bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bais Yaakov and Bnos Agudath Israel
Authors: Seidman Naomi
Published: February 2021

This chapter details events important to the world of Bais Yaakov and Bnos Agudath Israel. It begins by explaining the mission of the Bais Yaakov schools, which is to educate Jewish girls so that they will serve the Creator and fulfil the commandments of the Torah with seriousness and passion. Indeed, the Bais Yaakov schools have as their mission to keep the Torah alive among women and to excite the passion for Torah among Jewish girls. The chapter then looks at the first anniversary of Bnos Agudath Israel in March of 1927. It outlines the most important tasks of Bnos Agudath Israel, which are: to advance, to lead with a strong connection to their sacred tradition; to advance in the knowledge of Torah, especially learning Jewish laws, in order to fulfil the duties incumbent on a Jew; and to spread their ideals with warmth and light.
The Hasid and the ‘Other’
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

At this point I am enlarging on the theme of the previous chapter. The concept of hafatsah, of bursting through borders, recognizes and enfranchises the ‘other’. Or does it? We saw the steps which Rabbi Menachem Schneerson and his Habad movement made towards the estranged Jew. But what about the non-Jew? Does he or she remain irredeemably ‘other’, beyond the sacred canopy?
‘From the Source of Mercy’: Graveside Prayer in Habad Hasidism
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

Rabbi Menachem Mendel’s teachings about the messiah revealed a beautiful vision to his followers. For many, this meant willing participation in an intense messianic movement focused on the person of Rabbi Menachem Mendel as the messiah. Then, on 12 June 1994 (3 Tamuz), after two years of severe illness, he passed away. What would be the future for the Habad-Lubavitch movement? This chapter explores the idea of a continued sense of relationship with Rabbi Menachem Mendel through visiting his grave.
The Ashkenaz of the South
Authors: Karády Victor
Published: February 2021

A COMPARISON of the modernization of the Jewish populations within the Polish and Hungarian societies of the long nineteenth century is a valuable exercise, since before i9i9 these two groups formed the two largest Ashkenazi communities in Europe. Given the space limitations of this chapter, this can be done only with a broad brush, focusing both on differences (mostly) and similarities (some) from a sociohistorical perspective. I shall start by describing the context of this transformation....
The Politics of Exclusion
Authors: Papp Susan M.
Published: February 2021

THIS CHAPTER seeks to present a comparative examination of the film industries in Hungary and Poland from the invention of the first motion picture cameras in the 1890s up to and including the Second World War, and the important role played in this industry by Jews from both countries. Throughout the period, Hungary had a vibrant film industry, yet, from the end of the First World War, each successive government tried to politicize and shape it. In Poland, government interference was less intrusive until the late 1930s, and Jews continued to play an important role in the film industry until the German invasion in September 1939. Nevertheless calls were made to limit the role of Jews. Even though the history of filmmaking in the two countries was very different, there still remain some interesting historical comparisons to be explored. In particular, this chapter will examine the Hungarian Theatre and Film Chamber (A SzínműVészeti és a Filmművészeti Kamara), established in 1938 by the regime of Miklós Horthy in order to limit the number of Jews working in the film business in Hungary....
Warsaw and Budapest, 1939–1945
Authors: Karsai László
Published: February 2021

THIS CHAPTER will compare the histories of the Warsaw and Budapest ghettos. Prior to the Second World War a significant number of Jews lived in both cities; however, their fates were very different: of the 380,000 Jews living in Warsaw before the war only an estimated ii ,500 survived, whereas out of the 200,000 Jews of Budapest more than 130,000 lived to see the liberation of Hungary....
‘Anti-Fascist Literature’ as Holocaust Literature?
Authors: Esbenshade Richard S.
Published: February 2021

THE long-accepted, fairly universal idea of a ‘great silence’ on the Holocaust in general, and in Hungary in particular, extending from the end of the Second World War until the Eichmann trial, has recently been challenged.1 The return or emergence from hiding of survivors quickly led to an explosion of Holocaust literature. Before the communist takeover, in the midst of difficult material and turbulent political conditions, Jenő Lévai and others published collections of documents;...
Polish and Hungarian Jews: So Different, Yet So Interconnected
Authors: Lupovitch Howard
Published: February 2021

