Download or read book Hollywood Cauldron written by Gregory William Mank and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-06-21 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen of Hollywood's horror classics in detail: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), The Old Dark House(1932), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), Mark of the Vampire (1935), Mad Love (1935), The Black Room (1935), The Walking Dead (1936), Cat People (1942), Bluebeard (1944), The Lodger (1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), Hangover Square (1945) and Bedlam (1946). From original interviews and research, the styles of the various studios (from giant M-G-M to Poverty Row's PRC), along with the performers, directors, and backstage events, are examined.
Download or read book The New Hollywood written by James Bernardoni and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-07-27 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "Old Hollywood" of studios, stars, and house directors began to break up in the 1960s. Newly independent directors freed from budgetary and aesthetic limitations imposed by studio moguls were the "New Hollywood." Directors could develop their own styles, hire whom they wanted, and make movies that would dazzle jaded audiences. Hollywood would never be the same ... What happened? The author looks at the productions of the "New Hollywood" to answer that question. Scene by scene analyses of some of the 70s most significant films (i. e., Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, M. A. S. H., Annie Hall, and American Graffiti) assess both the successes and failures of the New Hollywood.
Download or read book Classical Hollywood American Modernism written by Jordan Brower and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-18 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical Hollywood, American Modernism charts the entwined trajectories of the Hollywood studio system and literary modernism in the United States. By examining the various ways Hollywood's industry practices inflected the imaginations of authors, filmmakers, and studios, Jordan Brower offers a new understanding of twentieth-century American and ultimately world media culture. Synthesizing archival research with innovative theoretical approaches, this book tells the story of the studio system's genesis, international dominance, decline, and continued symbolic relevance during the American postwar era through the literature it influenced. It examines the American film industry's business practices and social conditions, demonstrating how concepts like anticipated adaptation, corporate authorship, systemic development, and global distribution inflected the form of some of the greatest works of prose fiction and nonfiction by modernist writers, such as Anita Loos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Patsy Ruth Miller, Nathanael West, Parker Tyler, Malcolm Lowry, and James Baldwin.
Download or read book The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror Films 1931 1936 written by Jon Towlson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critics have traditionally characterized classic horror by its use of shadow and suggestion. Yet the graphic nature of early 1930s films only came to light in the home video/DVD era. Along with gangster movies and “sex pictures,” horror films drew audiences during the Great Depression with sensational content. Exploiting a loophole in the Hays Code, which made no provision for on-screen “gruesomeness,” studios produced remarkably explicit films that were recut when the Code was more rigidly enforced from 1934. This led to a modern misperception that classic horror was intended to be safe and reassuring to audiences. The author examines the 1931 to 1936 “happy ending” horror in relation to industry practices and censorship. Early works like Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and The Raven (1935) may be more akin to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Hostel (2005) than many critics believe.
Download or read book The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia written by Peter Dendle and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-01-12 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zombies are cautionary forms of humankind's most universally cherished ideal--life after death. Ragged, ill-spoken, rotting zombies (or the post-dead) seem socially awkward beside the more popular and aristocratic undead, like Count Dracula. The humble zombie remains, for the most part, unappreciated and unacknowledged--until now. The first exhaustive historical overview of zombie films, this book's lengthy entries evaluate more than 200 movies from 16 countries over a 65-year period from the early 1930s to the late 1990s. It covers everything from large studio films to backyard videography, and touches on memorable television episodes and miscellaneous shorts. An introduction traces the evolution of the genre and interprets the broader significance of the zombie in contemporary Western mythology.
Download or read book Television Horror Movie Hosts written by Elena M. Watson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-05-03 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Midnight, 1954. A striking woman in a torn black dress slinks down a cobwebbed, candelabra'd corridor. She stops, shrieks hysterically into the camera, then solemnly says, "Good evening, I am Vampira." Her real name is Maila Nurmi and she was the first in a long line of television horror movie hosts, commonly seen on independent stations' late-night "grade Z" offerings dressed as some zany ghoul or mad scientist. This book covers the major hosts in detail, along with styles and show themes. Merchandise tie-in and fan reactions are also chronicled. The appendices list film and record credits.
Download or read book Golden Horrors written by Bryan Senn and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the grindhouse oddities to major studio releases, this work details 46 horror films released during the genre’s golden era. Each entry includes cast and credits, a plot synopsis, in-depth critical analysis, contemporary reviews, time of release, brief biographies of the principal cast and crew, and a production history. Apart from the 46 main entries, 71 additional “borderline horrors” are examined and critiqued in an appendix.
