The Psycho Records / Laurence Rickels.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rickels, Laurence, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thrillers (Motion pictures)--History and criticism.

Thrillers (Motion pictures).

Slasher films--History and criticism.

Slasher films.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (243 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2016]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

?The Psycho Records follows the influence of the primal shower scene within subsequent slasher and splatter films. American soldiers returning from World War II were called "psychos" if they exhibited mental illness. Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock turned the term into a catch-all phrase for a range of psychotic and psychopathic symptoms or dispositions. They transferred a war disorder to the American heartland. Drawing on his experience with German film, Hitchcock packed inside his shower stall the essence of schauer, the German cognate meaning "horror." Later serial horror film production has post-traumatically flashed back to Hitchcock's shower scene. In the end, though, this book argues the effect is therapeutically finite. This extensive case study summons the genealogical readings of philosopher and psychoanalyst Laurence Rickels. The book opens not with another reading of Hitchcock's 1960 film but with an evaluation of various updates to vampirism over the years. It concludes with a close look at the rise of demonic and infernal tendencies in horror movies since the 1990s and the problem of the psycho as our most uncanny double in close quarters.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface: Late arrival of the 'New Vampire Lectures'

Psycho−Historical Introduction

Record One: Playing Catch Up with the Vampire - But with True Blood

Record Two: Schauer Scenes

Record Three: Alternate History - 1960

Record Four: Epidemics of Mass Murder

Record Five: Manuals

Record Six: Still Working on It

Record Seven: Phantoms

Record Eight: The Turning

Record Nine: The Crowd and the Couple

Record Ten: Getting Into B-Pictures

Record Eleven: The Emperor's New Closure

Record Twelve: By Rule of Tomb

Record Thirteen: The Renewal of Psycho Horror by Compact with the Devil

Filmography

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references, filmographies and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 07. Sep 2019)

ISBN:

9780231543491

0231543492

OCLC:

979953915