HL:

There have been many more students writing about Poland than Hungary, or certainly about Polish Jews than Hungarian Jews. Why do you think this is? Especially with respect to American students, why are so many more drawn to Polish Jewry, or Russian Jewry, or Soviet Jewry, or . . . than are drawn to Hungarian Jewry?...
Ben-Zion Gold
Authors: Polonsky Antony
Published: February 2021

B EN-ZION GOLD, a long-time member of the Board of the American Association of Polish Jewish Studies who died on 20 April 2016, was director of Harvard Hillel from 1958 until he retired in 1990. He grew up in a traditional religious Jewish family in Radom in central Poland and described his childhood in a beautifully written and moving memoir, ...
The Egalitarian Agenda: Sources of Inspiration and Modes of Implementation
Authors: Rapoport-Albert Ada
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about the attraction inherent in Sabbatianism that sectarian messianism held for women, which accounts for women's active involvement with both the overt and the clandestine frameworks in which the movement persisted. It examines how women continued to be drawn to the sectarian fellowships as messianic prophetesses. It also describes Judaism that traditionally stressed a religious life bounded by the commandments. The chapter analyses the dense web of gendered prescriptions and rituals which segregated the sexes and assigned them different spheres of activity. It demonstrates how faith transcended the gender boundaries that were built into the halakhic system and opened a single arena of action to both sexes.
Telling Jokes: Connecting and Separating Jews in Analogue and Digital Culture
Authors: Bronner Simon J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about the behaviour of 'playing on the computer' that primarily involved sharing jokes in the 1990s. It mentions folklorist Paul Smith who dubbed the computer as the 'Joke Machine' and predicted the exponential growth of its humour-generating function. It also discusses how the internet brandishes the expressive, interactive features or cultural functions of folklore that frequently lodge as commentary on popular culture. The chapter contends how joking became associated with digital transmission and how it serves emotionally and psychologically to respond to anxieties concerning diminished human control and competency for users. It cites Jewish Orthodox groups that claim that the internet and computerized devices should be used for work, and not play.
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Maimonides
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about the central role of Maimonides in the life and thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, which was attested as a moving autobiographical passage in his work titled And from There You Shall Seek. It describes Rabbi Soloveitchik as an independent thinker who had been deeply involved in European intellectual life before the Second World War but had not blindly adopted Maimonides' philosophical positions. It also mentions how Rabbi Soloveitchik agrees with Maimonides but presents his thought in sharp terms that often evoke resistance among his more traditional readers. The chapter reviews Maimonides' interpretation by Professor Isadore Twersky, Rabbi Soloveitchik's son-in-law. It analyses how Rabbi Soloveitchik presents Maimonides in a language acceptable to contemporary traditional Jews.
Rabbi Elhanan Wasserman on Maimonides, and Maimonides on ‘Reb Elhanan’
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Maimonides' and Rabbi Elhanan Wasserman's different understandings of the nature of Torah. It cites a Maimonidean commentary on several key passages in Rabbi Wasserman's writings. It also shows that Maimonides and Rabbi Wasserman read the Torah in two different languages and points out how Rabbi Wasserman did not understand the language of Maimonides' Torah. The chapter analyses the vast gap between Maimonides' world and that of Rabbi Wasserman that relates to a meaningful truth concealed within the well-known Italian pun, traduttore-traditore. It mentions translators that are well acquainted with the problems of transmitting ideas from one language to another in theological contexts.
Aeschylus: Suppliant Women
Authors: Bowen A. J.
Published: February 2021

