Download or read book Grande Dame Guignol Cinema written by Peter Shelley and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2009-10-21 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This critically analytical filmography examines 45 movies featuring "grande dames" in horror settings. Following a history of women in horror before 1962's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which launched the "Grande Dame Guignol" subgenre of older women featured as morally ambiguous leading ladies, are all such films (mostly U.S.) that came after that landmark release. The filmographic data includes cast, crew, reviews, synopses, and production notes, as well as recurring motifs and each role's effect on the star's career.
Download or read book What Ever Happened to Babylon Queer Aesthetics of Cinematic Decadence in Grande Dame Guignol Cinema written by Patrick Woodstock and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appearing amidst the decline of the Hollywood studio system in the 1960s, the Grande Dame Guignol cycle of horror films reimagine the history and aesthetics of classical Hollywood through the lens of decadence. Casting some of the most iconic stars of the studio system in roles that self-reflexively engage with their star personae to reimagine their glamor in terms of the grotesque, these works recall similar combinations of beauty, decay, and queer eroticism found throughout the canon of fin-de-siècle decadent literature. While critical accounts of decadence tend to foreground its relation to literary modernism, this thesis instead applies this term towards cinema. Defining cinematic decadence as an aesthetic sensibility distinct from - although closely related to - its manifestation in fin-de-siècle literature, this term provides a valuable theoretical context to reconsider representations of queerness, temporality, embodiment, history, and misogyny within classical Hollywood cinema. Further, this cinematic decadence suggests a novel way to conceptualize the problematic but distinctly queer presentation of stardom and femininity offered by the monstrous women of the Grande Dame Guignol cycle, through four films: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962); Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Robert Aldrich, 1964); Strait-Jacket (William Castle, 1964); and What's the Matter With Helen? (Curtis Harrington, 1971). Like the texts of literary decadence at the turn of the 20th century, these works of cinematic decadence invite queer forms of subjectivity as they undermine the exclusionary, heteronormative discourses of modernity. Ultimately, this project seeks to define the sensibility of decadence as a distinct method of queering dominant culture, and to determine its largely unexplored relationship to the medium of cinema.
Download or read book Critical Readings on Hammer Horror Films written by Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-28 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection offers close readings on Hammer’s cycle of horror films, analysing key films and placing particular emphasis on the narratives and themes present in the works discussed. Ranging from the studio’s first horror outing, The Mystery of the Mary Celeste (1935) to Hammer’s last contemporary film, Doctor Jekyll (2023), the collection celebrates cult-favourites such as The Quatermass Experiment, the films of Terence Fisher, to overlooked classics such as Captain Clegg or The Mummy franchise. This volume also delves into Hammer’s psychological thrillers, the studio’s venture into TV with Hammer’s House of Horrors, with theoretical frameworks varying from queer studies to postcolonial readings. This volume will appeal to scholars and students of film studies, international cinema, film history and horror studies.
Download or read book Representations of the Mother in Law in Literature Film Drama and Television written by Jo Parnell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive study of some ways of treating the subject that demonstrate new and unusual perspectives, and provides a different approach to the popularly-held views of mothers-in-law; and that further address these works as popular culture; and as texts in their own right from within the framework of literary theory; and as works that demonstrate the ability to reach and connect with, and satisfy, both the general reader, the student, and the scholar, from all levels and walks of life.
Download or read book Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture written by Justyna Stępień and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-26 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture is a collection of fourteen essays dealing with the performative character of kitsch and camp aesthetics in popular culture and avant-garde productions. Anticipated in both literature and culture, the book traces the evolution of two aesthetics from a number of theoretical perspectives, including gender studies, queer studies, popular culture studies, aesthetics, film studies and postcolonial studies. The volume provides a much-needed commentary on the mechanisms and functions of kitsch and camp in contemporary literary and cultural studies, reflecting on various transformations that are currently underway.
Download or read book The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck written by Catherine Russell and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From The Lady Eve, to The Big Valley, Barbara Stanwyck played parts that showcased her multidimensional talents but also illustrated the limits imposed on women in film and television. Catherine Russell’s A to Z consideration of the iconic actress analyzes twenty-six facets of Stanwyck and the America of her times. Russell examines Stanwyck’s work onscreen against the backdrop of costuming and other aspects of filmmaking. But she also views the actress’s off-screen performance within the Hollywood networks that made her an industry favorite and longtime cornerstone of the entertainment community. Russell’s montage approach coalesces into an engrossing portrait of a singular artist whose intelligence and savvy placed her center-stage in the production of her films and in the debates around women, femininity, and motherhood that roiled mid-century America. Original and rich, The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck is an essential and entertaining reexamination of an enduring Hollywood star.
