Welcome to the wonderful world of horror films! We're not sure of all the reasons why, but there is just something in most of us that enjoys the good shiver or fright that comes from watching scary movies. It's probably something that goes back to childhood and those original fears of darkness and the unknown, of being left alone or lost, or of being surrounded by things bigger than we are.
Scary movies are like ghost stories around a campfire--only without the mosquitoes (unless they're scheduled to appear in Giant Radioactive Mosquitoes from the Planet Dracular). And don't we all remember the first scary movie we saw? (Confess. You trembled that night under the covers--even with the flashlight turned on--didn't you?)
Maybe horror movies are popular simply because they are so different from any other kind of movie. After much careful research and analysis, some horror scholars have offered their considered opinions that we like horror films because, well, they're cool.
This book is a tribute to the great horror makers of the past century as well as to some who were not so great but at least gave us laughs jumbled with fear. And so, too, we salute those magnificent kings and queens of scream with hundreds and hundreds of trivia questions (and answers) about hundreds of horror films.
We've included short biographies of the greatest names in the fright business and more than a hundred photographs. Together, they are The Amazing, Colossal Book of Horror Trivia.
This collection goes back to the beginning of horror history in America with quizzes on author Edgar Allan Poe and actor Lon Chaney (king of the silent horror film) and brings you right up to date with the teen-scream flicks of the 1990s. That's almost a century of chills and thrills from the greatest horror producers of Hollywood, London, Tokyo, and even a few lost worlds somewhere in between.
Here you'll find a variety of brainteasers on Dracula and vampires, Frankenstein monsters and werewolves, ghosts and haunted houses, witches and warlocks, mad doctors and weird scientists, demons and devils, monkeys and great apes, big bugs and giant reptiles, invisible men and shrunken heads, teen monsters and TV horror, and even comedy in horror films.
There are sidebars on the greatest names in the genre--men like Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Vincent Price--and sketches on such horror helping hands and scream queens as Peter Lorre, Barbara Steele, Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, and John Carradine.
We've designed the quizzes to be fun. But also, by the time you're finished, even if you don't know all of the answers to everything you always wanted to know about horror (but were too scared to ask!), you'll at least feel like you've graduated from Horror 101.
The quizzes are divided into seventeen chapters, but the list easily could have been expanded. While any number of films could have qualified for more than one chapter, we've tried to place them logically. Believe us, trying to sort hundreds of horror films into precise categories would drive any boy or ghoul mad.
But don't worry, the book's not too tidy. There's plenty of mayhem in our methods. And so it is that some films and quizzes have been left just to float among the chapters like so many ghosts--ready to pop and give you a scary challenge when you least expect it.
Enter these pages if you dare and enjoy the surprises of what just might be the most frightfully fun test of knowledge you'll ever encounter. But remember: Once you've removed this book from its shelf (Oops...you've already done that, haven't you? Well, now you've done it!), who knows what evil might befall you if you try to put it back. (What was that? Did something on the shelf just move?)
Whatever you do, don't look back. You never know what might be behind you.
See you at the movies!
