American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror FilmGregory Albert Waller Since the release of Rosemary's Baby in 1968, the American horror film has become one of the most diverse, commercially successful, widely discussed, and culturally significant film genres. Drawing on a wide range of critical methods---from close textual readings and structuralist genre criticism to psychoanalytical, feminist, and ideological analyses---the authors examine individual films, directors, and subgenres. In this collection of twelve essays, Gregory Waller balances detailed studies of both popular films (Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist, and Halloween) and particularly problematic films (Don't Look Now and Eyes of Laura Mars) with discussions of such central thematic preoccupations as the genre's representation of violence and female victims, its reflexivity and playfulness, and its ongoing redefinition of the monstrous and the normal. In addition, American Horrors includes a filmography of movies and telefilms and an annotated bibliography of books and articles about horror since 1968. |
Contents
Night of the Living Dead Its Not Like Just a Wind Thats Passing Through | 14 |
The Trauma of Infancy in Roman Polanskis Rosemarys Baby | 30 |
Seeing Is Believing The Exorcist and Dont Look Now | 44 |
Eyes of Laura Mars A Binocular Critique | 62 |
Returning the Look Eyes of a Stranger | 79 |
The Stalker Film 197881 | 86 |
The Funhouse and The Howling | 102 |
Through a Pumpkins Eye The Reflexive Nature of Horror | 114 |
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ABC-TV alien American audience Barbara become body bourgeois Brian De Palma camera characters child Cinema contemporary horror film context culture danger Dark David Cronenberg death demonic devil Dracula dream Dressed to Kill essay evil Exorcist Eyes of Laura family melodrama fantasy fear female figure film's finally Frankenstein Friday the 13th Funhouse genre Halloween Hell heroine horror film human John Carpenter Kate killer Larry Cohen Laura Mars Living Dead look made-for-television horror movies made-for-television movies male Michael modern horror monster murder narrative Nightmare novel Palma's paternity patriarchal Polanski popular present protagonists Psycho psychological R. H. W. Dillard reality repressed Richard Robin Wood role Romero Rosemary Rosemary's Baby scene science fiction film screen sequence sexual shot sisters social stalker film Stephen King story structure subgenre suggests supernatural symbolic teenagers telefilm television terror threat tion traditional vampire victims viewer violence vision visual woman women young community
Popular passages
Page 7 - The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain — a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults...
Page 10 - ... a plethora of mysterious clues and a cast of likely suspects. Prom Night and Terror Train, in turn, have their analogues in the many recent detective films, including Sharky's Machine (1981), /, The Jury (1982), Endangered Species (1982), and Tightrope (1984), which match the detective against the monstrous opponent who seems to be an interloper from the realm of horror. As Leo Braudy puts it, 'Understanding the appeal of horror films these days is crucial to understanding films in general because...