Titles of Interest – Bell, Book and Camera: A Critical History of Witches in American Film and Television
A new book by my friend Heather who does an outstanding job as editor of The Wild Hunt blog. Bell, Book and Camera: A Critical History of Witches in American Film and Television by Heather Greene McFarland, 2018 The witch as a cultural archetype has existed in some form since the beginning of recorded history. […]
Titles of Interest – Holy Horror: The Bible and Fear in Movies
Holy Horror: The Bible and Fear in Movies By Steve Wiggins McFarland, 2018 What makes you afraid? It may be more than what you think. Horror films have been exploiting our fears almost from the moment movies were invented. Lurking unseen in the corner of horror, however, is something unexpected: the Bible. Sit back while […]
Titles of Interest: Pseudoscience and Science Fiction
Pseudoscience and Science Fiction by Andre May Springer, 2017 Aliens, flying saucers, ESP, the Bermuda Triangle, antigravity … are we talking about science fiction or pseudoscience? Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference. Both pseudoscience and science fiction (SF) are creative endeavours that have little in common with academic science, beyond the superficial trappings […]
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 […]