Aeschylus starts his tetralogy boldly, making the Danaids themselves prologue, chorus and protagonist. Guided by their father Danaus, these girls have fled from Egypt, where their cousins want to marry them, to seek asylum in Argos: they claim descent from Io, who was driven to Egypt five generations earlier when Zeus' love for her was detected by jealous Hera. In the long first movement of the play, the Danaids argue their claim, pressing it with song and dance of pathos and power, upon the reluctant Argive king. He, forced eventually by their threat of suicide, puts the case to his people, who vote to accept the girls, but while they sing blessings on Argos, Danaus spies their cousins' ships arriving. Left on their own when he goes for help, they sing more seriously of suicide, and seek sanctuary upstage when the Egyptians enter. A remarkable tussle of two choruses ensues; in the nick of time the king arrives, sees off the Egyptians (but they promise a return) and offers his hospitality. The girls want their father, however, and go when guided by him and his escort of Argive soldiers. Their final song has elements of wedding song in it; they share it, provocatively, with the Argives. The rest of the tetralogy is lost, but enough is known to indicate that marriage is the theme. Aeschylus probably surprised his first audience in his use of the myth; his command of theatre and poetry is fully mature.
Making Text
Authors: Walters Emma
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the act of making text. It looks at the author's own biography. Understanding one's contribution to both the textual and cultural milieu in which one situates themself provides concrete meaning to their existence in the space and time in which they are historically rooted. Of equal importance are questions on the very nature of how one's textual and cultural footprint impacts on the wider society they are in the process of creating. Making texts is a mode of reinforcing this underlying ideology, a strategy of facilitating, locating, constructing, and ultimately communicating or 'making' one's sense of self and place.
Inception
Authors: Carter David
Published: February 2021

Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010) is a difficult film to categorize. It partakes of various genres, blurring the distinctions between them. It is science fiction, but it does not contain many of the ingredients associated with that genre. It can also be identified as a kind of heist film, and there are shades of film noir as well, not only because of the heist motifs but also due to its character types. It can also be described as a psychological thriller, telling the story of one man's attempt to flee his past and regain access to his family, of his coming to terms with the death of his wife. In addition, it plays with time, questioning the certainty of consciously experienced real time, and revealing that the personal experience of the passing of time is variable. The film also explores the nature of the mind and how dreams are related to the conscious and unconscious mind. This book covers all of these facets of a complex, yet highly successful, film, as well as considering it in the context of the director's other work.
Introductory Remarks
Authors: Carter David
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010). Inception blurs the distinctions between various genres. It is considered as science fiction although it does not contain many of the elements associated with the genre. It can also be identified as a kind of heist film, and the first part of the film, the extraction, certainly involves a complex robbery; but then the second part of the film, while having many of the trappings of a heist, involves putting something into a heavily guarded location rather than stealing from it. Moreover, the heist motifs and the film's character types are reminiscent of film noir. Inception can also be described as a psychological thriller and it deals with the subject of time and how dreams are related to the conscious and unconscious mind.
Christopher Nolan: The Director and his Work
Authors: Carter David
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents a brief biography of Christopher Nolan, outlining his life so far. From his earliest short films, it is clear that Nolan has been interested in strange states of mind, illusions of various kinds, and the borderlines between fantasy and reality. Even his first experiments with his father's Super 8 camera were made using toy action figures. By the time he made Inception (2010), he was forcing his audience to understand not only the actual temporal sequence of juxtaposed events but also various events occurring contemporaneously but at different speeds (at different dream levels) and, further, to identify whether any given sequence was in the 'real' (diegetic) world as presented in the film or in one of the dream worlds. The chapter then looks at Nolan's other works, including Memento (2000), Insomnia (2002), The Prestige (2006), the Batman trilogy, Interstellar (2014), and Dunkirk (2017).
The Question of Genre
Authors: Carter David
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the genre of Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010). Nolan changed his mind several times about what kind of film he wanted to make. This led him to view the material at different times in terms of different genres. He has said that he initially imagined developing the general idea as a horror film, and wrote an 80-page treatment about dream-stealers. As he set about writing it he came to view it more as a heist film, though even at this early stage he had reservations about conceiving it in this genre. It is clear that he was starting to envision something with psychological depth. The chapter reflects on the notion of genre in general, how best to identify and describe genres, and then on the characteristics of the heist and sci-fi genres in particular. It also considers the tech noir genre; films commonly identified as tech noir freely explore deeper levels of human psychology.
Further Lines of Inquiry
Authors: Carter David
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores further lines of inquiry for Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010). Christopher Nolan has said that he cannot cut a film without considering whose point of view the shot represents. Students might care to discuss the camerawork in Inception, taking into account Nolan's preferences and analyse specific scenes which exemplify them. Another area for future study is the role in the film of the song 'Non, je ne regrette rien', in the original recording by Édith Piaff, as well as Hans Zimmer's musical score. It is also worth considering whether the marketing of the film was effective in awakening interest in. Finally, there are several mythological references in the film, and it is worth examining whether they broaden the films frames of reference in any way.
Close Encounters: Genre and Context
Authors: Towlson Jon
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the genre and context of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). It begins by tracing the emergence of science fiction in literature and in cinema. The chapter then looks at how film serials popularised pulp science-fiction cinema in the form of rocketships, ray guns, alien invaders, evil intergalactic emperors, and damsels in distress. One can see them as the inspiration for the likes of Star Wars and the myriad superhero blockbuster movies that continue to dominate Hollywood today. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey returned science fiction to its origins in Greek mythology. It is perhaps the first example of ‘transcendent’ science-fiction cinema, exploring the human need to place trust in a force larger than ourselves. In the early 1970s, science-fiction films were more overtly concerned with identity and environment, and how both were increasingly shaped or misshapen by technology. Meanwhile, post-9/11 has seen a move towards intelligent science fiction as a bankable commodity within Hollywood. Part of the genre's continuing appeal is, of course, the showcasing of state-of-the-art cinema technology within the sci-fi narrative. Special-effects technology has evolved in line with cinema's own development.
Close Encounters: Cultural Impact
Authors: Towlson Jon
Published: February 2021

