Since the early days of silent film accompaniment, the piano has played an integral part in the history of cinema. Film's fascination with the piano, both in soundtracks and onscreen as a status symbol and icon of popular romanticism, offers a revealing opportunity to chart the changing perception of the instrument. From Mozart to Elton John, this book surveys the cultural history of the piano through the instrument's cinematic functions. Composer biopics, such as A Song to Remember, romantic melodramas like the Liberace vehicle Sincerely Yours, and horror films such as The Hands of Orlac, along with animated cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry demonstrate just how pervasive the cinematic image of the piano once was during a period when the piano itself began its noticeable decline in everyday life. By examining these depictions of the piano onscreen, readers will begin to understand not only the decline of the piano but also the decline of the idealistic culture to which it gave birth in the nineteenth century.

The horror and psychological denial of our mortality, along with the corruptibility of our flesh, are persistent themes in drama. Body horror films have intensified these themes in increasingly graphic terms. The aesthetic of body horror has its origins in the ideas of the Marquis de Sade and the existential philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, all of whom demonstrated that we have just cause to be anxious about our physical reality and its existence in the world. This book examines the relationship between these writers and the various manifestations of body horror in film. The most characteristic examples of this genre are those directed by David Cronenberg, but body horror as a whole includes many variations on the theme by other figures, whose work is charted here through seven categories: copulation, generation, digestion, mutilation, infection, mutation, disintegration and extinction.

Edgar Allan Poe exerted a profound influence on many aspects of 20th-century culture, and continues to inspire composers, filmmakers, writers and artists. Popularly thought of as a ""horror"" writer, Poe was also a philosophical aesthete, a satirist, a hoaxer, a psychologist and a prophet of the anxieties and preoccupations of the modern world. Alphabetically arranged, this book explores Poe's major works both in their own right and in terms of their impact on others, including Baudelaire, who translated his works into French; Debussy, Rachmaninoff and the Alan Parsons' Project, who set them to music; Roger Corman, Federico Fellini and Jean Epstein, who interpreted his visions for film audiences; and television shows such as The Six Million Dollar Man and Time Tunnel, which borrowed his imagery (and, in the case of The Simpsons, sent it up). A wide range of other responses to his compelling Tales of Mystery and Imagination, his poetry and the theoretical writings, combine strongly to suggest that Poe's legacy will indeed last forevermore.

Occult traditions have inspired considerable musical ingenuity over the centuries, as well as some undeniable masterpieces. From the Pythagorean concept of a music of the spheres to the occult subculture of 20th-century pop and rock, music has often attempted to express mystical states of mind, cosmic harmony, the demonic and the divine--nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the music for occult and science fiction films such as The Mephisto Waltz, The Devil Rides Out, Star Trek, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Omen and The Exorcist. This wide-ranging survey explores how such film music works and uncovers its origins in Pythagorean and Platonic ideas about the divine order of the universe and its essentially numerical/musical nature. Chapters trace the influence of esoteric Freemasonry on Mozart and Beethoven, the birth of ""demonic"" music in the 19th century with composers such as Weber, Berlioz and Liszt, Wagner's racial mysticism, Schoenberg's numerical superstition, the impact of synesthesia on art music and film, the effect of theosophical ideas on composers such as Scriabin and Holst, supernatural opera and ballet, fairy music and, finally, popular music in the 1960s and '70s.

Luchino Visconti's trilogy of films Ludwig, Death in Venice and The Damned explore the complex relationship between the themes and ideals of German Romanticism and their impact on the catastrophe of the Third Reich. The personality and works of Richard Wagner to a large extent epitomize German Romanticism as a whole, while the writings of Thomas Mann and Friedrich Nietzsche provide the greatest critique of this dark and troubled but sublime and emotionally overwhelming culture. Along with contrasting approaches to this subject by other filmmakers such as Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Ken Russell and Tony Palmer, this book explores how the preoccupations of the German Romantic movement led to Nazism, and contrasts the ways in which filmmakers have presented this continuum. The book also discuses the impact of Wagner's musical dramas on the art form of the cinema itself.

British literature often refers to pagan and classical themes through richly detailed landscapes that suggest more than a mere backdrop of physical features. The myth-inspired writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Algernon Blackwood, Aleister Crowley, Lord Dunsany and even Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows informed later British films and television dramas such as Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), Excalibur (1981) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). The author analyzes the evocative language and aesthetics of landscapes in literature, film, television and music, and how "psycho-geography" is used to explore the influence of the past on the present.

