Tag Archives: Titles of Interest

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

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 […]

Titles of Interest: Why Horror Seduces

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 […]

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

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 […]

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

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 […]

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

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 […]

Titles of Interest: The Psycho Records

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 […]

Titles of Interest: The Laughing Dead

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 […]

Titles of Interest: Irony in The 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 […]

Titles of Interest: Undead Apocalypse

Undead Apocalypse: Vampires and Zombies in the 21st Century by Stacey Abbott Edinburgh University Press, 2016 Rather than seeing them as separate or oppositional, this book explores the intersection and dialogue between the vampire and zombie across film and television. Much contemporary scholarship on the vampire focuses on Dark Romance, while this book explores the […]

Titles of Interest – “The Undead on the Battlefield: Horrors of War”

The Undead on the Battlefield: Horrors of War, edited by Cynthia J. Miller and Bowdoin Van Riper (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015) Battlefields have traditionally been considered places where the spirits of the dead linger, and popular culture brings those thoughts to life. Supernatural tales of war told in print, on screen, and in other […]

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