Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold

Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold PDF Author: Kevin Heffernan
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822385554
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Tingler, the Mole People—they stalked and oozed into audiences’ minds during the era that followed Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein and preceded terrors like Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street) and Chucky (Child’s Play). Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold pulls off the masks and wipes away the slime to reveal how the monsters that frightened audiences in the 1950s and 1960s—and the movies they crawled and staggered through—reflected fundamental changes in the film industry. Providing the first economic history of the horror film, Kevin Heffernan shows how the production, distribution, and exhibition of horror movies changed as the studio era gave way to the conglomeration of New Hollywood. Heffernan argues that major cultural and economic shifts in the production and reception of horror films began at the time of the 3-d film cycle of 1953–54 and ended with the 1968 adoption of the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings system and the subsequent development of the adult horror movie—epitomized by Rosemary’s Baby. He describes how this period presented a number of daunting challenges for movie exhibitors: the high costs of technological upgrade, competition with television, declining movie attendance, and a diminishing number of annual releases from the major movie studios. He explains that the production and distribution branches of the movie industry responded to these trends by cultivating a youth audience, co-producing features with the film industries of Europe and Asia, selling films to television, and intensifying representations of sex and violence. Shining through Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold is the delight of the true horror movie buff, the fan thrilled to find The Brain that Wouldn’t Die on television at 3 am.

Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold

Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold PDF Author: Kevin Heffernan
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822385554
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Tingler, the Mole People—they stalked and oozed into audiences’ minds during the era that followed Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein and preceded terrors like Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street) and Chucky (Child’s Play). Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold pulls off the masks and wipes away the slime to reveal how the monsters that frightened audiences in the 1950s and 1960s—and the movies they crawled and staggered through—reflected fundamental changes in the film industry. Providing the first economic history of the horror film, Kevin Heffernan shows how the production, distribution, and exhibition of horror movies changed as the studio era gave way to the conglomeration of New Hollywood. Heffernan argues that major cultural and economic shifts in the production and reception of horror films began at the time of the 3-d film cycle of 1953–54 and ended with the 1968 adoption of the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings system and the subsequent development of the adult horror movie—epitomized by Rosemary’s Baby. He describes how this period presented a number of daunting challenges for movie exhibitors: the high costs of technological upgrade, competition with television, declining movie attendance, and a diminishing number of annual releases from the major movie studios. He explains that the production and distribution branches of the movie industry responded to these trends by cultivating a youth audience, co-producing features with the film industries of Europe and Asia, selling films to television, and intensifying representations of sex and violence. Shining through Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold is the delight of the true horror movie buff, the fan thrilled to find The Brain that Wouldn’t Die on television at 3 am.

Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold

Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold PDF Author: Kevin Heffernan
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822332152
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
DIVThe history of horror films and the horror film industry in the 1950s and 1960s./div

"Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!"

Author: Eric Schaefer
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822323747
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 492

Get Book Here

Book Description
A social and cultural history of exploitation films, which were produced on the fringes of Hollywood and often dealt with subjects forbidden by the Production Code.

The Battle for the Bs

The Battle for the Bs PDF Author: Blair Davis
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813553245
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book Here

Book Description
The emergence of the double-bill in the 1930s created a divide between A-pictures and B-pictures as theaters typically screened packages featuring one of each. With the former considered more prestigious because of their larger budgets and more popular actors, the lower-budgeted Bs served largely as a support mechanism to A-films of the major studios—most of which also owned the theater chains in which movies were shown. When a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust ruling severed ownership of theaters from the studios, the B-movie soon became a different entity in the wake of profound changes to the corporate organization and production methods of the major Hollywood studios. In The Battle for the Bs, Blair Davis analyzes how B-films were produced, distributed, and exhibited in the 1950s and demonstrates the possibilities that existed for low-budget filmmaking at a time when many in Hollywood had abandoned the Bs. Made by newly formed independent companies, 1950s B-movies took advantage of changing demographic patterns to fashion innovative marketing approaches. They established such genre cycles as science fiction and teen-oriented films (think Destination Moon and I Was a Teenage Werewolf) well before the major studios and also contributed to the emergence of the movement now known as underground cinema. Although frequently proving to be multimillion-dollar box-office draws by the end of the decade, the Bs existed in opposition to the cinematic mainstream in the 1950s and created a legacy that was passed on to independent filmmakers in the decades to come.

Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead PDF Author: Ben Hervey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1839022027
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 131

Get Book Here

Book Description
George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead is a cult classic that has resonated with audiences and independent filmmakers ever since its release in 1968. It redefined horror cinema and launched the modern zombie genre that continues with films and series like 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and The Walking Dead. Ben Hervey's illuminating study of the movie traces Night's influences, from Powell and Pressburger to fifties horror comics, and provides the first history of its reception. Hervey argues that the film broke cultural barriers, fêted at New York's Museum of Modern Art while it was still packing 42nd Street grindhouses. Scene-by-scene analysis meshes with detailed historical contexts, showing why Night was a new kind of horror film: the expression of a generation who didn't want their world to return to normal.

Euro Horror

Euro Horror PDF Author: Ian Olney
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253006589
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
Beginning in the 1950s, "Euro Horror" movies materialized in astonishing numbers from Italy, Spain, and France and popped up in the US at rural drive-ins and urban grindhouse theaters such as those that once dotted New York's Times Square. Gorier, sexier, and stranger than most American horror films of the time, they were embraced by hardcore fans and denounced by critics as the worst kind of cinematic trash. In this volume, Olney explores some of the most popular genres of Euro Horror cinema—including giallo films, named for the yellow covers of Italian pulp fiction, the S&M horror film, and cannibal and zombie films—and develops a theory that explains their renewed appeal to audiences today.

Terrifying Texts

Terrifying Texts PDF Author: Cynthia J. Miller
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476671303
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
From Faust (1926) to The Babadook (2014), books have been featured in horror films as warnings, gateways, prisons and manifestations of the monstrous. Ancient grimoires such as the Necronomicon serve as timeless vessels of knowledge beyond human comprehension, while runes, summoning diaries, and spell books offer their readers access to the powers of the supernatural--but at what cost? This collection of new essays examines nearly a century of genre horror in which on-screen texts drive and shape their narratives, sometimes unnoticed. The contributors explore American films like The Evil Dead (1981), The Prophecy (1995) and It Follows (2014), as well as such international films as Eric Valette's Malefique (2002), Paco Cabeza's The Appeared (2007) and Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981).

German Popular Cinema and the Rialto Krimi Phenomenon

German Popular Cinema and the Rialto Krimi Phenomenon PDF Author: Nicholas G. Schlegel
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498570739
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Get Book Here

Book Description
German Popular Cinema and the Rialto Krimi Phenomenon: Dark Eyes of London examines the Kriminalfilme—or Krimis—based on the novels of English author Edgar Wallace, released by Rialto Film between 1959 and 1972 as part of the post-World War II era of German popular cinema that enjoyed extraordinary popularity with the German public. Nicholas G. Schlegel analyzes how this group of West German thrillers not only nurtured a convalescing film industry, but also provided unequaled national entertainment while canonizing Rialto’s Krimi productions in terms of their historical genesis, aesthetic characteristics, and social reception. Schlegel surveys the Krimi’s enduring legacy, calculable global influence, inevitable decline, and eventual migration to television in the 1970s, where it thrived but ultimately took on a more somber tone. Scholars of film, television, history, and German culture will find this book particularly useful.

The Man Who Got Carter

The Man Who Got Carter PDF Author: Andrew Spicer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 085772309X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
Michael Klinger was the most successful indpendent producer in the British film industry over a 20 year period from 1960 to 1980, responsible for 32 films, including classics such as Repulsion (1965) and Get Carter (1971). Despite working with many famous figures- including actors Michael Caine, Peter Finch, Lee Marvin, Roger Moore, Mickey Rooney and Susannah York; directors Claude Chabrol,Mike Hodges and Roman Polanski and author Wilbur Smith- Klinger's contribution to British cinema has been almost largely ignored. This definitive book on Micheal Klinger, largely based on his previously unseen personal papers, examines his origins in Sixties Soho 'sexploitation' cinema and 'shockumentaries' through to major international productions including Gold (1974) and Shout at the Devil (1976). It reveals how Klinger deftly combined commercial product-the hugely popular 'Confessions' series (1974-78)- with artistic, experimental cinema that nurtured young talent, including Polanski and Hodges, Peter Colinson, Alastair Reid, Linda Hayden and Moshe Mizrahi, the Israeli director of Rachel's Man (1975). Klinger's career is contextualised through a reassessment of the British film industry during a period of unprecedented change and volatility as well as highlighting the importance of his Jewishness. The Man Who Got Carter offers a detailed analysis of the essential but often misunderstood role played by the producer.

Edgar G. Ulmer

Edgar G. Ulmer PDF Author: Gary D. Rhodes
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780739125687
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
Edgar G. Ulmer: Detour on Poverty Row examines the full scope of the career of this often overlooked film auteur, with essays exploring individual films, groups of films (such as his important work in film noir), repetitive themes appearing across the spectrum of his work, and a case study of three essays analyzing The Black Cat (1934).