While certainly well-intentioned, the idea behind Hidden Horror: A Celebration of 101 Underrated and Overlooked Fright Flicks is hardly new. For example, I immediately was reminded of a book that’s now 10 years old: Fangoria’s 101 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen: A Celebration of the World’s Most Unheralded Fright Flicks. Hell, the titles are almost the same!

Yet that’s not a complaint. At least not when so little overlap exists, when so many more movies have yet to get their due, and when the results are as finely polished as editor Aaron Christensen’s trade paperback is. Pay no mind to it being print-on-demand; this book exudes professionalism on all levels without sacrificing its pure indie spirit.

It’s also a good sign that I didn’t care that I have seen more than half of the 101 featured films and heard of all but two. No matter how deep your knowledge of the genre goes, Hidden Horror is a fun read above all else. While I suspect it will be used by burgeoning film buffs looking to expand their horizons in the years to come, it serves dual purpose as simply a fine collection of criticism and an opportunity to reconnect with titles that may have escaped your memory.

Following a foreword by no less an icon than Maniac director William Lustig, Christensen admits in his introduction that the movies covered in Hidden Horror may not truly be hidden at all. Degrees to which a film is “underrated” and/or “overlooked” is arguably as subjective as whether it is scary.

That’s why something like 1978’s notorious (or noxious, depending on your POV) as I Spit on Your Grave is included. Yes, the rape-revenge shocker has plenty of fans and caused plenty more furor in its time, but no, you’re not likely to have read about it quite like you will here, as BJ Coleangelo — a rape victim herself — defends the oft-maligned exploitation thriller as empowering cinema. Now that’s a refreshing take to read.

And so it goes with 100 other essays from writers, journalists and bloggers, each taking roughly three pages apiece to share and spill their love over a particular work, from the low-bar schlock of Horror of Party Beach to the high-minded artistry of Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession.

Only the spaghetti Western Django Kill … If You Live, Shoot! — no matter how surreal — strikes me as suspect for this lineup. Still, the piece on it is well-written; all of them are, which is more than a little surprising, given the sheer number of cooks in the kitchen.

Also worthy of a shout-out is John Pata for his terrific design work. What so DIY indie authors and publishers fail to recognize is that how a book looks is just as important as how it reads — and maybe even more so, since it creates that first impression upon flip-through. Bad design — or simply nonexistent design — can do harm to good work. Just look at Christensen’s previous collection, 2007’s Horror 101, the guts of which are as drab as to repel the eyeballs connected to interested minds.

Hidden Horror has no such problems; I’m not sure it has any problems, other than that soon after 300 pages, it comes to an end. —Rod Lott

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Pop quiz, hotshot: One guess as to which movies form the core of Randy Rasmussen’s Psycho, The Birds and Halloween: The Intimacy of Terror in Three Classic Films.

Wait, how’d you guess?

Okay, next question. This one’s harder, but not by much: Is the book as simplistic as that initial question?

Answer: Yeah, pretty much.

It’s not that everything to be said about those Alfred Hitchcock and John Carpenter classics already has been said — it just depends on what’s being said and who’s doing the saying. If there can be a 336-page critical study devoted to a four-minute scene from Psycho alone — and there is and the Hitch faithful among us should read it — there can be a worthy volume on the entirety of these three horror greats. I’m afraid it’s just not this one.

A university library associate by trade, Rasmussen — whose previous books for McFarland & Company analyzed Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick and horror archetypes — focuses on the relationship triangles in each film, but separately and going scene by scene, seemingly making comment on every line of stage direction.

The problem in that approach is Rasmussen finds hidden meaning in everything, like a first-semester film student patting himself on the back for a newfound ability to Think Deep. It’s like the infamous case of critics reading 1968’s Night of the Living Dead as a statement of America’s race relations at the time, whereas its director claims no such thesis was implied or intended.

For example, take this excerpt of the author on Psycho‘s first scene:

“All right,” he concedes, spreading his arms in a gesture of defeat. He is not indifferent to her feelings. Marion turns to face him again. Background music returns. The same lethargic, slightly melancholy music heard during the scene’s opening pan shot. Neither lover is completely satisfied with their new understanding. Sam gets up from his chair and puts on his shirt. Looking more “respectable” now, he approaches Marion and tells her, with evident sincerity, that he wants to continue seeing her under any circumstances. Marion, amused but deep down not entirely so, turns away from him to resume straightening her clothes in front of the mirror, “You make respectability sound — disrespectful,” she observes with a touch of sardonic humor. Yes, he does. Because for him respectability is little more than “hard work.” … This dialog occurs with the two characters shown in profile, against the confining backdrop of drawn blinds (more horizontal lines, like the ones in the credits). Contradicting his new commitment to Marion, if only indirectly, Sam turns away from her now and complains bitterly of two other burdens of respectability that have obviously soured him on the whole concept. He is “tired” (like the music) of “sweating for people who aren’t there” …

One more example, in which Rasmussen breaks down the scene of Norman Bates complaining about his mother to new motel guest Marion Crane:

Suddenly we see Norman from a new camera angle — a low angle profile in which the predatory stuffed owl and rape painting are visible behind him. … Visually, in two-dimension, his head overlaps with the swooping owl. Is he defying the mother that owl represents to him? Or has he merged with the owl? Become one with it? The paintings depicting rape are mounted below the predatory owl. …

And so it goes, through the whole of Psycho, then the same for The Birds and finally, mercifully, Halloween. The pages are occasionally supplemented with a welcome still, but more often rife with incomplete sentences on purpose. The effect is numbing, like watching a DVD with someone who not only voices everything onscreen, but shares his unsolicited opinion as well. I wouldn’t even accept an A-to-Z plot summary-cum-supposition from an Andrew Sarris. —Rod Lott

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