This chapter reflects on the cultural impact of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). During the filming of Close Encounters, a rumour spread that the film was being secretly sponsored by an American government agency as part of its acclimation programme to ready humankind for imminent first contact with extraterrestrials. In some ways, there is a sense — conspiracy theories aside — that Spielberg may have achieved something along those lines. As such, the cosmic outlook of Close Encounters has influenced not only subsequent science-fiction films but also the continuing fascination with extraterrestrial life and a whole UFO subculture. Even if the film itself is all but forgotten in certain quarters, its impact can still be felt keenly on popular culture and in the SETI/ufology community at large.
Blade Runner
Authors: Redmond Sean
Published: February 2021

Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner is now widely recognized as an undisputed masterwork of science-fiction cinema and one of the most influential films released in the last forty years. Yet on its original release, it was both a critical and commercial failure, criticized for its perceived prioritizing of style over content and a narrative that did not deliver the anticipated high-octane action that its star casting and large budget normally promise. How did a film that was removed from circulation within a month of its premiere come to mean so much to modern audiences and provide such a rich seam of material for film and media studies? This book excavates the many significances of the film — its breakthrough use of special effects as a narrative tool; its revolutionary representation of the future city; its treatment of racial and sexual politics; and its unique status as a text whose meaning was fundamentally altered in its re-released Director's Cut form, then further revised in a Final Cut in 2007, and what this means in an institutional context.
Afterword (2016): AfterHuman
Authors: Redmond Sean
Published: February 2021

When Blade Runner was first released we were very much living in the analogue and (late) industrial age. Today, of course, the world is a digital one and for many people is fully augmented. In a very real sense the prophecies found in the future world of ...
Macbeth
Authors: Owens Rebekah
Published: February 2021

