Hollywood horror : from gothic to cosmic
"The horror film, which author Mark A. Vieira calls "the escape valve of the American psyche," is forever imprinted on our popular culture. Celebrating an ever-popular and enduring cinematic genre populated with vampires, mummies, zombies, werewolves, sinister scientists, aliens, and psychopaths, Hollywood Horror is an entertaining narrative and pictorial history of the classic American monster movie from the silent era to 1968." "Illustrated with 260 pristine still photographs - many never before published - culied from 160 films, the book captures all the mystery, power, dark humor, and chilling beauty of cinematic horror. Among the featured films are seminal icons such as James Whale's Frankenstein and Tod Browning's Dracula; the steamy pre-Code jungle sorcery of The Island of the Lost Souls; big-budget thrillers like The Uninvited and The Picture of Dorian Gray; the cold-war science fiction of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers; sublimely ridiculous "creature features" such as The Blob, and terrifying thrillers like Hitchcock's Psycho."--Jacket
Nonfiction
264 pages : illustrations ; 31 cm
9780810945357, 0810945355
51942518
pt. 1. The gothic
1. Silent prototypes
The monster born and bred
The German influence
Lon Chaney and Tod Browning
2. The horror film
Tod Browning's Dracula
James Whale's Frankenstein
A cycle spawned
3. Pre-code horrors
Madness reigns
Karl Freund's The mummy
Jungle horrors
Edgar Ulmer's The black cat
4. Gothic moderne
Variations on a gothic theme
WereWolf in London
Bride of Frankenstein
Dracula's daughter
Son of Frankenstein
5. Universal, the horror factory
House of horrors
In the gothic tradition
pt. 2. The psychic
6. Big-budget chills
Glossy hauntings
Music and madness
The terror of evil
7. Val Lewton and the psychology of fear
Poetry and danger
Horror meets terror
pt. 3. The atomic
8. Poisoned air
Kiss me deadly
Lab work
9. Poisoned waters
Modern inconveniences
Cheap thrills
pt. 4. The cosmic
10. The science-fiction film
Unearthly subversion
The good neighbor policy
Green meanies
11. Drive-in terror
The last of the epics
Those monsters next door
Don't step on it!
12. Last hurrahs
Alfred Hitchcock
William Castle, master of gore and gimmicks
Horror queens
Roger Corman
2001 : a space odyssey
The end of two eras
Epilogue : rated "ick!"