Download or read book Lugosi written by Gary Don Rhodes and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He was born Béla Ferenc Dezso Blasko on October 20, 1882, in Hungary. He joined Budapest’s National Theater in 1913 and later appeared in several Hungarian films under the pseudonym Arisztid Olt. After World War I, he helped the Communist regime nationalize Hungary’s film industry, but barely escaped arrest when the government was deposed, fleeing to the United States in 1920. As he became a star in American horror films in the 1930s and 1940s, publicists and fan magazines crafted outlandish stories to create a new history for Lugosi. The cinema’s Dracula was transformed into one of Hollywood’s most mysterious actors. This exhaustive account of Lugosi’s work in film, radio, theater, vaudeville and television provides an extensive biographical look at the actor. The enormous merchandising industry built around him is also examined.
Download or read book Comedy Quotes from the Movies written by Larry Langman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2001-05-15 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clever repartee, double entendres, punch lines and many other variations of humor have been a staple of movie dialogue since the advent of talkies. Collected here are over 4,000 of the best comedic lines from the movies. The compilers of this book have tried to bring together some of the funniest, wittiest and most outrageous snatches of dialogue on film over a sixty year time period. For each entry the authors set the quotation in context, provide the name of the actor or actress, the name of the movie and the year of release. The quotations are arranged by a broad range of categories, such as politics, food and eating, gambling, and many others. A title index and a name index follow the body of the book..
Download or read book Down and Dirty written by Mike Quarles and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-06-21 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taboo breakers and trendsetters, shameless hucksters and famous directors. Exploitation filmmaking has seen it all. Fred Olen Ray made his first movie for $298. In 1936 Marijuana-Weed with Roots in Hell showed drug use and nudity on screen in an effort to "educate the public." Kroger Babb, the man behind Mom and Dad, spliced color medical footage of a baby's birth into his black and white "classic." Russ Meyer, John Waters, Andy Milligan, Doris Wishman, and many others are covered. "Classic" films such as The Immoral Mr. Teas, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Nude on the Moon are examined. Production techniques and innovations are also discussed.
Download or read book Hollywood s Hellfire Club written by Gregory William Mank and published by Feral House. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They made fans go crazy and censors apoplectic, spent fortunes faster than they made them, forged Rembrandts and hung them in major museums, went on trial for committing statutory rape with necrophiliac teenage girls, reinterpreted Hamlet as an incestuous mama's boy,and swilled immeasurable quantities of spirits during week-long parties on wobbly yachts. They were "The Bundy Drive Boys," and they made the Rat Pack look like Cub Scouts. Their self-destructiveness was spectacular, the misanthropy profound, but behind the boozy bravado was a devoted mutual affection. The Bundy Drive Boys' un-bowdlerized stories have never been illustrated so well or told so completely as within Hollywood's Hellfire Club. Author Gregory William Mank also wrote It's Alive!: The Classic Cinema Saga of Frankenstein and Hollywood Cauldron.
Download or read book Monsters in the Closet written by Harry M. Benshoff and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1997-11-15 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monster in the Closet is a history of the horrors film that explores the genre's relationship to the social and cultural history of homosexuality in America. Drawing on a wide variety of films and primary source materials including censorship files, critical reviews, promotional materials, fanzines, men's magazines, and popular news weeklies, the book examines the historical figure of the movie monster in relation to various medical, psychological, religious and social models of homosexuality. While recent work within gay and lesbian studies has explored how the genetic tropes of the horror film intersect with popular culture's understanding of queerness, this is the first book to examine how the concept of the monster queer has evolved from era to era. From the gay and lesbian sensibilities encoded into the form and content of the classical Hollywood horror film, to recent films which play upon AIDS-related fears. Monster in the Closet examines how the horror film started and continues, to demonize (or quite literally "monsterize") queer sexuality, and what the pleasures and "costs" of such representations might be both for individual spectators and culture at large.
