100 Years of Horror

Ted Newson made a wonderful, lengthy documentary on the horror film with this 13 volume set narrated by the great Christopher Lee. The videos are basically divided into sub-genres within the horror film such as witches, ghosts, dinosaurs, Frankenstein, vampires, etc... In each video, the ever urbane and deadpan Lee narrates the evolution of that particular horror strand from its roots to modern times. Without a doubt the series is dedicated to older horror films from the silent era, the Universal era, the Hammer era, and the huge field of B pictures(which for some reason garnered more attention than all the others it seems). We get glimpses of old interviews with deceased stars such as Karloff, Lugosi, Chaney Jr., John Carradine, and Vincent Price, as well as interviews with living legends such as Lee himself, John Carpenter, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, and many others. An obvious flaw with the series is that it definitely seems to be under budgetary constraints. Most of the clips, if not all, come from movie trailers rather than the films themselves. Although there are 13 tapes, many of them are barely 45 minutes in length. And Lee himself uses the same catch-phrases throughout the series, thus letting us know that the producers had only a certain time with his services. This is not really a complaint, as I am glad the project was done....just an observation. There are some obvious films missing in the series(probably because they didn't have the trailers) and they are only mentioned in passing. The two that really stand out are Psycho and Night of the Living Dead. But again, overall this is a must-see for the student of the horror film and a very entertaining series as well. I can't remember ever seeing Mr. Lee so funny before as he talks about some of the films he made. One in particular line I found very amusing was when he mentioned that his only brush with film lycanthropy was The Howling II...and then he said in a very Jack Benny manner.."The less said about that the better."

I would have to say that this is a very good video. They really made this right. The only thing is that where is George Romero? They should have had him on because he was the one who gave a zombies a new name (well thats what I think). Anyway it is overall excellent.

Just saw the DVD, which only contains the two general episodes of this series and enjoyed it immensely. And since I'm a HUGE Abbott&Costello fan I was pleasantly surprised to see some outtakes from 'Abbott&Costello meets Frankenstein', one of their best films for sure.

But aside from that, Lee guides us through the history of horror movies using the trailers of the movies themselves. Not bad, all the exciting shots are there, but also the the very misplaced music and captions that accompanies the trailers. Silencing the music and removing the captions would have earned this otherwise wellmade documentary a 8/10, but now I think a 7 will be quite enough.

Generally speaking, most of these compilation "tributes" are crap...even this one was done on the cheap. Perhaps on account though of the clips used (95% trailers, if you're observant enough to notice) and Christopher Lee's (who else???) narration, the thing works. Matter of fact its great stuff!

Definitely more of interest to the over 40's (over 60"s wouldn't go that far astray either, now I come to think about it!) as the greater majority of the referenced work here is from archived horror 1940 and earlier. Not ALL though, even relative "acolytes" such as John Carpenter get their few minutes worth on camera!

As one reviewer pointed out, it was funny stuff to hear Lee's more than realistic comment upon his own contribution - to the "horror" that was HOWLING II!

I saw an edited version of this that was made into a 2 hour movie and it was super choppy and disjointed, jumping around all over the place with no flow or purpose. There were some neat clips and Lee is always great but it was pretty hard to watch overall. Maybe as a series it worked better?