Merchants of menace : the business of horror cinema / edited by Richard Nowell.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Nowell, Richard, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Horror films--History and criticism.

Horror films.

Horror films--Marketing.

Horror films--Production and direction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (279 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Bloomsbury, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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

Contents:

Production lines, trends, and cycles. "House of horrors": corporate strategy at Universal Pictures in the 1930s

Kyle Edwards

The undead of Hollywood and poverty row: the influence of studio-era industrial patterns on zombie film production, 1932-46

Todd K. Platts

By the book: American horror cinema and horror literature of the late 1960s and 1970s

Peter Hutchings

Risen from the vaults: recent horror film remakes and the American film industry

Kevin Heffernan

Monster factory: international dynamics of the Australian horror movie industry

Mark David Ryan

Film content, style, and themes. "Bad medicine": the psychiatric profession's interventions into the business of postwar horror

Tim Snelson

Horror film atmosphere as anti-narrative (and vice versa)

Robert Spadoni

"A kind of Bacall quality?: Jamie Lee Curtis, stardom, and gentrifying non-Hollywood horror

Richard Nowell

"New decade, new rules": rebooting the scream franchise in the digital age

Valerie Wee

Movie marketing, branding, and distribution. "Hot profits out of cold shivers!": horror, the first run market, and the Hollywood studios, 1938-42

Mark Jancovich

Strange enjoyments: the marketing and reception of horror in the civil rights era black press

Mikal J. Gaines

Bids for distinction: the critical-industrial function of the horror auteur

Joe Tompkins

Low budgets, no budgets, and digital-video nasties: recent British horror and informal distribution

Johnny Walker

Hammer 2.0: legacy, modernization, and hammer horror as a heritage brand

Matt Hills.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781628929973

1628929979

9781623563943

1623563941

OCLC:

1154964027