Rating: 
Summary: Industry Buzz about VideoHound's Horror Show
Review: "A must-have for horror film junkies." -- Entertainment Weekly"It's a lively look at the best and worst ... and has enlightenment aplenty on how we like to scare ourselves." -- Dayton (OH) News "It has a slew of information and pictures presented in an easily digestible format ./.. a welcome addition to the horror movie review world." -- Geocities.com "This book will relieve the heartache of standing around the video store looking stupid."
Rating: 
Summary: A good book, but with some reviews that just don't belong.
Review: As a fan of the horror genre, I'm always searching for reading material to expand my views on these films as well as help open my eyes to some films that I may have overlooked in the past. This book should be on every film fan's shelf, as it is amusing as well as enlightening and the cross references are amazingly helpful.
Rating:
Summary: A Videophile's Best Friend
Review: As a fan of the horror genre, I'm always searching for reading material to expand my views on these films as well as help open my eyes to some films that I may have overlooked in the past. This book should be on every film fan's shelf, as it is amusing as well as enlightening and the cross references are amazingly helpful.
Rating:
Summary: With a grain of salt...
Review: Bare in mind first of all that I am reviewing this based on the older edition of the book. So if things have changed in terms of Mr. Mayo's approach and style to reviewing films I am unaware of it. What I can review however is the formula, knowledge and bias' inherent in his writing. Anyway, I'll cut with the BS now and get to it.
Mike Mayo's Videohound's Horror Show is first and foremost a resource book. It links movies to actors/directors and viceversa. It has a category index as well as a list of distributors, alternative titles, etc. etc. But chances are thats not what most people will want it for. Most will want it for a quick overview of all the horror films they have and haven't seen, to either validate their existing opinions or to see out new films to watch.
Mr. Mayo provides this in abundance. From Zombie Lake to Dawn of the Dead he really covers all of his bases, ranging from fan-classics to almost completely unheard of titles. His reviews are to the point, subjective (as he freely admits in the introduction) and at times even very funny. So in terms of providing what he promises, he inarguably succeeds. That said the only real problem anyone can have with his book is simply a difference of opinions and tastes. As far as I can tell Mr. Mayo has a soft spot for older horror movies and British Hammer films, and in turn tends to grade them easier and with less predjudice than certain others. For example, the film Plague Of Zombies he awarded four stars, digressing breifly about the political aspects of the story and overall displaying all the enthusiasm for the film that a young boy after his first viewing would. I personally saw the film and found it, like most Hammer films to be formulaic, dull and consisting of enough wide angle shots to almost validate it as a stage play. But thats not so much what bothers me - its the fact that he then went on to give Nightmare On Elm Street, an original and frightening film for its time (and now) only 2 1/2 stars. (Well bones, really - not stars.) On a similar tolken he gives Devil Doll, a fairly bad 1960's film, (so bad in fact that it was ripped on by Msytery Science Theater 3000) the same 3-bone rating as he gave the brilliant David Fincher release Se7en. But again, this is all subjective and Mayo covers his tracks in the introduction by stating that the bone-rating system is in his mind the least important aspect of the book and only reflects his immediate reaction to when he saw it originally. Fair enough. All the same, I think this illustrates his own cinematic proclivities and so just be aware that you may find your own personal favorites the subject of some pretty heavy criticism while other films remain relatively unscratched. (The Amityville Horror, an excellent ghost movie in my eyes, actually recieved only one bone and got a pretty rough thrashing from the critic.)
One other aspect which may puzzle some readers is Mr. Mayo's inclusion of some films which are arguably not horror films at all. Sure, some may contain horrific scenes in them but the likes of Jurassic Park, Nightmare Befor Christmas, Apocolypse Now, Alice In Wonderland, and Abbot and Costello Meet The Invisible Man don't typically tend to count as "Horror."
All the same though, there remains a remarkable amount of solid review and criticism in the book which will surely intrigue horror fans and hopefully get you out there renting titles you otherwise never would have heard of. Besides, no one has published anything of the kind thats better, so what choice to do you have? Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: A book any horror film fan should be ashamed to be without!!
Review: I bought this book as a supplement to research on a term paper. Wow, was I surprised!! This is the end-all be-all of horror film books. Mike Mayo is amazingly honest, and though there are some strange entries (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies rates 3 stars), he never becomes defensive. He lists some excellent sources, and as with all Videohound books, cross-indexes everything. Those movies that are not included are not included for good reason. Those movies that are included...well, let's just say this is the ultimate horror book.
Rating:
Summary: A book any horror film fan should be ashamed to be without!!
Review: I bought this book as a supplement to research on a term paper. Wow, was I surprised!! This is the end-all be-all of horror film books. Mike Mayo is amazingly honest, and though there are some strange entries (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies rates 3 stars), he never becomes defensive. He lists some excellent sources, and as with all Videohound books, cross-indexes everything. Those movies that are not included are not included for good reason. Those movies that are included...well, let's just say this is the ultimate horror book.
Rating:
Summary: Nearly Indispensible
Review: I bought this book right when it came out oh so many years ago. Since that time I've thumbed through it on countless occasions when I thought I'd seen everything there was to see...or had at least heard about it. This book invariably brought some film to my attention that I had some how missed before. In that regard this book it wonderful. There are some flaws, though. The first is the authors rather lax definition of the horror genre. This leads to the Wizard of Oz being included along side the Wizard of Gore. Somehow that doesn't quite jive and it makes me wonder sometimes what honest to goodness horror movies got excluded to make room for these selections. Second, the author tends to keep things very mainstream. This gripe was answered some when I looked through the Videohound cult movie guide and saw that many of the more fringe titles I hoped to find in the horror guide were included there. Finally, the author's tastes skew very Anglo-American to the point where I don't think that European productions that aren't from the UK get a raw deal in his reviews. However, this is more of a difference of opinion with the author than an actual problem with the book. On the whole this is very good pickup for someone new to the genre and a find that will reward even the most seasoned horror enthusiast.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for anybody deeply into horror movies.
Review: One piece of advice: If you're squimish don't buy this book. It has graphic pictures and explistic reviews, all the things a horror film junkie loves. Mike Mayo does the best job at writing this book he rates the movies and will even make fun of the movies he didn't like. I can't spend one day without looking through the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Are we looking at the same book?...
Review: The reviews are terrible, the non-horror choices are ridiculous (Apocalypse Now?, that's the horror of war, not horror), and the cast and director indices leave something to be desired. The author will give a film a great review, then short it in the # of bones rating. I have to recommend trimming off the fat before expanding into another edition.
Rating:
Summary: Are we looking at the same book?...
Review: The reviews are terrible, the non-horror choices are ridiculous (Apocalypse Now?, that's the horror of war, not horror), and the cast and director indices leave something to be desired. The author will give a film a great review, then short it in the # of bones rating. I have to recommend trimming off the fat before expanding into another edition.
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