Even though horror has been a key component of media output for almost a century, the genre's industrial character remains under explored and poorly understood. Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema responds to a major void in film history by shedding much-needed new light on the economic dimensions of one of the world's most enduring audiovisual forms. Given horror cuts across budgetary categories, industry sectors, national film cultures, and media, Merchants of Menace also promises to expand understandings of the economics of cinema generally. Covering 1930-present, this groundbreaking collection boasts fourteen original chapters from world-leading experts taking as their focus such diverse topics as early zombie pictures, post-WWII chillers, Civil Rights-Era marketing, Hollywood literary adaptations, Australian exploitation, "torture-porn" Auteurs, and twenty-first-century remakes.

Scholars have consistently applied psychoanalytic models to representations of gender in early teen slasher films such as "Black Christmas (1974)," "Halloween (1978)" and "Friday the 13th (1980)" in order to claim that these were formulaic, excessively violent exploitation films, fashioned to satisfy the misogynist fantasies of teenage boys and grind house patrons. However, by examining the commercial logic, strategies and objectives of the American and Canadian independents that produced the films and the companies that distributed them in the US, "Blood Money" demonstrates that filmmakers and marketers actually went to extraordinary lengths to make early teen slashers attractive to female youth, to minimize displays of violence, gore and suffering and to invite comparisons to a wide range of post-classical Hollywood's biggest hits - including "Love Story (1970)," "The Exorcist (1973)," "Saturday Night Fever (1977)," "Grease," and "Animal House (both 1978)." "Blood Money" is a remarkable piece of scholarship that highlights the many forces that helped establish the teen slasher as a key component of the North American film industry's repertoire of youth-market product.

Even though horror has been a key component of media output for almost a century, the genre's industrial character remains under explored and poorly understood. Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema responds to a major void in film history by shedding much-needed new light on the economic dimensions of one of the world's most enduring audiovisual forms. Given horror cuts across budgetary categories, industry sectors, national film cultures, and media, Merchants of Menace also promises to expand understandings of the economics of cinema generally. Covering 1930-present, this groundbreaking collection boasts fourteen original chapters from world-leading experts taking as their focus such diverse topics as early zombie pictures, post-WWII chillers, Civil Rights-Era marketing, Hollywood literary adaptations, Australian exploitation, "torture-porn" Auteurs, and twenty-first-century remakes.

Scholars have consistently applied psychoanalytic models to representations of gender in early teen slasher films such as "Black Christmas (1974)," "Halloween (1978)" and "Friday the 13th (1980)" in order to claim that these were formulaic, excessively violent exploitation films, fashioned to satisfy the misogynist fantasies of teenage boys and grind house patrons. However, by examining the commercial logic, strategies and objectives of the American and Canadian independents that produced the films and the companies that distributed them in the US, "Blood Money" demonstrates that filmmakers and marketers actually went to extraordinary lengths to make early teen slashers attractive to female youth, to minimize displays of violence, gore and suffering and to invite comparisons to a wide range of post-classical Hollywood's biggest hits - including "Love Story (1970)," "The Exorcist (1973)," "Saturday Night Fever (1977)," "Grease," and "Animal House (both 1978)." "Blood Money" is a remarkable piece of scholarship that highlights the many forces that helped establish the teen slasher as a key component of the North American film industry's repertoire of youth-market product.