Download or read book Cinema 62 written by Stephen Farber and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-13 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the common assumption that the early 1960s were a drab time for American film, this book makes the bold case that 1962 was a peak year for the movies, giving audiences a prime mix of adult, artistic, and uncompromising work from Hollywood veterans, hot young directors, and international auteurs.
Download or read book Penny Dreadful and Adaptation written by Julie Grossman and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection is the first book-length critical study of the Showtime-Sky Atlantic television series Penny Dreadful (2014-2016), which also includes an analysis of Showtime’s 2020 spin-off City of Angels. Chapters examine the status of the series as a work of twenty-first-century cable television, contemporary Gothic-horror, and intermedial adaptation, spanning sources as diverse as eighteenth and nineteenth-century British fiction and poetry, American dime novels, theatrical performance, Hollywood movies, and fan practices. Featuring iconic monsters such as Dr. Frankenstein and his Creature, the “bride” of Frankenstein, Dracula, the werewolf, Dorian Gray, and Dr. Jekyll, Penny Dreadful is a mash-up of familiar texts and new Gothic figures such as spiritualist Vanessa Ives, played by the magnetic Eva Green. As a recent example of adapting multiple sources in different media, Penny Dreadful has as much to say about the Romantic and Victorian eras as it does about our present-day fascination with screen monsters. Hear the authors talk about the collection here: https://nrftsjournal.org/monsters-all-are-we-not-an-interview-with-julie-grossman-and-will-scheibel/
Download or read book Culture Wars and Horror Movies written by Noelia Gregorio-Fernández and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Women Monstrosity and Horror Film written by Erin Harrington and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-10 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women occupy a privileged place in horror film. Horror is a space of entertainment and excitement, of terror and dread, and one that relishes the complexities that arise when boundaries – of taste, of bodies, of reason – are blurred and dismantled. It is also a site of expression and exploration that leverages the narrative and aesthetic horrors of the reproductive, the maternal and the sexual to expose the underpinnings of the social, political and philosophical othering of women. This book offers an in-depth analysis of women in horror films through an exploration of ‘gynaehorror’: films concerned with all aspects of female reproductive horror, from reproductive and sexual organs, to virginity, pregnancy, birth, motherhood and finally to menopause. Some of the themes explored include: the intersection of horror, monstrosity and sexual difference; the relationships between normative female (hetero)sexuality and the twin figures of the chaste virgin and the voracious vagina dentata; embodiment and subjectivity in horror films about pregnancy and abortion; reproductive technologies, monstrosity and ‘mad science’; the discursive construction and interrogation of monstrous motherhood; and the relationships between menopause, menstruation, hagsploitation and ‘abject barren’ bodies in horror. The book not only offers a feminist interrogation of gynaehorror, but also a counter-reading of the gynaehorrific, that both accounts for and opens up new spaces of productive, radical and subversive monstrosity within a mode of representation and expression that has often been accused of being misogynistic. It therefore makes a unique contribution to the study of women in horror film specifically, while also providing new insights in the broader area of popular culture, gender and film philosophy.
Download or read book Elder Horror written by Cynthia J. Miller and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-02-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As baby boomers gray, cinematic depictions of aging and the aged are on the rise. In the horror genre, fears of growing old take on fantastic proportions. Elderly characters are portrayed as either eccentric harbingers of doom--the crone who stops at nothing to restore her youth, the ancient ancestor who haunts the living--or as frail victims. This collection of new essays explores how various filmic portrayals of aging, as an inescapable horror destined to overtake us all, reflect our complex attitudes toward growing old, along with its social, psychological and economic consequences.
Download or read book Australian Horror Films 1973 2010 written by Peter Shelley and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering work provides in-depth coverage of 76 horror films produced in Australia, where serial killers, carnivorous animals, mutants, zombies, vampires and evil spirits all receive the "antipodean" cinematic treatment unique to the Land Down Under. Titles covered were released between 1973 and 2010, a period coinciding with the revival of the long-dormant Australian film industry in the early 1970s, and continuing into the second wave of genre production spurred by the international success of the 2005 chiller Wolf Creek. The Cars That Ate Paris, The Last Wave, Roadgames, Razorback, Outback Vampires, Queen of the Damned, Black Water, and The Reef are among the titles represented. Each film is covered in a chapter that includes a cast and credits list, release information, contemporary reviews and DVD availability, as well as a synopsis and in-depth notes about the story, filmmaking techniques, acting performances, recurring themes and motifs, and overall effectiveness of the film as a work of horror.
