These are such things as screams are made of! From the black-and-white nightmares etched out  of  the German  Expressionist movement to today's terrifying exercises in cinema verite, the horror film has never gone out of fashion, decade  after  decade.  Essential Horror  Movies charts the history of the horror film - its creation, development, and evolution-through the movies that have been essential to the growth and continuance of the genre. What  makes  a  horror  movie "essential"?  It can be that the silent masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari  has lost none of its eerie power after almost a century, or that 1931's Dracula is not just a classic, but also one of  the most influential pictures in the history of Hollywood. It can be that the film established a new form of cinematic storytelling, such as 1945's Dead of  Night, or  introduced   a  visceral level of screen terror, like 1957's  Curse of Frankenstein. Small pictures whose influences belied their budgets—-such  as  Night of  the Living Dead, Halloween, and  The  Blair Witch Project - were essential to the continuing development of the genre. They, along with many other impactful fright films, are described and analyzed in Essential Horror Movies. Lavishly  illustrated   with   color  and   black­ and-white  photographs, many of  them  rare, and featuring insights from the filmmakers themselves and behind-the-scenes information on the making of the films, Essential Horror Movies is the most comprehensive "biography" of  one of the cinema's most popular  and enduring  genres, and a book that offers a frighteningly good time!