Why write about Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971) as part of a series of books dedicated to the classics of the horror movie genre? Because, this book argues, just as Banquo in Polanski's film holds up a series of mirrors that reflect images of his successors that trace back to his own son Fleance, so subsequent milestones in the genre show their lineage to this work, their originator. Polanski had previously made Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary's Baby (1968), so he was fully aware of the conventions of the horror genre and this film provides clues to his own horror lexicon. This book demonstrates how Macbeth can be read as part of the British Folk tradition, strengthening the reading of the film as a horror movie in its own right through its links to The Wicker Man (1973), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and Witchfinder General (1968) then argues the case for its recognition as a horror movie even further, by connecting it to the later American horror classics, such as Halloween (1978). It also explores the popular associations made between the film and Polanski's own life, arguing that they endorse the view of the film as a horror. The book represents the first serious attempt to regard Polanski's Macbeth as a horror film in its own right, and not exclusively as one of a multitude of ongoing Shakespeare film adaptations.
Polanski’s Macbeth As Social Commentary – ‘None can call our power to account’
Authors: Owens Rebekah
Published: February 2021

This chapter mentions Roman Polanski's film Rosemary's Baby, in which he managed to take the conventions of the Gothic world of demons and place them in a modern world of coffee machines and Christmas shopping. It analyses how Polanski overlaid William Shakespeare's Macbeth with the old Gothic bright red blood-and-guts instead of just presenting it in a modern world. It also discusses how Polanski chose the landscape of a feudal nation and the inner world of Macbeth to create a film that was a commentary on modernity. The chapter highlights how Polanski used Macbeth to show that a violent tendency is not done by one man alone, but it is symptomatic of the society being inhabited. It outlines the aspect of some horror films that functioned as a commentary on contemporary social anxieties of the late 1960s and 1970s.
‘Hours dreadful and things strange’
Authors: Scovell Adam
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides an overview of Folk Horror. The term ‘Folk Horror’ seems to have been coined by one of the genre's true proprietors, director Piers Haggard. In an interview, he suggests that he was ‘trying to make a folk horror film, I suppose’ when discussing the ideas behind his key film, The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971). From henceforward, the term has spun down several alleyways which only seem to marginally touch upon its descriptive character; where the re-appropriation of past culture, even that which is still within living memory, now attains a folkloric guise and becomes ascribed as Folk Horror. With this, Folk Horror in all types of media can be considered a channelling of any of the following formal ideas: a work that uses folklore, either aesthetically or thematically, to imbue itself with a sense of the arcane for eerie, uncanny, or horrific purposes; a work that presents a clash between such arcania and its presence within close proximity to some form of modernity, often within social parameters; or a work which creates its own folklore through various forms of popular conscious memory, even when it is young in comparison to more typical folkloric and antiquarian artefacts of the same character.
Topographies
Authors: Scovell Adam
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the role of landscape in Folk Horror. Landscape can be used to isolate but, especially in British Folk Horror, the realms of possibilities opened up by an aesthetic and thematic emphasis on landscape leads to a huge range of complex functioning. Because landscape can be so nuanced, and almost infinitely variable, there is almost an ease in mythologising it; to drawing out its already folklorically contained mystery and heightening its speculative character, to the point of inducing fantastical and terrifying apparitions. Folk Horror often denies reason and embraces new forms of, often theological, moral authority; it just so happens that this is linked almost consistently with the topographical location of its societies. In a sense, Folk Horror frames itself in such landscapes to evoke the awe-inspiring terror embraced in such a period of artwork, but also ironically suggests that such terror be derived from a more primitive set of ideals; the sort that Romanticism seemed to equally embrace but at a comfortable, lofty distance.
Rurality
Authors: Scovell Adam
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates the use of the rural setting in Folk Horror. David Gladwell's 1976 experimental feature Requiem for a Village questions the logic of such location-bred violence by looking into darker aspects of the rural. This is not simply through emphasis upon the topographical difference between urban and rural areas but more akin to the accoutrements of rural living and lifestyle; the aesthetics of farming, and other practices that are required to live off the land have a dual character of violence and history. Folk Horror regularly builds its sense of the horrific around societies and groups of people that have very specific ways of life, and it is not by sheer chance that these often happen to be rural rather than urban. This sense of divide between the two accounts for what was called ‘skewed belief systems and ideologies’, but there is more to it than the allowing of pulp forms of paganism and occultism to grow; Folk Horror uses the otherness that can be attributed to rural life to warp the very reality of its narrative worlds and often for its own explicit means.
Key Credits and Synopsis
Authors: Ahmed Omar
Published: February 2021

