Barbara L. (Barbllm) reviewed on 2/7/2013 + 241 more book reviews

Jason Zinoman writes a very vivid account of 70s cinema and how the modern horror film was "invented" by a few geniuses, notably Wes Craven ("The Last House on the Left"), Roman Polanski ("Rosemary's Baby", the thinking person's horror film), Dan O'Bannon (creator of "Alien"), and John Carpenter (onetime USC film student and director of "Halloween"). There is a lot of detail in the book, including anecdotes about Carpenter and O'Bannon's time as film students, and how Tobe Hooper came to direct the now-infamous "Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

I'm not a huge fan of horror, but I found it interesting to see the creative process at work and how these ideas came to fruition. That the early films are far more beloved and better reviewed than their recently rebooted counterparts says volumes about the talent involved: did anyone seriously like the 2003 Chainsaw reboot with Jessica Biel over the 1974 original with Marilyn Burns? Or Rob Zombie's take on the origin of Michael Myers over Carpenter's unsettling 1978 film with Jamie Lee Curtis?

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