Remaking Horror

Remaking Horror
Author: James Francis, Jr.
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2013-01-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0786470887

This book chronicles the American horror film genre in its development of remakes from the 1930s into the 21st century. Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) is investigated as the watershed moment when the genre opened its doors to the possibility that any horror movie--classic, modern, B-movie, and more--might be remade for contemporary audiences. Staple horror franchises--Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)--are highlighted along with their remake counterparts in order to illustrate how the genre has embraced a phenomenon of remake productions and what the future of horror holds for American cinema. More than 25 original films, their remakes, and the movies they influenced are presented in detailed discussions throughout the text.

Making and Remaking Horror in the 1970s and 2000s

Making and Remaking Horror in the 1970s and 2000s
Author: David Roche
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2014-02-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1617039624

An expansive treatment of the meanings and qualities of original and remade American horror movies

The Remaking

The Remaking
Author: Clay McLeod Chapman
Publisher: Quirk Books
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2019-10-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1683691547

From Clay McLeod Chapman, “the twenty-first century’s Richard Matheson” (Richard Chizmar), comes an “original and chilling” (Buzzfeed) ghost story that follows the legend of the Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek as it evolves every twenty years—with haunting results. In the 1930s, Ella Louise and her daughter Jessica are dragged from their home at the outskirts of Pilot’s Creek, Virginia. Ella Louise is accused of witchcraft, and both are burned at the stake. Ella Louise’s burial site is never found, but the little girl has the most famous grave in the South: a steel-reinforced coffin surrounded by a fence of interconnected white crosses. But if the mother was the witch, why was the little girl’s grave so tightly sealed? This question fuels a legend told around a campfire in the 1950s by a man forever marked by his encounters with Jessica. Twenty years later, a boy at that campfire will cast Amber Pendleton as Jessica in a ’70s horror movie inspired by the ghost story. Amber’s experiences on the set and its ’90s remake will ripple through pop culture, ruining her life and career after she becomes the target of a witch hunt. Now, Amber’s best chance to break the cycle of horror comes when a popular true-crime investigator tracks her down for an interview. But will this final act of storytelling redeem her—or will it bring the story full circle, ready to be told once again?

Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes

Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes
Author: Valerie Wee
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013-10-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134109628

The Ring (2002)—Hollywood’s remake of the Japanese cult success Ringu (1998)—marked the beginning of a significant trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s of American adaptations of Asian horror films. This book explores this complex process of adaptation, paying particular attention to the various transformations that occur when texts cross cultural boundaries. Through close readings of a range of Japanese horror films and their Hollywood remakes, this study addresses the social, cultural, aesthetic and generic features of each national cinema’s approach to and representation of horror, within the subgenre of the ghost story, tracing convergences and divergences in the films’ narrative trajectories, aesthetic style, thematic focus and ideological content. In comparing contemporary Japanese horror films with their American adaptations, this book advances existing studies of both the Japanese and American cinematic traditions, by: illustrating the ways in which each tradition responds to developments in its social, cultural and ideological milieu; and, examining Japanese horror films and their American remakes through a lens that highlights cross-cultural exchange and bilateral influence. The book will be of interest to scholars of film, media, and cultural studies.

Remaking the Frankenstein Myth on Film

Remaking the Frankenstein Myth on Film
Author: Caroline Joan S. Picart
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0791486664

Focusing on films outside the horror genre, this book offers a unique account of the Frankenstein myth's popularity and endurance. Although the Frankenstein narrative has been a staple in horror films, it has also crossed over into other genres, particularly comedy and science fiction, resulting in such films as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Bladerunner, and the Alien and Terminator film series. In addition to addressing horror's relationship to comedy and science fiction, the book also explores the versatility and power of the Frankenstein narrative as a contemporary myth through which our deepest attitudes concerning gender (masculine versus feminine), race (Same versus Other), and technology (natural versus artificial) are both revealed and concealed. The book not only examines the films themselves, but also explores early drafts of film scripts, scenes that were cut from the final releases, publicity materials, and reviews, in order to consider more fully how and why the Frankenstein myth continues to resonate in the popular imagination.