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Writers: Edward Neumeier, Michael Miner

Starring: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer

Producer: Jon Davison

Cinematography: Jost Vacano

Editing: Frank J. Urioste

Music: Basil Poledouris

Casting: Sally Dennison, Julie Selzer

Production Design: William Sandell

Art Direction: John Marshall, Gayle Simon...
Scream
Authors: West Steven
Published: February 2021

Wes Craven's Scream (1996) emerged at the point where the early Eighties American slasher cycle had effectively morphed into the post-Fatal Attraction trend for Hollywood thrillers that incorporated key slasher movie tropes. Scream emerged as a spiritual successor to Wes Craven's unpopular but critically praised previous film New Nightmare (1994), which evolved from his frustration at having lost creative control over his most popular creation, Freddy Krueger, and rebirthed the character in a postmodern context. Scream appropriates many of the concepts, conceits, and in-jokes inherent in New Nightmare, albeit in a much more commercial context that did not alienate teenage audiences who were not around to see the movies that were being referenced. This book offers a full exploration of Scream, including its structure, its many reference points (such as the prominent use of Halloween as a kind of sacred text), its marketing (“the new thriller from Wes Craven” — not a horror film), and legacy for horror cinema in the new millennium.
Watch A Few Movies, Make A Few Notes: Scream’s Layer Cake of References
Authors: West Steven
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes how Halloween is referenced throughout Wes Craven's Scream as the definitive slasher text in its own time that was received by some critics as a genre-savvy confidence trick in its own right. It notes the numerous references to Halloween in Scream as an example of periods rewriting the past to create their own heritage, consequently imposing understandings from the present on to the past. It also emphasizes how it became common for 1980s American horror cinema to playfully incorporate references to past-genre films via excerpts, character names, or dialogue quotes. The chapter talks about how Scream is sceptical about the horror genre as a whole, openly highlighting the weaknesses of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels and critiquing its exploitation of young actresses. It explores Halloween's main purpose in Scream's narrative that is climactically used to mirror the onscreen action in the film.
Introduction
Authors: Hayes Marisa C.
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Ju-on: The Grudge (2002), which was written and directed by Takashi Shimizu. Ju-on: The Grudge was one of the key titles that helped launch the popularity of ‘J-horror’ at the turn of the millennium. It plunged audiences into Japan's rich supernatural folklore while tapping into universal fears in a very contemporary context. In this sense, not only is the film brimming with atmospheric tension and masterfully executed camera work, it is also rich with social commentary that inspires repeated viewings of the film, as well as the discovery of other titles in the Ju-on franchise. Although hailed as an important film and now recognised as a classic of the horror genre, Ju-on: The Grudge receives only a few pages or even a chapter in most books, but never enough space to examine the film in depth. Similarly, texts that attempt to address the role of Japanese folklore or traditional theatre in contemporary Japanese horror cinema—of vital importance in Ju-on: The Grudge—are often cursory and fail to describe the myriad ways these connections manifest on screen.
Once Upon a Time
Authors: Gracey James
Published: February 2021

