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Horror films can be profound fables of human nature and important works of art, yet many people dismiss them out of hand. ‘Horror and the Horror Film’ conveys a mature appreciation for horror films along with a comprehensive view of their narrative strategies, their relations to reality and fantasy and their cinematic power. The volume covers the horror film and its subgenres – such as the vampire movie – from 1896 to the present. It covers the entire genre by considering every kind of monster in it, including the human.
“Bruce F. Kawin commences one of the most unusual genre studies in recent memory […He] employs the brief and precise declarative sentences traditionally found in instruction manuals to offer largely irrefutable observations about the mechanisms that horror films employ to manipulate viewers […] The result is a highly readable introduction to genre studies rendered in a style that is novel for its precision and brevity, as well as its emphasis on dispassionate observation rather than critical evaluation.” — John-Paul Checkett, “Video Watchdog”
Bruce F. Kawin is Professor of English and Film at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His books include ‘Telling It Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film’, ‘Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-Person Film’, ‘The Mind of the Novel: Reflexive Fiction and the Ineffable’, ‘Faulkner’s MGM Screenplays’ and ‘How Movies Work’. He is also the co-author of ‘A Short History of the Movies’.
Preface; List of Figures; Part I. Approaching the Genre; 1. Horror; 2. The Monster at the Bedroom Window; 3. Fear in a Frame; Part II. Subgenres: The Book of Monsters; 4. Monsters; 5. Supernatural Monsters; 6. Humans; Part III. Related Genres; 7. Horror Comedy; 8. Horror Documentary; Notes; Films Cited; Selected Bibliography; Index