Friedrich Nietzsche regarded himself as the most musical philosopher - he played the piano, wrote his own compositions and espoused a philosophy encouraging all to dance for joy. Central to his life and his ideas were the music and personality of Richard Wagner, whom he both loved and loathed at different times of his life. Nietzsche had considerable influence on contemporary composers, many of whom employed Wagnerian sonorities set to his words (although he had by then broken with Wagner, advocating Bizet instead). This book explores Nietzsche's relationship with Wagner, the influence of his writings on the music of Strauss, Mahler, Delius, Scriabin, Busoni and others, his place in Thomas Mann's critique of German Romantic music in the novel Doctor Faustus and his impact on 20th-century popular music.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton-who coined the terms ""the great unwashed"" and ""the pen is mightier than the sword""-is best remembered for persuading Dickens to change the ending of Great Expectations. Bulwer-Lytton was a prolific and influential novelist in his own right, inspiring Edgar Allan Poe, H. Rider Haggard and Madame Blavatsky, among others. His radical ideas were applauded by William Godwin, the father of both Mary Shelley and the anarchist movement, and his ideas about power foreshadowed those of Friedrich Nietzsche. Fascinated by crime, he was an outspoken critic of his society, both in his novels and throughout his political career. Equally fascinated by paranormal phenomena, he wrote two of the most important occult fantasies in English literature and set the agenda of the Society for Psychical Research. His historical romance The Last Days of Pompeii has inspired several movies and a star-studded television series, while his stately home at Knebworth has provided brooding Gothic backdrops for many other films. This book covers Bulwer-Lytton's novels in detail, exploring their influence on writers and film makers and, via Richard Wagner's operatic adaptation of Rienzi, the catastrophe of Adolf Hitler.

Hammer Film's output is justly famous for Gothic horror but the company also excelled in the genre of the psychological thriller. Though indebted to the example of Henri-Georges Clouzot and Alfred Hitchcock, Hammer nonetheless created its own style and approach to this genre in a series of often under-rated films that are, in fact, some of the company's very best. Beginning with an exploration of the key influences from Clouzot and Hitchcock, this book takes a chronological, film-by-film approach to all of Hammer's thrillers. Along the way, well-known classics such as Seth Holt's The Nanny (1965) and Taste of Fear (1961) are discussed, along with less well known but equally brilliant films such as The Full Treatment (dir. Val Guest, 1960) and Michael Carreras' Maniac (1963). Each chapter takes a particular theme around which to approach the films in question, exploring their literary ancestry, their reflection of British society and their relation to a wide range of other references, such as the psychological theories of Freud and Jung, architectural metaphor, sexuality, religion, and even Nazi atrocities.

English actor Dirk Bogarde dominated the films in which he starred. Exploring the tension between his matinee idol appeal and his own closeted sexuality, this book focuses on the wide variety of genres in which he worked, and the highly charged interaction between his life and his roles. Beginning with an expose of gay life in post-war Britain and his relationship with partner/manager, Anthony Forwood, each chapter explores Bogarde's performances by genre-his juvenile delinquent movies, his military roles, his contribution to Basil Dearden's overtly gay thriller Victim (1961), and his "outsider" roles in such films as The Servant (1963), The Fixer (1968) and Despair (1978). Bogarde's "camp" cinema, espionage thrillers and various roles as artists are also examined, along with the misogyny of the Doctor films and his later television work.

Composers give a unique and powerful voice to stories on the big screen. Those who work principally with one genre may leave a unique imprint. James Bernard was one such composer. From 1952 to the late 1990s, he was one of horror's definitive and distinctive voices, scoring many of Hammer's best-known films, including Dracula. This is a critical biography of James Bernard. It is also a thorough and meticulous examination of his music, including its intricate mechanisms and the many sources of Bernard's inspiration. Movie scores examined include The Quatermass Experiment, Quatermass 2, X--The Unknown, The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Kiss of the Vampire, She, and many others. A foreword by Ingrid Pitt, a glossary, a filmography, notes, bibliography and index complete the work.

Music in film is often dismissed as having little cultural significance. While Hammer Film Productions is famous for such classic films as ""Dracula"" and ""The Curse of Frankenstein"", few observers have noted the innovative music that Hammer distinctively incorporated into its horror films.This book tells how Hammer Films commissioned composers at the cutting-edge of European musical modernism to write their movie scores, introducing the avant-garde into popular culture via the enormously successful venue of horror film. Each chapter addresses a specific category of the avant-garde musical movement. According to these categories, chapters elaborate upon the visionary composers who made the horror film soundtrack a melting pot of opposing musical cultures.

Film is a kind of magic, a world of shadows and light, where anything is possible and the dead come back to life. Film can persuade us to believe in anything and special effects can work miracles. It is therefore the perfect medium for expressing occult phenomena, and since the beginnings of cinema history, film has done just that. Movie Magick explores the way in which films have been inspired by Alesiter Crowley's famous definition of "Magick" as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." This naturally encompasses classic occult movies, such as Hammer's adaptations of Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out, but also ventures further afield into the cultural background of the modern occult revival, exploring the way in which occult movies have responded to the esthetics of fin de siecle decadence, the symbolist writings of Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Wagnerian music drama, the Faust legend, the pseudo-science of Theosophy, the occult psychedelia of the 1960s, occult conspiracy theories and some of the more arcane aspects of animation. The result is a cinematic grimoire, which will appeal to both sorcerers and apprentices of movie magick.