Introduction: The Dark Genre and Its Paradoxes

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Introduction: The Dark Genre and Its Paradoxes 1
4. The Silent and Classical Hollywood Eras
5. Shadow-Souls and Strange Adventures: Horror and the Supernatural in European Silent Film 15
6. Before Sound: Universal, Silent Cinema, and the Last of the Horror-Spectaculars 40
7. Children of the Night 58
8. The Horrors of War 70
9. The Modern Era
10. Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film 85
11. Dread, Taboo, and The Thing: Toward a Social Theory of the Horror Film 118
12. Toward an Aesthetics of Cinematic Horror 131
13. Scraping Bottom: Splatter and the Herschell Gordon Lewis Oeuvre 150
14. Mondo Horror: Carnivalizing the Taboo 167
15. Horror and Art-Dread 189
16. Horror and the Holocaust: Genre Elements in Schindler’s List and Psycho 206
17. Developmental Differences in Responses to Horror 224
18. The Appeal of Horror and Suspense 242
19. Contributors 261
20. Index 265