Reappraising Cult Horror Films

Reappraising Cult Horror Films
Author: Lee Broughton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2024-05-16
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1501387561

Identifies key – and in some cases previously overlooked – cult horror films from around the world and reappraises them by approaching and interrogating them in new ways. New productions in the horror genre occupy a prominent space within the cinematic landscape of the 21st century, but the genre's back catalogue of older films refuses to be consigned to the motion picture graveyard just yet. Interest in older horror films remains high, and an ever-increasing number of these films have enjoyed an afterlife as cult movies thanks to regular film festival screenings, television broadcasts and home video releases. Similarly, academic interest in the horror genre has remained high. The frameworks applied by contributors to the collection include genre studies, narrative theory, socio-political readings, aspects of cultural studies, gendered readings, archival research, fan culture work, interviews with filmmakers, aspects of film historiography, spatial theory and cult film theory. Covering a corpus of films that ranges from recognised cult horror classics such as The Wicker Man, The Shining and Candyman to more obscure films like Daughters of Darkness, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, Shivers, Howling III: The Marsupials and Inside, Broughton has curated an international selection of case studies that show the diverse nature of the cult horror subgenre. Be they star-laden, stylish, violent, bizarre or simply little heard-of obscurities, this book offers a multitude of new critical insights into a truly eclectic selection of cult horror films.

We Don't Go Back

We Don't Go Back
Author: Howard David Ingham
Publisher:
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2018-07-08
Genre: Horror films
ISBN: 9781722748814

Secret, strange, dark, impure and dissonant...Enter the haunted landscapes of folk horror, a world of ­pagan ­village conspiracies, witch finders, and teenagers awakening to evil; of dark fairy tales, backwoods cults and obsolete technologies. Beginning with the classics Night of the Demon, Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan's Claw, We Don't Go Back surveys the genre of screen folk horror from across the world. Travelling from Watership Down to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with every stop inbetween, We Don't Go Back is a thoughtful, funny and essential overview of folk horror in TV and cinema."A beautiful rumination on the dark films and television that shaped me and a generation of odd children, for good or ill, worth a year of your time, because you won't just read the book, you'll feel a burning desire to watch everything mentioned within." - Robin Ince"A comprehensive, accessible and often riotously funny tome weaving together folk horror in all its forms, from British television to the American backwoods, from Eastern European fairytales to the vengeful ghosts of East Asia. Ingham explores uncanny landscapes haunted by things buried, old cultures converging with the reluctance of contemporary reason, that very tension that gives his book its name. He attempts to both define folk horror and free it from definition, creating the ultimate guide to the genre's manifestations on film and offering a convincing argument as to why the genre resonates so compellingly with people today." - Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women

Cult Movies

Cult Movies
Author: Danny Peary
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Total Pages:
Release: 1982
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

A survey of 100 films describes their plots and examines their artistic quality, stars, and the reasons for their special popularity

Post-9/11 Horror in American Cinema

Post-9/11 Horror in American Cinema
Author: Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2012-03-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1441103961

The horror film is meant to end in hope: Regan McNeil can be exorcized. A hydrophobic Roy Scheider can blow up a shark. Buffy can and will slay vampires. Heroic human qualities like love, bravery, resourcefulness, and intelligence will eventually defeat the monster. But, after the 9/11, American horror became much more bleak, with many films ending with the deaths of the entire main cast. Post-9/11 Horror in American Cinema illustrates how contemporary horror films explore visceral and emotional reactions to the attacks and how they underpin audiences' ongoing fears about their safety. It examines how scary movies have changed as a result of 9/11 and, conversely, how horror films construct and give meaning to the event in a way that other genres do not. Considering films such as Quarantine, Cloverfield, Hostel and the Saw series, Wetmore examines the transformations in horror cinema since 9/11 and considers not merely how the tropes have changed, but how our understanding of horror itself has changed.

Defining Cult Movies

Defining Cult Movies
Author: Mark Jancovich
Publisher:
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2003
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

Concentrates on the analysis of cult movies, how they are defined, who defines them and the cultural politics of these definitions. Raises issues about the perception of it as an oppositional form of cinema, and of its strained relationships to mainstream cinema and the processes of institutionalisation and classification. Claims that the history of academic film studies and that of cult movie fandom are inextricably intertwined and raises fundamental questions about both cult movies themselves, and film studies as a discipline. Updates work on cult movies at a time when cult films and TV have become a central part of contemporary culture. Ranges over the full and entertaining gamut of cult films from Dario Argento, Spanish horror and Peter Jackson's New Zealand gorefests to sexploitation, kung fu and sci fi flicks, as well investigations of Sharon Stone, 'underground' and trivia.

