Horror Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Slashers Vampires Zombies Aliens and More
Horror Films FAQ explores a century of ghoulish and grand horror cinema, gazing at the different characters, situations, settings, and themes featured in the horror film, from final girls, monstrous bogeymen, giant monsters and vampires to the recent torture porn and found footage formats. The book remembers the J-Horror remake trend of the 2000s, and examines the oft-repeated slasher format popularized by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980).

After an introduction positioning the horror film as an important and moral voice in the national dialogue, the book explores the history of horror decade by decade, remembering the women's liberation horrors of the 1970s, the rubber reality films of the late 1980s, the serial killers of the 1990s, and the xenophobic terrors of the 9/11 age. Horror Films FAQ also asks what it means when animals attack in such films as The Birds (1963) or Jaws (1975), and considers the moral underpinnings of rape-and-revenge movies, such as I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and Irreversible (2002). The book features numerous photographs from the author's extensive personal archive, and also catalogs the genre's most prominent directors.

1114792860
Horror Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Slashers Vampires Zombies Aliens and More
Horror Films FAQ explores a century of ghoulish and grand horror cinema, gazing at the different characters, situations, settings, and themes featured in the horror film, from final girls, monstrous bogeymen, giant monsters and vampires to the recent torture porn and found footage formats. The book remembers the J-Horror remake trend of the 2000s, and examines the oft-repeated slasher format popularized by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980).

After an introduction positioning the horror film as an important and moral voice in the national dialogue, the book explores the history of horror decade by decade, remembering the women's liberation horrors of the 1970s, the rubber reality films of the late 1980s, the serial killers of the 1990s, and the xenophobic terrors of the 9/11 age. Horror Films FAQ also asks what it means when animals attack in such films as The Birds (1963) or Jaws (1975), and considers the moral underpinnings of rape-and-revenge movies, such as I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and Irreversible (2002). The book features numerous photographs from the author's extensive personal archive, and also catalogs the genre's most prominent directors.

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Horror Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Slashers Vampires Zombies Aliens and More

Horror Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Slashers Vampires Zombies Aliens and More

by John Kenneth Muir
Horror Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Slashers Vampires Zombies Aliens and More

Horror Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Slashers Vampires Zombies Aliens and More

by John Kenneth Muir

Paperback

$22.99 
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Overview

Horror Films FAQ explores a century of ghoulish and grand horror cinema, gazing at the different characters, situations, settings, and themes featured in the horror film, from final girls, monstrous bogeymen, giant monsters and vampires to the recent torture porn and found footage formats. The book remembers the J-Horror remake trend of the 2000s, and examines the oft-repeated slasher format popularized by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980).

After an introduction positioning the horror film as an important and moral voice in the national dialogue, the book explores the history of horror decade by decade, remembering the women's liberation horrors of the 1970s, the rubber reality films of the late 1980s, the serial killers of the 1990s, and the xenophobic terrors of the 9/11 age. Horror Films FAQ also asks what it means when animals attack in such films as The Birds (1963) or Jaws (1975), and considers the moral underpinnings of rape-and-revenge movies, such as I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and Irreversible (2002). The book features numerous photographs from the author's extensive personal archive, and also catalogs the genre's most prominent directors.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781557839503
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 08/01/2013
Series: FAQ
Pages: 386
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

John Kenneth Muir (Charlotte, NC) is the author of 24 reference books, including The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi, and Horror Films of the 1970s. John's blog, Reflections on Cult Movies and Classic TV, was selected one of the “100 Top Film Study” sites on the net in 2010. In 2009, John appeared in the documentary Nightmares in Red, White and Blue with John Carpenter and Joe Dante.

Table of Contents

Foreword Chris Carter ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: It Knows What Scares You xv

1 "What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?": A Brief History of the Horror Film 1

2 "If It's Not in the Frame, It Doesn't Exist": The Prominent Directors 14

3 "My Mommy Always Said There Is No Such Thing as Monsters": The Boogeymen 31

4 "The Spider Spinning His Web for the Unwary Fly": Dracula Films 59

5 "The Night Has Its Price": Vampire Films 69

6 "Where Should We Be if No One Tried to Find Out What Lies Beyond?": Frankenstein Films 85

7 "Do You Know What It Means to Feel Like God?: Mad-Scientist Films 95

8 "I Believe a Man Lost in the Mazes of His Own Mind May Imagine That He's Anything": The Wolf Man and Werewolf Movies 108

9 "Look, I Know the Supernatural Is Something That Isn't Supposed to Happen, but It Does Happen": Haunted Houses 117

10 "There Is No Death. It Is Only a Transition to a Different Sphere of Consciousness": Ghost Films 129

11 "Have You Ever Heard of Exorcism?": Devil and Demon Films 137

12 "They're Dead. They're All Messed Up": Zombie Films 149

13 "We Adapt and We Survive": Alien Films, Part I 162

14 "Is This a Stand-Up Fight or Another Bug Hunt?": Alien Films, Part II 171

15 "And the Beasts Shall Reign over the Earth": Giant-Monster Films 184

16 "The Very Concept Is Unimaginable!": When-Animals-Attack Films 197

17 "We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes": Psycho Films and Serial-Killer Films 209

18 "Vengeance Is a Human Right": Rape and Revenge Films 224

19 "It's Got a Death Curse": The Slasher-Film Paradigm 237

20 "No Reason, No Conscience, No Understanding, Even the Most Rudimentary Sense of Life or Death, Good or Evil, Right or Wrong": Slasher Films, Part II 252

21 "I Could Be Bounded in a Nut Shell, and Count Myself a King of Infinite Space, Were It Not That I Have Bad Dreams": Rubber-Reality Films 265

22 "What Will You Give Me for a Basket of Kisses?": Evil-Children Films 275

23 "I'm Going to Scare You to Death!": Stephen King Adaptations 288

24 "Cut It Out, Evil, It's Not Funny": Horror-Comedy Films 302

25 "The Old-Timers Say He's Still Out There": Remakes, Reboots, and Prequels 312

26 "Everyone Will Suffer": The J-Horror Remakes 325

27 "Try Me if You Dare": Video-Game Horror Films 332

28 "You Identify More with a Cold Corpse than You Do with a Living Human": Torture-Porn Films 341

29 "We Have to Tape Everything": The Found-Footage Horror Film 352

30 "The Truth Is Out There": Television Terrors 363

Selected Bibliography 375

Index 378

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