Publisher's Weekly
Golden, a columnist for the Entertainment News Wire, has assembled an impressive list of writers of horror fiction to offer opinions on horror films. Clive Barker and Peter Atkins engage in a free-flowing dialogue about varieties of horror: movies such as Taxi Driver that are not in the genre but have horror-film structures and sensibilities or The Night Porter , which Barker calls ``touched by a pleasure . . . in horrifying people which is entirely admirable.'' Anne Rice engagingly defines the qualities she admires in her favorite fright flicks (including Frankenstein and Angel Heart ): atmosphere, elegance and characters of tragic dimension. Unfortunately, most of the articles do not meet these standards. Ed Gorman offers a much too brief and bland analysis of filmmaker Wes Craven (he ``makes good use of the desert'' and ``is also good at action scenes''). Nancy Holder asks ``why The Haunting is so damn scary,'' but her ``oh gee' analysis falls short of the answer . The problem is ultimately Golden's, whose introduction exhibits a fan magazine mentality. By his own admission, he gave contributors no guidance. The result is that far too many simply ramble on about movies they like with no discernible direction.