Download or read book A Companion to the Horror Film written by Harry M. Benshoff and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cutting-edge collection features original essays by eminent scholars on one of cinema's most dynamic and enduringly popular genres, covering everything from the history of horror movies to the latest critical approaches. Contributors include many of the finest academics working in the field, as well as exciting younger scholars Varied and comprehensive coverage, from the history of horror to broader issues of censorship, gender, and sexuality Covers both English-language and non-English horror film traditions Key topics include horror film aesthetics, theoretical approaches, distribution, art house cinema, ethnographic surrealism, and horror's relation to documentary film practice A thorough treatment of this dynamic film genre suited to scholars and enthusiasts alike
Download or read book Victor Fleming written by Michael Sragow and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This definitive biography chronicles the life and work of the legendary director of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Victor Fleming was the most sought-after director in Hollywood’s golden age, renowned for his work across an astounding range of genres—from gritty westerns to screwball comedies, romances, boddy pictures, and family entertainment. Yet this chameleon-like versatility has resulted in his relative obscurity today—despite his having directed two of the most iconic movies of all time. Fleming is best remembered for Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, but he directed more than forty films, including classics like Red Dust, Test Pilot, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Captains Courageous. Fleming created enduring screen personas for Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Gary Cooper, as well as for Ingrid Bergman, Clara Bow, and Norma Shearer—who were among his many lovers. In this definitive biography, Michael Sragow restores the director to the pantheon of great American filmmakers, correcting a major oversight in Hollywood history. It is the dramatic story of a man at the center of the most exciting period in American filmmaking.
Download or read book The Suspense Thriller written by Charles Derry and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-06-21 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive study of one of the most popular genres in the cinema. From a perspective sympathetic to popular culture, this study analyzes a large number of primarily American and European films by a variety of distinguished directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Claude Chabrol, John Frankenheimer, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Costa-Gavras. Indispensable to anyone interested in understanding how suspense thrillers work and what they mean, this book provides insightful analysis of hundreds of memorable films, while at the same time working as a virtual how-to manual for anyone trying to write a Hitchcock-like thriller. The first section of the book is primarily theoretical. It offers a bibliographical survey and then explains why we so profoundly enjoy these suspenseful films of murder and intrigue. A chapter on "Thrills: or, How Objects and Empty Spaces Compete to Threaten Us" explores the psychological concept of the thrill and relates it to the psyche of the spectator. To what extent does the suspense thriller represent a symbolic and vicarious experience of danger? A chapter on "Suspense That Makes the Spectator Take a Breath" explores the crucial narrative concept of suspense and relates it to the psychological mechanisms of anxiety incited in the spectator. Why do we like to be scared? A final theoretical chapter offers a dynamic definition of the suspense thriller derived in part from Edgar Allan Poe and based primarily on content analysis. The second section of the book is more of an historical survey and devotes one chapter to each of the suspense thriller's primary sub-genres. These chapters provide close readings of more than 150 major films and detailed analysis of the suspense thriller's conventions, themes, and recurrent iconography. Sub-genres include The Postman Always Rings Twice, Body Heat, The Manchurian Candidate, The China Syndrome, Missing, The Passenger, Spellbound, Obsession, Marathon Man and Blue Velvet. A final chapter explores areas for further research and offers concluding insights.
Download or read book In the Nick of Time written by William C. Cline and published by McFarland. This book was released on 1997-12-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the famous Big Reel columnist: the story of serials from Universal's 1930 The Indians Are Coming to Columbia's 1956 Blazing the Overland Trail. Fifteen fascinating chapters explain the importance of "cliffhangers" to the industry as audience builders and "product leaders." The serials provided training for actors and served as a "technical university" for people who later made the television industry work. An appendix lists in order of release all of the sound serials from 1930 through 1956, showing titles, releasing companies, chapter titles, directors and several cast members. Superb photographs.
Download or read book Producers on Producing written by Irv Broughton and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2001-09-04 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imre Horvath, producer of 60 Minutes, was asked how to get to talk to inaccessible people: "People that are busy...are scheduled tight...it's at 5:00 and 6:00 that they're back in their office to unwind...there's a kind of resonance or sympathy that springs up. "Oh, you're still in your office too?" Twenty-two interviews feature the producers or creators of Mister Rogers, Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt, The Cisco Kid, The Tonight Show, Rockford Files, Falcon Crest, Gunsmoke, Family Feud, and Roots, among others. These people offer opinions on the producer's role, the creation and packaging of different program genres, getting the best from the production team, tips for success, and of course personalities and personal moments. Honest and intelligent, these interviews give the reader a fascinating view of the industry.