The Cult Film Reader

The Cult Film Reader
Author: Ernest Mathijs
Publisher: Open University Press
Total Pages: 584
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

'The Cult Film Reader' contains major essays written on the structure, form, status, and reception of global cult cinema traditions. It includes work from key established scholars in the field, including Janet Staiger, Jeffrey Sconce and Umberto Eco, as well as new takes on the gradually developing canon of cult cinema.

Horror Noire

Horror Noire
Author: Robin R. Means Coleman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2013-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136942947

From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of the horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. In Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from 1890's to Present, Robin R. Means Coleman traces the history of notable characterizations of blackness in horror cinema, and examines key levels of black participation on screen and behind the camera. She argues that horror offers a representational space for black people to challenge the more negative, or racist, images seen in other media outlets, and to portray greater diversity within the concept of blackness itself. Horror Noire presents a unique social history of blacks in America through changing images in horror films. Throughout the text, the reader is encouraged to unpack the genre’s racialized imagery, as well as the narratives that make up popular culture’s commentary on race. Offering a comprehensive chronological survey of the genre, this book addresses a full range of black horror films, including mainstream Hollywood fare, as well as art-house films, Blaxploitation films, direct-to-DVD films, and the emerging U.S./hip-hop culture-inspired Nigerian "Nollywood" Black horror films. Horror Noire is, thus, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how fears and anxieties about race and race relations are made manifest, and often challenged, on the silver screen.

Reframing Cult Westerns

Reframing Cult Westerns
Author: Lee Broughton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2020-03-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1501343513

Once one of the most popular film genres and a key player in the birth of early narrative cinema, the Western has experienced a rebirth in the era of post-classical filmmaking with a small but noteworthy selection of Westerns being produced long after the genre's 1950s heyday. Thanks to regular repertory cinema and television screenings, home video releases and critical reappraisals by cultural gatekeepers such as Quentin Tarantino, an ever-increasing number of these Westerns have become cult films. Be they star-laden, stylish, violent, bizarre or simply little heard-of obscurities, Reframing Cult Westerns offers a multitude of new critical insights into a truly eclectic selection of cult Western films. These twelve essays present a wide-ranging methodological scope, from industrial histories to ecocritical approaches, auteurist analysis to queer and other ideological angles. With a thorough analysis of the genre from international perspectives, Reframing Cult Westerns offers fresh insight on the Western as a global phenomenon.

Critical Perspectives on the Western

Critical Perspectives on the Western
Author: Lee Broughton
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2016-09-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1442272430

For decades, the Western film has been considered a dying breed of cinema, yet filmmakers from Quentin Tarantino to Ethan and Joel Coen find new ways to reinvigorate the genre. As Westerns continue to be produced for contemporary audiences, scholars have taken a renewed interest in the relevance of this enduring genre. In Critical Perspectives on the Western: From A Fistful of Dollars to Django Unchained, Lee Broughton has compiled a wide-ranging collection of essays that look at various forms of the genre, on both the large and small screen. Contributors to this volume consider themes and subgenres, celebrities and authors, recent idiosyncratic engagements with the genre, and the international Western. These essays also explore issues of race and gender in the various films discussed as well as within the film genre as a whole. Among the films and television programs discussed in this volume are The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward, Robert Ford; Django Kill; Justified; Meek’s Cutoff; Tears of the Black Tiger; Appaloosa; The Frozen Limits; and Red Harvest.Featuring a diverse selection of chapters that represent current thinking on the Western. Critical Perspectives on the Western will appeal to fans of the genre, film students, and scholars alike.

The Afterlife of the Hollywood Western

The Afterlife of the Hollywood Western
Author: Pete Falconer
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2020-04-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137546719

This book examines the Western genre in the period since Westerns ceased to be a regular feature of Hollywood filmmaking. For most of the 20th Century, the Western was a major American genre. The production of Westerns decreased in the 1960s and 1970s; by the 1980s, it was apparent that the genre occupied a less prominent position in popular culture. After an extended period as one of the most prolific Hollywood genres, the Western entered its “afterlife”. What does it now mean for a Hollywood movie to be a Western, and how does this compare to the ways in which the genre has been understood at other points in its history? This book considers the conditions in which the Western has found itself since the 1980s, the latter-day associations that the genre has acquired and the strategies that more recent Westerns have developed in response to their changed context.