From early twentieth-century stag films to 1960s sexploitation pictures to the boom in 1970s "porno chic," adult cinema's vintage forms are now being reappraised by a new generation of historians, fans, preservationists, and home video entrepreneurs-all of whom depend on and help shape the archive of film history. But what is the present-day allure of these artifacts that have since become eroticized more for their "pastness" than the explicit acts they show? And what are the political implications of recovering these rare but still-visceral films from a less "enlightened," pre-feminist past? Drawing on media industry analysis, archival theory, and interviews with adult video personnel, David Church argues that vintage pornography retains its retrospective fascination precisely because these culturally denigrated texts have been so poorly preserved on political and aesthetic grounds. Through these films' ongoing moves from cultural emergence to concealment to rediscovery, the archive itself performs a "striptease," permitting tangible contact with these corporeally stimulating forms at a moment when the overall physicality of media objects is undergoing rapid transformation. Disposable Passions explores the historiographic lessons that vintage pornography can teach us about which materials our society chooses to keep, and how a long-neglected genre is primed for serious rediscovery as more than mere autoerotic fodder.

Holiday Musical Comedy / Characters: 7m, 6f / Simple Set Judy Garland is primed for her biggest comeback ever - the dazzling star of her own TV special, broadcast live on Christmas Eve, 1959. Judy's guests include Bing Crosby (making some holiday "grog"), Ethel Merman (plugging her Hawaiian album), and Liberace (with a handsome sailor in tow). However, mysterious snafus behind the scenes and cameo appearances by commie-baiting Vice President Richard Nixon (who performs a magic act) and blacklisted writer, Lillian Hellman, (who's forced to read "Children's Letter to Santa" with a puppet) throw Judy's program off course. The surprises climax when the arrival of Joan Crawford is interrupted by the spectral figure of...Death. The evening takes a detour into the twilight zone as the celebrities are forced to confront the lies behind their legends. Devastated and alone, Judy meets a special fan who ultimately proves that, despite her flaws, her shining legacy still endures. "Magical! A side-splitting musical parody...wickedly funny!" - Los Angeles Times "Fascinating, hilarious and wildly entertaining!" - Gerard Alessandrini, Creator of Forbidden Broadway "Wonderfully strange...a true holiday treat! " - Hollywood Reporter "A non-stop hoot!" - Back Stage West "Hilarious! A surreal snow globe highball; a Hollywood Christmas card from beyond the grave!" - Portland Mercury

Upon its premiere in 1992, Midway's Mortal Kombat spawned an enormously influential series of fighting games, notorious for their violent "fatality" moves performed by photorealistically rendered characters. Targeted by lawmakers and moral reformers, the series directly inspired the creation of an industrywide rating system for video games and became a referendum on the wide popularity of 16-bit home consoles. Along the way, it became one of the world's most iconic fighting games, and a transmedia franchise that continues to this day. This book traces Mortal Kombat's history as an American product inspired by both Japanese video games and Chinese martial-arts cinema, its successes and struggles in adapting to new market trends, and the ongoing influence of its secret-strewn narrative world. After outlining the specific elements of gameplay that differentiated Mortal Kombat from its competitors in the coin-op market, David Church examines the various martial-arts films that inspired its Orientalist imagery, helping explain its stereotypical uses of race and gender. He also posits the games as a cultural landmark from a moment when public policy attempted to intervene in both the remediation of cinematic aesthetics within interactive digital games and in the transition of public gaming spaces into the domestic sphere. Finally, the book explores how the franchise attempted to conquer other forms of media in the 1990s, lost ground to a new generation of 3D games in the 2000s, and has successfully rebooted itself in the 2010s to reclaim its legacy.

Horror's longstanding reputation as a popular but culturally denigrated genre has been challenged by a new wave of films mixing arthouse minimalism with established genre conventions. Variously dubbed 'elevated horror' and 'post-horror, ' films such as The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, It Comes at Night, Get Out, The Invitation, Hereditary, Midsommar, A Ghost Story, and mother! represent an emerging nexus of taste, politics, and style that has often earned outsized acclaim from critics and populist rejection by wider audiences. Post-Horror is the first full-length study of one of the most important and divisive movements in twenty-first-century horror cinema.

Horror's longstanding reputation as a popular but culturally denigrated genre has been challenged by a new wave of films mixing arthouse minimalism with established genre conventions. Variously dubbed 'elevated horror' and 'post-horror, ' films such as The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, It Comes at Night, Get Out, The Invitation, Hereditary, Midsommar, A Ghost Story, and mother! represent an emerging nexus of taste, politics, and style that has often earned outsized acclaim from critics and populist rejection by wider audiences. Post-Horror is the first full-length study of one of the most important and divisive movements in twenty-first-century horror cinema.

This is an indispensable study of exploitation cinema's continuing allure. Too often dismissed as nothing more than 'trash cinema', exploitation films have become both earnestly appreciated cult objects and home video items that are more accessible than ever. In this wide ranging new study, David Church explores how the history of drive in theatres and urban grind houses has descended to the home video formats that keep these lurid movies fondly alive today. Arguing for the importance of cultural memory in contemporary fan practices, Church focuses on both the re release of archival exploitation films on DVD and the recent cycle of 'retrosploitation' films like Grindhouse, Machete, Viva, The Devil's Rejects and Black Dynamite. At a time when older ideas of subcultural belonging have become increasingly subject to nostalgia, Grindhouse Nostalgia presents an indispensable study of exploitation cinema's continuing allure, and is a bold contribution to our understanding of fandom, taste politics, film distribution and home video. This is the first in depth critical examination of the recent and ongoing "retrosploitation" cycle. It expands a growing body of research on the importance of home video as containers of material history. It unites cultural memory studies and fan studies in productive ways for understanding a broad range of fan investments. It restores questions of affect and non ironic reception to understandings of exploitation cinema's continuing appeal.

From early twentieth-century stag films to 1960s sexploitation pictures to the boom in 1970s "porno chic," adult cinema's vintage forms are now being reappraised by a new generation of historians, fans, preservationists, and home video entrepreneurs-all of whom depend on and help shape the archive of film history. But what is the present-day allure of these artifacts that have since become eroticized more for their "pastness" than the explicit acts they show? And what are the political implications of recovering these rare but still-visceral films from a less "enlightened," pre-feminist past? Drawing on media industry analysis, archival theory, and interviews with adult video personnel, David Church argues that vintage pornography retains its retrospective fascination precisely because these culturally denigrated texts have been so poorly preserved on political and aesthetic grounds. Through these films' ongoing moves from cultural emergence to concealment to rediscovery, the archive itself performs a "striptease," permitting tangible contact with these corporeally stimulating forms at a moment when the overall physicality of media objects is undergoing rapid transformation. Disposable Passions explores the historiographic lessons that vintage pornography can teach us about which materials our society chooses to keep, and how a long-neglected genre is primed for serious rediscovery as more than mere autoerotic fodder.