Overview
Presents the history of horror films and the horror film industry in the 1950s and 1960s Explains that the movie industry responded to 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 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.
Full Product Details
Author: Kevin Heffernan
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.454kg
ISBN: 9780822332152
ISBN 10: 0822332159
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 25 March 2004
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
"""As someone who grew up watching late night chiller feature series on television, reading Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, listening to haunted house sound effects records, and making my own super-8 monster movies, I read Kevin Heffernan's book with nostalgia and delight. He provides the historical, cultural, and economic context for many of the texts and artifacts of my own misbegotten youth."" Henry Jenkins, coeditor of Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture ""This is the kind of book on horror film that I've been waiting years to read. Combining a historian's rigor and a fan's enthusiasm, Kevin Heffernan shows us how industrial considerations shaped the genre and how the marginalized horror film has in fact been at the center of changes in the American movie business for the past fifty years."" Eric Schaefer, author of ""Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!"": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959"
As someone who grew up watching late night chiller feature series on television, reading Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, listening to haunted house sound effects records, and making my own super-8 monster movies, I read Kevin Heffernan's book with nostalgia and delight. He provides the historical, cultural, and economic context for many of the texts and artifacts of my own misbegotten youth. Henry Jenkins, coeditor of Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture This is the kind of book on horror film that I've been waiting years to read. Combining a historian's rigor and a fan's enthusiasm, Kevin Heffernan shows us how industrial considerations shaped the genre and how the marginalized horror film has in fact been at the center of changes in the American movie business for the past fifty years. Eric Schaefer, author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! : A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959
Author Information
Kevin Heffernan is Assistant Professor in the Division of Cinema-Television at Southern Methodist University. He is the coauthor of My Son Divine and co-screenwriter and associate producer of the documentary Divine Trash, winner of the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.
