The Horror Film: An Introduction / Edition 1

by Rick Worland

Overview

Combining historical narrative with close readings of several significant horror films, this brief volume offers a broad and lively introduction to cinematic horror. In doing so, it outlines and investigates important issues in the production, consumption, and cultural interpretation of the genre.

• An ideal text for perennially popular courses on the horror film genre.
  
• Examines the ways in which horror movies have been produced, received, and interpreted by filmmakers, audiences, and critics, from the 1920s to the present.
  
• Provides a short historical introduction of the horror film as an orientation to the field.
  
• Analyses a wide variety of major works in the genre, including Frankenstein, Cat People, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781405139021
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	10/30/2006
Series:	New Approaches to Film Genre , #7
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 9.05(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Rick Worland is Associate Professor and Chair of the Division of Cinema-Television at Southern Methodist University. He has published in many scholarly journals, including Cinema Journal, and has contributed essays to a number of film collections.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

 

Acknowledgements

 

Chapter 1. Introduction: Undying Monsters

 

Chapter 2. A Short History of the Horror Film, Beginnings to 1945

 

Chapter 3. A Short History of the Horror Film, 1945 to Present

 

Chapter 4. Monsters Among Us: Cases of Social Reception

 

Chapter 5. Edges of the Horror Film: Lon Chaney, Tod Browning, and The Unknown (1927)

 

Chapter 6. Frankenstein (1931) and Hollywood Expressionism

 

Chapter 7. Cat People (1942): Lewton, Freud, and Suggestive Horror

 

Chapter 8. Horror in “The Age of Anxiety:” Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

 

Chapter 9. Slaughtering Genre Tradition: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

 

Chapter 10. Halloween (1978): The Shape of the Slasher Film

 

Chapter 11. Re-Animator (1985) and Slapstick Horror

 

Chapter 12. Demon Lover: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

 

Chapter 13. Get Out (2017): The American Horror

 

Afterword to the 1st edition: Our Haunted Houses  

 

Afterword to the 2^nd edition: Dark Universes

 

Appendix: Horror Auteurs

 

Notes

 

References

 

Index

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