Gothic Afterlives

Gothic Afterlives
Author: Lorna Piatti-Farnell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2019-09-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1498578233

Gothic Afterlives examines the intersecting dimensions of contemporary Gothic horror and remakes scholarship, bringing together innovative perspectives from different areas of study. The research compiled in this collection covers a wide range of examples, including not only literature but also film, television, video games, and digital media remakes. Gothic Afterlives signals the cultural and conceptual impact of Gothic horror on transmedia production, with a focus on reimagining and remaking. While diverse in content and approach, all chapters pivot on two important points: first, they reflect some of the core preoccupations of Gothic horror by subverting cultural and social certainties about notions such as the body, technology, consumption, human nature, digitalization, scientific experimentation, national identity, memory, and gender and by challenging the boundaries between human and inhuman, self and Other, and good and evil. Second, and perhaps most important, all chapters in the collection collectively show what happens when well-known Gothic horror narratives are adapted and remade into different contexts, highlighting the implications of the mode-shifting registers, platforms, and chronologies in the process. As a collection, Gothic Afterlives hones in on contemporary sociocultural experiences and identities as they appear in contemporary popular culture and in the stories told and retold in the twenty-first century.

Remake the World

Remake the World
Author: Astra Taylor
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2021-05-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 164259475X

Over the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped shift the national conversation on topics including technology, inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. The essays collected here reveal the range and depth of her thinking, with Taylor tackling the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the politics of listening, the possibility of rights for the natural and non-human world, the future of the university, the temporal challenge of climate catastrophe, and more. Addressing some of the most pressing social problems of our day, Taylor invites us to imagine how things could be different while never losing sight of the strategic question of how change actually happens. Curious and searching, these historically informed and hopeful essays are as engaging as they are challenging and as urgent as they are timeless. Taylor 's unique philosophical style has a political edge that speaks directly to the growing conviction that a radical transformation of our economy and society is required.

Recreational Terror

Recreational Terror
Author: Isabel Cristina Pinedo
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2016-02-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1438416164

In Recreational Terror, Isabel Cristina Pinedo analyzes how the contemporary horror film produces recreational terror as a pleasurable encounter with violence and danger for female spectators. She challenges the conventional wisdom that violent horror films can only degrade women and incite violence, and contends instead that the contemporary horror film speaks to the cultural need to express rage and terror in the midst of social upheaval.

Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes

Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes
Author: Valerie Wee
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2013-10-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134109695

The Ring (2002)—Hollywood’s remake of the Japanese cult success Ringu (1998)—marked the beginning of a significant trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s of American adaptations of Asian horror films. This book explores this complex process of adaptation, paying particular attention to the various transformations that occur when texts cross cultural boundaries. Through close readings of a range of Japanese horror films and their Hollywood remakes, this study addresses the social, cultural, aesthetic and generic features of each national cinema’s approach to and representation of horror, within the subgenre of the ghost story, tracing convergences and divergences in the films’ narrative trajectories, aesthetic style, thematic focus and ideological content. In comparing contemporary Japanese horror films with their American adaptations, this book advances existing studies of both the Japanese and American cinematic traditions, by: illustrating the ways in which each tradition responds to developments in its social, cultural and ideological milieu; and, examining Japanese horror films and their American remakes through a lens that highlights cross-cultural exchange and bilateral influence. The book will be of interest to scholars of film, media, and cultural studies.

Adaptation, Awards Culture, and the Value of Prestige

Adaptation, Awards Culture, and the Value of Prestige
Author: Colleen Kennedy-Karpat
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2017-09-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3319528548

This book explores the intersection between adaptation studies and what James F. English has called the “economy of prestige,” which includes formal prize culture as well as less tangible expressions such as canon formation, fandom, authorship, and performance. The chapters explore how prestige can affect many facets of the adaptation process, including selection, approach, and reception. The first section of this volume deals directly with cycles of influence involving prizes such as the Pulitzer, the Man Booker, and other major awards. The second section focuses on the juncture where adaptation, the canon, and awards culture meet, while the third considers alternative modes of locating and expressing prestige through adapted and adaptive intertexts. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of adaptation, cultural sociology, film, and literature.