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Author Skal, David J.

Title The monster show : a cultural history of horror / David J. Skal.

Imprint New York : Faber and Faber, ©2001.

Copies

Location Call No. OPAC Message Status
 Axe 2nd Floor Stacks  791.436164 Sk13m 2001    ---  Available
1 copy being processed for Axe Acquisitions Order.
Edition Rev. ed.
Description 446 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
text txt rdacontent
unmediated n rdamedia
volume nc rdacarrier
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 403-431) and index.
Contents Introduction: A sideshow in Camelot -- Tod Browning's America -- "You will become Caligari": monsters, mountebanks, and modernism -- Dread and circuses -- The monsters and Mr. Liveright -- 1931: the American abyss -- Angry villagers -- "I used to know your daddy": the horrors of war, part two -- Drive-ins are a ghoul's best friend: horror in the fifties -- The graveyard bash -- It's alive, I'm afraid -- Scar wars -- "Rotten blood" -- The dance of dearth -- The monster millennium -- Afterword.
Summary Illuminating the dark side of the American century, this book uncovers the surprising links between horror entertainment and the great social crises of our time, as well as horror's function as a pop analogue to surrealism and other artistic movements. With penetrating analyses and revealing anecdotes, David J. Skal chronicles one of our most popular and pervasive modes of cultural expression. He explores the disguised form in which Hollywood's classic horror movies played out the traumas of two world wars and the Depression; the nightmare visions of invasion and mind control catalyzed by the Cold War; the preoccupation with demon children that took hold as thalidomide, birth control, and abortion changed the reproductive landscape; the vogue in visceral, transformative special effects that paralleled the development of the plastic surgery industry; the link between the AIDS epidemic and the current fascination with vampires; and much more.--From publisher description.
Subject Horror films -- History and criticism.
Social problems in motion pictures.
Horror films. (OCoLC)fst00960370
Social problems in motion pictures. (OCoLC)fst01122808
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. (OCoLC)fst01411635
ISBN 0571199968
9780571199969

 
    
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