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The Highway Horror Film argues that 'Highway Horror' is a hither-to
overlooked sub-genre of the American horror movie. In these films,
the American landscape is by its very accessibility rendered
terrifyingly hostile, and encounters with other travellers almost
always have sinister outcomes.
"It Came From the 1950s" is an eclectic, witty and insightful
collection of essays predicated on the hypothesis that popular
cultural documents provide unique insights into the concerns,
anxieties and desires of their times. The essays explore the
emergence of "Hammer Horror" and the company's groundbreaking 1958
adaptation of "Dracula"; the work of popular authors such as
Shirley Jackson and Robert Bloch, and the effect that 50s food
advertisements had upon the poetry of Sylvia Plath; the place of
special effects in the decade's science fiction films; and 1950s
Anglo-American relations as refracted through the prism of the 1957
film "Night of the Demon."
Horror and Gothic in all of their various forms have penetrated the
cultural mainstream in a manner unseen since the last horror boom
in mid/late 1970s; even people who would never before have
entertained an interest in such dark genres are now happily
settling down to watch zombie- and serial killer-related TV shows
after the family dinner. This unique collection of 54 short
biographical essays, by scholars and experts, brings together a
vast array of figures who have played a role in the ever-expanding
world of Gothic and Horror. However, you won't find the usual
suspects here. Names such as Bram Stoker, Vincent Price, and
Stephen King are notably absent. Such titans of terror have
received and continue to receive prominent attention in all manner
of publications. This collection, instead, focuses on those
underrated or overlooked people whom our contributors persuasively
argue are deserving of acknowledgement or reappraisal.
Stimulatingly eclectic, the essays muse and enthuse on figures as
diverse as American singer-songwriter, Tom Waits; British occultist
and author, Dion Fortune; American author and scriptwriter, Charles
Beaumont; Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop, Gregory of Tours;
British gothic novelist and playwright, Francis Lathom; Japanese
video game designer, Shinji Mikami; English stage and film actor,
Skelton Knaggs; 19th-century Irish novelist, Charlotte Riddell; and
Russian-born American experimental filmmaker, Maya Deren.
Informative and entertaining, these essays expand, enrich (and, at
times, challenge) the boundaries of what we actually define as
Gothic and Horror. They celebrate the wide variety of talented
individuals whose participation in Gothic and Horror's ongoing
evolution has been unjustly overlooked...until now.
Shirley Jackson was one of America's most prominent female writers
of the 1950s. Between 1948 and 1965 she published one best-selling
story collection, six novels, two popular volumes of her family
chronicles and many stories, which ranged from fairly conventional
tales for the women's magazine market to the ambiguous, allusive,
delicately sinister and more obviously literary stories that were
closest to Jackson's heart and destined to end up in the more
highbrow end of the market. Most critical discussions of Jackson
tend to focus on ""The Lottery"" and The Haunting of Hill House. An
author of such accomplishment - and one so fully engaged with the
pressures and preoccupations of postwar America - merits fuller
discussion. To that end, this collection of essays widens the scope
of Jackson scholarship with new writing on such works as The Road
through the Wall and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and topics
ranging from Jackson's domestic fiction to ethics, cosmology, and
eschatology. The book also makes newly available some of the most
significant Jackson scholarship published in the last two decades.
This book positions the 'California Gothic' as a highly significant
regional subgenre which articulates anxieties specific to the
historical, cultural and geographical characteristics of the
'Golden State'. California has long been perceived as a utopian
space, but it is also haunted by the spectres of European and
Anglo-American imperialism, genocide, racial and economic
discrimination, natural disaster and aggressive infrastructural and
commercial development. Drawing on the work of California
historians and cultural commentators, this study explores the ways
in which the nightmarish flipside of the 'California Dream' has
been depicted within horror and Gothic.
.During the latter half of the twentieth century the Gothic emerged
as one of the liveliest and most significant areas of academic
inquiry within literary, film, and popular culture studies. This
volume covers the key concepts and developments associated with
Twentieth-Century Gothic, tracing the development of the mode from
the fin de siecle to 9/11. The eighteen chapters reflect the
interdisciplinary and ever-evolving nature of the Gothic, which,
during the century, migrated from literature and drama to the
cinema and television. The volume has both a chronological and
thematic focus and particular attention is paid to topics and
themes related to race, identity, marginality and technology.
Chapters on ecogothic, Gothic Studies as a discipline, Medical
Humanities, Queer Studies, African American Studies and Russian
Gothic ensure that the collection is up-to-date and wide-ranging.
Suggested further readings at the end of each chapter are intended
to facilitate further independent research by readers and
researchers.
An eclectic and insightful collection of essays predicated on the
hypothesis that popular cultural documents provide unique insights
into the concerns, anxieties and desires of their times. 1950s
popular culture is analysed by leading scholars and critics such as
Christopher Frayling, Mark Jancovich, Kim Newman and David J. Skal.
"A memorable first book of fiction, one which belongs on any shelf
of the best contemporary weird tales." - August Derleth, "Chicago
Tribune"
" E]xtraordinary . . . gives Mr. Beaumont undeniable stature as an
artist." - "N. Y. Herald Tribune"
"Charles Beaumont was a genius . . . and one hell of a
storyteller." - Dean R. Koontz
"The name of Charles Beaumont will be honored and recognized for
generations yet to come." - Robert Bloch
When "The Hunger and Other Stories" (1957) appeared, it heralded
the arrival of Charles Beaumont (1929-1967) as an important and
highly original new voice in American fiction. Although he is best
known today for his scripts for television and film, including
several classic episodes of "The Twilight Zone," Beaumont is being
rediscovered as a master of weird tales, and this, his first
published collection, contains some of his best. Ranging in tone
from the chilling Gothic horror of "Miss Gentilbelle," where an
insane mother dresses her son up as a girl and slaughters his pets,
to deliciously dark humor in tales like "Open House" and "The
Infernal Bouillabaisse," where murderers' plans go disastrously
awry, these seventeen stories demonstrate Beaumont's remarkable
talent and versatility. This new edition of "The Hunger and Other
Stories," the first in more than fifty years, includes a new
introduction by Dr. Bernice M. Murphy, who argues for reevaluation
of Beaumont alongside the other greats of the genre, including
Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, and Richard Matheson.
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