic gaps, including the ommitence of Jason, the Friday series and the influence of George Romero's films. It's time they made a real documentary on the subject. Not some cheap cash-in. 3.5/10
