Category Archives: Titles of Interest

Titles of Interest – Subversive Spirits: The Female Ghost in British and American Popular Culture

April 16th, 2018 | Posted in female, ghost, Titles of Interest

Subversive Spirits: The Female Ghost in British and American Popular Culture By Robin Roberts University Press of Mississippi, 2018 The supernatural has become extraordinarily popular in literature, television, and film. Vampires, zombies, werewolves, witches, and wizards have become staples of entertainment industries, and many of these figures have received extensive critical attention. But one figure […]

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Titles of Interest: Why Horror Seduces

October 31st, 2017 | Posted in evolutionary psychology, horror, Titles of Interest

Why Horror Seduces by Mathias Clasen (Oxford University Press, 2017) From vampire apocalypses, shark attacks, witches, and ghosts, to murderous dolls bent on revenge, horror has been part of the American cinematic imagination for almost as long as pictures have moved on screens. But why do they captivate us so? What is the drive to […]

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Titles of Interest – “Living with the Living Dead: The Wisdom of the Zombie Apocalypse”

August 14th, 2017 | Posted in Titles of Interest, zombie

Living with the Living Dead: The Wisdom of the Zombie Apocalypse by Greg Garrett When humankind faces what it perceives as a threat to its very existence, a macabre thing happens in art, literature, and culture: corpses begin to stand up and walk around. The dead walked in the fourteenth century, when the Black Death […]

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Titles of Interest – Divine Horror: Essays on the Cinematic Battle Between the Sacred and the Diabolical

March 23rd, 2017 | Posted in horror, sacred, Titles of Interest

Divine Horror: Essays on the Cinematic Battle Between the Sacred and the Diabolical Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, eds. McFarland, 2017 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 […]

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Titles of Interest – Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us

March 8th, 2017 | Posted in monster theory, monsters, monstrous, teratology, Titles of Interest

Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us Edited by Adam Golub and Heather Richardson Hayton Foreword by W. Scott Poole; Afterword by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen McFarland, 2017 About the Book Exploring the pedagogical power of the monstrous, this collection of new essays describes innovative teaching strategies that use our cultural fascination with […]

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Titles of Interest: The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas

December 27th, 2016 | Posted in 1980s, Christmas, Krampus, Titles of Interest

The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas: Roots and the Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil by Al Ridenour (Feral House, 2016) With the appearance of the demonic Christmas character Krampus in contemporary Hollywood movies, television shows, advertisements, and greeting cards, medieval folklore has now been revisited in American culture. Krampus-related events and parades occur both […]

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Titles of Interest: The Psycho Records

December 27th, 2016 | Posted in Psycho, Titles of Interest

The Psycho Records by Laurence A. Rickels (Columbia University Press, 2016) The Psycho Records follows the influence of the primal shower scene within subsequent slasher and splatter films. American soldiers returning from World War II were called “psychos” if they exhibited mental illness. Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock turned the term into a catch-all phrase […]

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Titles of Interest: The Laughing Dead

December 27th, 2016 | Posted in comedy, horror, Titles of Interest

The Laughing Dead: The Horror-Comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland, edited by Cynthia J. Miller and Bowdoin Van Riper (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) 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 […]

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Titles of Interest: Irony in The Twilight Zone

December 27th, 2016 | Posted in Titles of Interest, Twilight Zone

Irony in The Twilight Zone: How the Series Critiqued Postwar American Culture by David Melbye (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) Rod Serling’s pioneering series The Twilight Zone (1959 to 1964) is remembered for its surprise twist endings and pervading sense of irony. While other American television series of the time also experimented with ironic surprises, none […]

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Titleles of Interest: The Curse of Frankenstein

December 27th, 2016 | Posted in Frankenstein, Hammer Films, Titles of Interest

The Curse of Frankenstein by Marcus K. Harmes (Columbia University Press, June 2015) Critics abhorred it, audiences loved it, and Hammer executives where thrilled with the box office returns: The Curse of Frankenstein was big business. The 1957 film is the first to bring together in a horror movie the ‘unholy two’, Christopher Lee and […]

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