Being a collector of horror reference books, which includes several different film guides from throughout the past 30 years, I can’t help but add new ones to the collection. But as serious collectors know, you have to be a little careful before immediately picking up a new release, because you might already have an older version of the book, and sometimes the new version isn’t that much newer. Thankfully, it seems this version at least some more content added than just a few pages. But again, the rest of the book seems to be exactly the same as the last edition.

This title started back in 2006, under the title Horror: The Definitive Guide to Cinema of Fear. Then it was released again in 2010 under the title Horror! 333 Films to Scare You to Death, with a few pages of added content. Then three years later, it was released again as Horror! The Definitive Companion to the Most Terrifying Movies Ever Made, again with a few more papers of content added. Then five years later, and another 8 pages added, it was released again under the title The Definitive Guide to Horror Movies: 365 Films to Scare You to Death. And now, it is being released once again, with seemingly a bit more content, more than 30 pages added, under the same Definitive title, now with Ghostface from the Scream series on the cover.

If all of this sounds confusing, it can be, which is why I’m posting about it here. This book, whichever version you may or may not have, is a great book. With most of the content written by Kim Newman and James Marriott (who sadly passed away in 2012), is excellent reading and plenty of worthwhile information. You just need to make sure don’t already own a copy of one of the previous editions, unless you are wanting to update it to the current version.

The new edition seems to be exact same layout, or at least the two pics of different pages on the book shown on Amazon are identical as the last edition. Because of the substantial increase in content in this new volume, I know I will be adding it to the library but at least replacing the old edition I had. As I stated the first time I reported about this book series, back in 2018, if you don’t have this volume, it is an excellent edition for any horror fan that loves film guides.