You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Reviews of The Gorehound's Guide to Splatter Films of the 1960s and 1970s: "recommended"--Booklist; "exhaustive...useful"--ARBA; "a solid reference work"--Video Watchdog; "bursting with information, opinion and trivia...impeccably researched"--Film Review; "interesting and informative"--Rue Morgue; "detailed credits...entertaining"--Classic Images. Author Scott Aaron Stine is back again, this time with an exhaustive study of splatter films of the 1980s. Following a brief overview of the genre, the main part of the book is a filmography. Each entry includes extensive technical information; cast and production credits; release date; running time; alternate and foreign release titles; comments on the availability of the film on videocassette and DVD; a plot synopsis; commentary from the author; and reviews. Extensive cross-referencing is also included. Heavily illustrated.
For the uninitiated the author has obligingly supplied a definition for the slasher/splatter film: "Any motion picture which contains scenes of extreme violence in graphic and grisly detail...." For those film viewers who think this is a good thing and are more likely to select The Texas Chainsaw Massacre than The Remains of the Day, or for those who are not quite sure but are nevertheless drawn to the phantasmagoric, or for those horrified by gratuitous violence and blood for blood's sake but are researching this filmic phenomenon, this reference book provides all the gory details. From At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul Away to Zombie 2: The Dead Are Among Us, this book is an exhaustive study of the splatter films of the 1960s and 1970s. After a history of the development of the genre, the main meat of the book is a filmography. Each entry includes extensive credits, alternate names and foreign release titles; availability of the film on videocassette; availability of soundtracks and film novelization; and reviews. Extensive cross-referencing is also included.
Industrial advancement has not changed the basic fragility of human life, and the commercialization and consumer orientation of the mass media has actually helped legends travel faster and farther. Legends are communicated not only orally, face to face, but also in the press, on radio and television, on countless Web sites, and by e-mail, perpetuating new waves of the "culture of fear.""--BOOK JACKET.
This revised edition of the original reference standard for urban legends provides an updated anthology of common myths and stories, and presents expanded coverage of international legends and tales shared and popularized online. From roasted babies to vanishing hitchhikers to housewives in football helmets, this exhaustive and highly readable encyclopedia provides descriptions of hundreds of individual legends and their variations, examines legend themes, and explains scholarly approaches to the genre. Revised and expanded to include updated versions of the entries from the award-winning first edition, this work provides additional entries on a wide range of new topics that include terroris...
Splatter Capital shows how a popular sub-genre of cinematic horror has developed a uniquely sensitive perspective on the cycles of capitalism. It argues that the emphatically messy brand of horror mobilised in gore or "splatter" films is extremely responsive to the internal contradictions that threaten the future sustainability of capitalist accumulation. And, while responding to the prospect of that end, splatter promotes an extant truth: capitalist accumulation is and always has been a nightmare of systematised bloodshed. This book provides an account of that nightmare as told through a combination of economic history and filmic analysis. The story it tells will serve as a source of both theoretical and practical knowledge for surviving the horror movie we collectively inhabit.
The evil clown is a subversion of the traditional comic clown character, in which the playful trope is instead rendered as disturbing through the use of horror elements and dark humor. The modern archetype of the evil clown was popularized by DC Comics character the Joker starting in 1940 and again by Pennywise in Stephen King's 1986 novel It. The character can be seen as playing off the sense of unease felt by sufferers of coulrophobia, the fear of clowns This book is the assembly of various texts that are freely available on the web, especially from Wikipedia. The next obvious question is: why buy this book? The answer: because it means you avoid having to carry out long and tedious intern...
Pop culture history meets blood-soaked memoir as Adam Rockoff, “a passionate fan of the horror genre in all its forms,” (The New York Times) recalls a life spent watching blockbuster slasher films, cult classics, and everything in between. Horror films have simultaneously captivated and terrified audiences for generations, racking up millions of dollars at the box office and infusing our nightmares with chainsaws, goblins, and blood-spattered machetes. Today’s hottest television shows feature classic horror elements, from marauding zombies and sexy vampires to myriad incarnations of the devil himself. Yet the horror genre and its controversial offshoots continue to occupy a nebulous sp...
"The Ghost in the Image offers a new take on the place that supernatural phenomena occupy in everyday life by examining the horror genre in fiction, documentary and participative modes. The book covers a variety of media: spirit photography, ghost-hunting reality shows, documentary and fiction films based on the Amityville and Enfield hauntings, found-footage horror movies, experiential cinema, survival games, and creepypasta. These works transform our interest in ghosts into an interactive form of entertainment. Through a transmedial approach to horror, this book investigates our expectations about the ability of photography and video to work as evidence. A historical examination of technology's role in at once showing and forging truths invites questions about our investment in its powers, which is pertinent to the so-called post-fact scenario. Behind our obsession with documenting everyday life lies the hope that our cameras will reveal something extraordinary. The obsessive search for ghosts in the image, however, shows that the desire to find them is matched by the pleasure of calling a hoax"--
This comprehensive bibliography covers writings about vampires and related creatures from the 19th century to the present. More than 6,000 entries document the vampire's penetration of Western culture, from scholarly discourse, to popular culture, politics and cook books. Sections by topic list works covering various aspects, including general sources, folklore and history, vampires in literature, music and art, metaphorical vampires and the contemporary vampire community. Vampires from film and television--from Bela Lugosi's Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood and the Twilight Saga--are well represented.
This source of information on comtemporary American reference works is intended for the library and information community. It has nearly 1600 descriptive and evaluative entries, and reviews material from more than 300 publishers in nearly 500 subject areas. It should help the user keep abreast of reference publications in all fields, answer everyday questions and build up reference collections.