A. Bowdoin Van Riper

Cynthia J. Miller

Explores the horrific side of consumption, as it is portrayed in film and television—from what (and whom) we eat to food that “bites back.”

Food and Horror on Screen

What's Eating You?

As baby boomers gray, cinematic depictions of aging and the aged are on the rise. In the horror genre, fears of growing old take on fantastic proportions. Elderly characters are portrayed as either eccentric harbingers of doom--the crone who stops at nothing to restore her youth, the ancient ancestor who haunts the living--or as frail victims. This collection of new essays explores how various filmic portrayals of aging, as an inescapable horror destined to overtake us all, reflect our complex attitudes toward growing old, along with its social, psychological and economic consequences.

Essays on Film's Frightening Images of Aging

Elder Horror

Since ancient times, explorers and adventurers have captured popular imagination with their frightening narratives of travels gone wrong. Usually, these stories heavily feature the exotic or unknown, and can transform any journey into a nightmare. Stories of such horrific happenings have a long and rich history that stretches from folktales to contemporary media narratives.This work presents eighteen essays that explore the ways in which these texts reflect and shape our fear and fascination surrounding travel, posing new questions about the "geographies of evil" and how our notions of "terrible places" and their inhabitants change over time. The volume's five thematic sections offer new insights into how power, privilege, uncanny landscapes, misbegotten quests, hellish commutes and deadly vacations can turn our travels into terror.

Essays from the Cinematic Intersection of Travel and Horror

Journeys into Terror

Home, we are taught from childhood, is safe. Home is a refuge that keeps the monsters out—until it isn't. This collection of new essays focuses on genre horror movies in which the home is central to the narrative, whether as refuge, prison, menace or supernatural battleground. The contributors explore the shifting role of the home as both a source and a mitigator of the terrors of this world, and the next. Well known films are covered—including Psycho, Get Out, Insidious: The Last Key and Winchester House—along with films produced outside the U.S. by such directors as Alejandro Amenábar (The Others), Hideo Nakata (Ringu) and Guillermo Del Toro (The Orphanage), and often overlooked classics like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger.

Essays on Hauntings, Possessions and Other Domestic Terrors in Cinema

Horror Comes Home

James J. Ward

This collection of essays examines how New York and Los Angeles are depicted in noir and neo-noir films from the 1940s through the 21st century. These essays consider how the architectural sights and city sounds inform such films as Cotton Comes to Harlem, Drive, Kiss of Death, Naked City, and Nightcrawler, among others.

New York and Los Angeles in Shadow and Light

Urban Noir

Divided into four thematic sections, What's Eating You? explores the deeper significance of food on screen-the ways in which they reflect (or challenge) our deepest fears about consuming and being consumed. Among the questions it asks are: How do these films mock our taboos and unsettle our notions about the human condition? How do they critique our increasing focus on consumption? In what ways do they hold a mirror to our taken-for-granteds about food and humanity, asking if what we eat truly matters? Horror narratives routinely grasp those questions and spin them into nightmares. Monstrous “others” dine on forbidden fare; the tables of consumption are turned, and the consumer becomes the consumed. Overindulgence, as Le Grande Bouffe (1973) and Street Trash (1987) warn, can kill us, and occasionally, as films like The Stuff (1985) and Poultrygeist (2006) illustrate, our food fights back. From Blood Feast (1963) to Sweeney Todd (2007), motion pictures have reminded us that it is an “eat or be eaten” world.

This companion to Undead in the West (Scarecrow 2012) explores the blending of the Western genre with zombies, vampires, mummies, ghosts, and spirits in comics, graphic novels, literature, games, new media, fandom and material culture.

They Just Keep Coming

Undead in the West II

John A. Dowell

Horrific Humor and the Moment of Droll Grimness in Cinema explores the moment in audience reception where screams and laughter collide. Essays examinine the aesthetics and mechanics of the sLaughter moment, the impact of its frission of humor and horror on the viewer, and sLaughter’s implications for the human condition more generally./span

Sidesplitting sLaughter

Horrific Humor and the Moment of Droll Grimness in Cinema

From Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to The Witch (2015), horror films use religious entities to both inspire and combat fear and to call into question or affirm the moral order. Churches provide sanctuary, clergy cast out evil, religious icons become weapons, holy ground becomes battleground—but all of these may be turned from their original purpose. This collection of new essays explores fifty years of genre horror in which manifestations of the sacred or profane play a material role. The contributors explore portrayals of the war between good and evil and their archetypes in such classics as The Omen (1976), The Exorcist (1973) and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), as well as in popular franchises like Hellraiser and Hellboy and cult films such as God Told Me To (1976), Thirst (2009) and Frailty (2001).

Essays on the Cinematic Battle Between the Sacred and the Diabolical

Divine Horror

Zombie Culture by McIntosh and Leverette (Scarecrow, 2010), 420 pages, paper, $50 LTD sales: 850 ($26,461) From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse by Cline and Weiner (Scarecrow, 2010), 362 pages, cloth, $55. LTD sales: 253 ($9,855)

Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier

Undead in the West

This volume explores the representation of the supernatural in war stories in various media. These essays show how such depictions reflect (or challenge) the popular memory of particular wars and engage with cultural attitudes toward war in general and associated issues such as battlefield heroism, military ethics, and the politics of sacrifice.

The Undead on the Battlefield

Horrors of War

Douglas Brode

Shea T. Brode

In The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color, Douglas Brode, Shea T. Brode, and Cynthia J. Miller bring together nineteen essays by a diverse array of scholars to explore issues of morality, race, gender, nation, and history in films and television shows featuring the American Civil War.

Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color

The American Civil War on Film and TV

Dark Forces at Work examines the role of race, class, gender, religion, and the economy as they are portrayed in, and help construct, horror narratives across a range of films and eras. These larger social forces not only create the context for our cinematic horrors, but serve as connective tissue between fantasy and lived reality, as well. While several of the essays focus on “name” horror films such as IT, Get Out, Hellraiser, and Don’t Breathe, the collection also features essays focused on horror films produced in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and on American classic thrillers such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Key social issues addressed include the war on terror, poverty, the housing crisis, and the Time’s Up movement. The volume grounds its analysis in the films, rather than theory, in order to explore the ways in which institutions, identities, and ideologies work within the horror genre.

Essays on Social Dynamics and Cinematic Horrors

Dark Forces at Work

The heyday of the televised rocketman came before our actual travels in space occurred and was a burgeoning time in TV history. Before astronauts like John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and Neil Armstrong were household names, before the 'one small step' that left America's national footprint on the Moon, and before the wonders of science fiction became the wonders of science fact, battles were fought with Para-Ray guns and Cosmic Vibrators, 'Opticon Scillometers' scanned through walls, heroes in jetpacks soared through the skies, and the universe was full of wonder. The fourteen essays featured here focus on series such as Space Patrol, Tom Corbett, and Captain Z-Ro, exploring their roles in the day-to-day lives of their fans through topics such as mentoring, promotion of the real-world space program, merchandising, gender issues, and ranger clubs - all the while promoting the fledgling medium of television.

Cadets, Rangers, and Junior Space Men

1950s "Rocketman" TV Series and Their Fans

Julie Anne Taddeo

Presents a collection of essays looking at the social and cultural aspects of steampunk and its relationship to popular culture.

A Steampunk Anthology

Steaming Into a Victorian Future

Hybrid films that straddle more than one genre are not unusual. But when seemingly incongruous genres are mashed together, such as horror and comedy, filmmakers often have to tread carefully to produce a cohesive, satisfying work. Though they date as far back as James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935), horror-comedies have only recently become popular attractions for movie goers. In The Laughing Dead: The Horror-Comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland, editors Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper have compiled essays on the comic undead that look at the subgenre from a variety of perspectives. Spanning virtually the entire sound era, this collection considers everything from classics like The Canterville Ghost to modern cult favorites like Shaun of the Dead. Other films discussed include Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters, House on Haunted Hill, ParaNorman, Scream, Vampire’s Kiss, and Zombieland. Contributors in this volume consider a wide array of comedic monster films—from heartwarming (The Book of Life) to pitch dark (The Fearless Vampire Killers) and even grotesque (Frankenhooker). The Laughing Dead will be of interest to scholars and fans of both horror and comedy films, as well as those interested in film history and, of course, the proliferation of the undead in popular culture.

The Horror-Comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland

The Laughing Dead

From Faust (1926) to The Babadook (2014), books have been featured in horror films as warnings, gateways, prisons and manifestations of the monstrous. Ancient grimoires such as the Necronomicon serve as timeless vessels of knowledge beyond human comprehension, while runes, summoning diaries, and spell books offer their readers access to the powers of the supernatural--but at what cost? This collection of new essays examines nearly a century of genre horror in which on-screen texts drive and shape their narratives, sometimes unnoticed. The contributors explore American films like The Evil Dead (1981), The Prophecy (1995) and It Follows (2014), as well as such international films as Eric Valette's Malefique (2002), Paco Cabeza's The Appeared (2007) and Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981).

Essays on Books of Good and Evil in Horror Cinema

Terrifying Texts

Undead in the West is a collection of essays that explore the many tropes and themes through which undead Westerns make the genre’s inner plagues and demons visible, and lay siege to a frontier tied to myths of strength, ingenuity, freedom, and independence. Featuring several illustrations and a filmography, the volume is divided into three sections: “Reanimating Classic Western Tropes” examines traditional Western characters, symbolism, and plot devices and how they are given new life in undead Westerns; “The Moral Order Under Siege” explores the ways in which the undead confront classic values and morality tales embodied in Western films; and “And Hell Followed with Him” looks at justice, retribution, and retaliation at the hands of undead angels and avengers.

In Too Bold for the Box Office, Cynthia J. Miller has assembled essays by scholars and filmmakers who examine the unique cinematic form of mockumentary. Individually, each of these essays looks at a given instance of mockumentary parody and subversion, examining the ways in which each calls into question our assumptions, pleasures, beliefs, and even our senses. Writing about national film, television, and new media traditions as diverse as their backgrounds, this volume s contributors explore and theorize the workings of mockumentaries, as well as the strategies and motivations of the writers and filmmakers who brought them into being."

The Mockumentary from Big Screen to Small

Too Bold for the Box Office

Home, we are taught from childhood, is safe. Home is a refuge that keeps the monsters out--until it isn't. This collection of new essays focuses on genre horror movies in which the home is central to the narrative, whether as refuge, prison, menace or supernatural battleground. The contributors explore the shifting role of the home as both a source and a mitigator of the terrors of this world, and the next. Well known films are covered--including Psycho, Get Out, Insidious: The Last Key and Winchester House--along with films produced outside the U.S. by directors such as Alejandro Amenabar (The Others), Hideo Nakata (Ringu) and Guillermo Del Toro (The Orphanage), and often overlooked classics like Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger.

Cynthia J. Miller

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