Halloween may be over, but there’s plenty of scares to be had in AMC’s second season of this compilation clip show, narrated and selected by director Eli Roth.

While the format of the clip show is nothing new, what’s refreshing about Eli Roth’s series is that he can call upon genre friends and associates to share their particular love and memories of some pretty obscure movies, and even a jaded horror fan like me who feels they’ve probably seen all there is worth seeing, walks away with a list of follow-up viewing.

Each episode is themed. Houses of Hell features the familiar – The Old Dark House, Psycho, The Haunting, The Amityville Horror, The Legend of Hell House; The Beyond, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses. Monsters takes us on a trawl through Alien, King Kong, The Thing, Godzilla and Cloverfield, and a favourite of mine, Pumpkinhead.

Body Horror predictably has a focus on David Cronenberg (Videodrome, The Fly), Under the Skin, Hellraiser, and there’s a great section on Brian Yuzna’s outrageous and under-rated Society. Witches looks at the phenomenon that was The Blair Witch Project and the slew of found footage movies that it ushered in, Edgar Wright shares his love of Argento’s Suspiria, and we look at all manner of cauldron-stirrer from those in The Witches of Eastwick to The Wizard of Oz to Hocus Pocus.

Chilling Children looks at evil adolescents and infants, from the mutant babies of Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive and David Lynch’s Eraserhead to the murderous Children of the Corn to the telekinetic terror of wronged teenager Carrie. The final segment, Nightmare Nine, is a catch-all 9 uncategorisable films, including Us, American Psycho, The Wicker Man (Roth describes it as the greatest British horror movie of all time), Creepshow and Dressed to Kill.

Verdict: A great way to revisit key scenes from favourite horror movies, to get some insight from the makers, or to get some tips on what to add to your ‘must watch’ list. 8/10

 

Eli Roth History of Horror Season 2 airs Tuesdays at 9pm on AMC – available on  BT TV 332/381 (HD