This chapter introduces Neil Jordan, who was born in Rosses Point, County Sligo on 25 February 1950, and studied English and History at University College Dublin. It talks about Jordan's first book, a collection of short stories titled Night in Tunisia in 1976, which feature many themes and ideas that Jordan would revisit throughout his career, including sexual relationships and notions of identity, and an experimental approach to perspective and narrative. The chapter also discusses Jordan's unique approach to storytelling that helped usher in a new kind of filmmaking in Ireland and radically changed perceptions of Irish culture for international audiences. It examines how Jordan's idiosyncratic approach to storytelling became more striking with each successive film. Finally, the chapter mentions The Company of Wolves as Jordan's second film and first foray into the realms of Gothic horror.
The First of Hammer
Authors: Dixon Wheeler Winston
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews Terence Fisher's initial work for Eros Films Ltd. on the production of Home to Danger, that starred Guy Rolfe. It discusses how Fisher embarked on a long period of highly uneven filmmaking after leaving behind the Gainsborough glossies, bouncing from one small company to another and making everything from domestic comedies and crime films to science-fiction dramas. It also looks at the period Fisher began his first work for Hammer, which used to be a very small British production company that relied upon co-production deals arranged by Robert Lippert. The chapter discusses Home to Danger, a successful program picture that is considered a modest and unpretentious crime thriller. It describes Fisher's crisp and authoritative compositions that favors neatly composed low-angle shots, which emphasized the grandeur of Barbara's home in Home to Danger.
The Gothic Impulse – Frankenstein
Authors: Dixon Wheeler Winston
Published: February 2021

This chapter cites The Curse of Frankenstein, which was a ground-breaking film that was brought together for the first time by the key members of the Hammer horror team. It recounts how Terrence Fisher paired for the first time Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in The Curse of Frankenstein, which would become the most famous team of horror stars since Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the 1930s. It also describes Fisher's enormous benefit of having an excellent screenplay by Jimmy Sangster, superb camerawork by Jack Asher, James Bernard's melancholy and evocative music, Bernard Robinson's effortlessly realistic production design, and Philip Leakey's startlingly revisionist work for the makeup of the Frankenstein monster itself. The chapter points out how The Curse of Frankenstein established the careers of nearly everyone involved in its production. It mentions Val Guest's The Quatermass Xperiment, as the film that started Hammer on its horror cycle.
In the Mouth of Madness
Authors: Blyth Michael
Published: February 2021

Somewhat overlooked upon its initial release in 1995, John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness has since developed a healthy cult reputation. But far more than simply a fan favourite, this closing instalment of the acclaimed director's self-described “apocalypse trilogy” (following The Thing and Prince Of Darkness) stands today as one of his most thematically complex and stylistically audacious pieces of work. The story of an insurance investigator drawn into the supposedly fictional universe of a best-selling horror novelist, the film is an extension of many recurring themes found in Carpenter's filmography (the end of the world, the loss of free will, a distrust of mass industry and global corporations, the cataclysmic resurgence of ancient evil), as well as an affectionate homage to the works of H. P. Lovecraft (and horror literature more broadly) and a self-reflexive celebration of the horror genre that predates the Scream-inspired postmodernist boom of late-nineties genre cinema. While numerous books and countless academic essays have been written about Carpenter's work, surprisingly little has focused exclusively on In the Mouth of Madness, a film which feels more prescient, more essential, and more daringly complex than ever. This book seeks to redress this imbalance, at last positioning this overlooked masterpiece as essential Carpenter.
‘It’s Just a Matter of Time’
Authors: Blyth Michael
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the cinematic horror landscape at the time John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness was first released, explaining why the film was so unfairly neglected in 1995. It is often acknowledged among horror fans that the early 1990s was not the strongest period in the genre's history. In fact, it has been argued that the first half of the decade represented one of the most significant lulls that US horror cinema has been witness to, with the volume of film production, box office takings, and overall audience interest hitting an all-time low. Of course, such lulls can only ever really come after a boom, and the previous decade had been a highly prolific and profitable time for the genre. But while the 1980s were littered with innovative horror classics, it is also recognised as the era of the sequel, a time when the franchise reigned supreme and horror cinema became less about striving for new ideas than the increasingly cynical (but lucrative) expansion of those which had come before. Ultimately, not only did In the Mouth of Madness debut during the closing moments of this significant horror depression, it came at a time when no one was expecting great things from its director.
Conclusion: ‘This is a Rotten Way to End It’
Authors: Blyth Michael
Published: February 2021