Download or read book Fade to Gray written by Timothy Shary and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans are living longer and reinventing both work and retirement, but Hollywood movies barely hint at this reality of contemporary society. In many popular films, older characters fade into irrelevance, inactivity, or absurdity, or else they stay in the background as wise elders while younger characters provide the action. Most American films do not attempt to portray the rich variety of experiences or the sensitive aging issues that people confront in the years beyond fifty. Fade to Gray offers one of the first extended studies of the portrayal of older people in American cinema from the silent era to the present. Writing in an accessible style for both general audiences and scholars, Timothy Shary and Nancy McVittie examine social attitudes toward aging through an analysis of hundreds of individual films, including such classics as You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Grumpy Old Men (1993), and Nebraska (2013). They show how representations of the aging process and depictions of older people embracing or enduring the various experiences of longer lives have evolved over the past century, as well as how film industry practices have both reflected and influenced perceptions of aging in American society. Exposing the social and political motivations for negative cinematic portrayals of the elderly, Fade to Gray also gives visibility to films that provide opportunities for better understanding and appreciation of the aged and the aging process.
Download or read book Faith Horror written by LMK Sheppard and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2022-03-21 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faith horror refers to a significant outcropping of mid-1960s and 1970s films and adaptative novels that depict non-Christian communities of evil doers and their activities. Before this period, the classical horror villain was ultimately ineffectual. The demonic monster was an isolated, lone individual easily vanquished by an altruistic Christian protagonist. Alternatively, the villain in faith horror is organized into identity-affirming, likeminded religious congregations that successfully overcome protagonists. Faith horror was a cinematic trend that depicted Satanism, witchcraft and paganism during a cultural deliberation over the "Death of God," which debated the legitimacy of alternative spiritualities and the value of alliance to any faith at all. Covering popular works like Rosemary's Baby, The Wicker Man and The Omen, this book regards these films and their literary sources in relation to this historical moment, providing new ways of understanding both the period and the faith horror movement more generally.
Download or read book A Critical Companion to Robert Zemeckis written by Adam Barkman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Critical Companion to Robert Zemeckis offers a comprehensive, academic and detailed study of the works of Robert Zemeckis, whose films include successful productions such as the Back to the Future trilogy (1985-90), Forrest Gump (1994), Contact (1997), Cast Away (2000) and The Polar Express (2004), but also lesser known films such as I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), Used Cars (1980), and Allied (2015). Most of Zemeckis’ major productions were not only successful when they were first released but continue to enjoy popularity—with critics and fans alike—even today. This volume investigates several distinct areas of Zemeckisʼ works and addresses the different approaches: the philosophical, the artistic, the socio-cultural, and the personal. The methodologies adopted by the contributors differ significantly from each other, thus offering the reader a variegated and compelling picture of Zemeckisʼ oeuvre, which includes nineteen films. Contrary to the few volumes published in the past on the subject, the chapters in this volume offer specific case studies that have been previously ignored (or only partially mentioned) by other scholars. A Critical Companion to Robert Zemeckis offers a great variety of interdisciplinary approaches to Zemeckis’ films, illuminating, re-reading and/or interpreting for the first time the entire career of the director, from his first films to the most recent ones.
Download or read book Ryan Murphy s Queer America written by Brenda R. Weber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-18 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ryan Murphy is a self-described "gay boy from Indiana," who has grown up to forge a media empire. With an extraordinary list of credits and successful television shows, movies, and documentaries to his name, Murphy can now boast one of the broadest and most successful careers in Hollywood. Serving as writer, producer, and director, his creative output includes limited-run dramas (such as Feud, Ratched, and Halston), procedural dramas (such as 9-1-1 and 9-1-1 Lonestar), anthology series (such as American Crime Story, American Horror Story, and American Horror Stories), sit-coms (such as The New Normal) and long-running serial narratives (such as Glee, Nip/Tuck, and Pose). Each of these is infused in different ways with a distinctive form of queer energy and erotics, animating their narratives with both campy excess and poignant longing and giving new meaning to the American story. This collection takes up Murphy as auteur and showrunner, considering the gendered and sexual politics of Murphy’s wide body of work. Using an intersectional framework throughout, an impressive list of well-known and emerging scholars engages with Murphy’s diverse output, while also making the case for Murphy’s version of a queer sensibility, a revised notion of queer time, cultural memory, and the contributions his own production company makes to a politics of LGBTQ+ representation and evolving gender identities. This book is suitable for students of Gender and Media, LGBTQ+ Studies, Media Studies, and Communication Studies.
Download or read book Neil Simon on Screen written by Peter Shelley and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-02-19 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neil Simon is the most successful American playwright on Broadway, and the winner of many awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Mark Twain Prize for Humor, and a Kennedy Center Honor for Lifetime Achievement. Many of his plays have been adapted into films and made-for-television movies, and he has written original screenplays and television specials. This book provides a catalogue of Simon's screen work with cast and crew information, synopses, release dates, reviews, awards and DVD availability. Notes on each film cover his narrative subjects and themes as well as adaptation, direction and performance.