This concluding chapter argues that the narrative of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1995) positions artistic creativity as deadly. However, the film as a whole can be read as a celebration of art and, more specifically, of horror as a legitimate mode of intellectual expression. Philosophically speaking, the film is a frisky hybrid of nihilistic Lovecraftian cosmicism and thoroughly playful 1990s postmodernism — complete with joking genre references and deft sociological satire. The film may be dealing with some heavy philosophical themes, but it is important not to forget that part of the pleasure of Carpenter's horrific brand of postmodernism lies in its sense of independent, anarchic creativity. This may well be one of Carpenter's most fatalistic works, but at the same time it is one of his most perversely playful, and most joyous.
‘Help me be human’: Cronenberg Becomes The Fly
Authors: Westwood Emma
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the relationship between Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg and his film, The Fly (1986). Even though, as a remake, The Fly had travelled a long way before falling into the creative hands of Cronenberg, it embodies him at an almost molecular level. Just as Frankenstein's Monster bears the name of its creator, and people are often confused between the two, The Fly is chromosomally ‘Cronenbergian’. It is a strident example of Cronenber's signature mode of ‘body horror’ or ‘visceral horror’ and the perfect crescendo to the first act in his filmmaking career, which had reached its natural conclusion at that particular point in time: 1986. The Fly additionally highlights Cronenberg's uncanny ability to create something uniquely personal to his own self — in the vein of an auteur — while borne from the mind of another storyteller with no immediate connection to himself.
‘There was an old lady who swallowed a fly’: A ‘Cronenfeld’ Film
Authors: Westwood Emma
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines how the idea to remake The Fly reached David Cronenberg. Producer Stuart Cornfeld was introduced to the idea of remaking The Fly by way of playwright/screenwriter Charles Edward ‘Chuck’ Pogue. Cornfeld admits David Cronenberg was his first choice as director for The Fly. However, Cronenberg would not fully enter the picture until further down the track, when Cronenberg's relationship with Dino De Laurentiis on Total Recall had fallen apart. Cronenberg, who had worked with De Laurentiis previously on The Dead Zone (1983), reportedly undertook 13 rewrites of Total Recall but was still unable to reach a point of compromise on the project that satisfied all parties involved. But The Fly story is interesting, even before it became a David Cronenberg film.
Introduction
Authors: Mee Laura
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of The Shining (1980), Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's bestselling novel of the same name. The Shining is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. However, it took time for the film to become recognised as the essential and effective horror movie it is regarded as today. For many critics, The Shining was simply not frightening. The re-evaluation that has taken place subsequently has, to some extent, sought beyond considerations of genre in highlighting the film's value, focusing on the adaptation of King's book, Kubrick's auteur status and filmmaking style, and analysis of its ‘deeper’ meanings, rather than situating it—as much of its audience has—in the context of horror cinema. These approaches are significant, and they offer useful frameworks for a closer look at the film, but it is important that they are considered in parallel with its position as a horror film. The book brings together these ideas to offer a study of The Shining in its rightful place. The chapter then presents the synopsis of the film and looks at considerations of The Shining in previous studies of the horror genre.
Dereliction and the Trauma of Place
Authors: Gildersleeve Jessica
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the settings of Don't Look Now (1973), looking at the ways in which these evoke the horror of different kinds of disruption. It particularly considers how horror invades the family, the heart of the home, but also how this is mirrored in the ruined and inhospitable spaces of Venice: the hotel is closing for the season, Laura causes damage in a restaurant, and John's restorations on the church are nowhere near completion. Horror, in this film, resides in the ordinary sites of the family, the home, and even the temporal refuge of the holiday. However, dereliction, in this film, also comes to figure Luce Irigaray's conceptualisation of the term as déréliction—a description of the way in which women are exiled from the patriarchal community. The chapter concludes, then, by considering Laura, Christine, the psychic sisters, and the monstrous dwarf in terms of their exile and the ways in which this disrupts and makes derelict the spaces which they inhabit.
‘Forward into Battle, Dear Chaps’: The Production
Authors: Riddle Nick
Published: February 2021

This chapter details the production history of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). It begins by considering the source novel, Henry Lionel Lawrence's The Children of Light (1960). The Damned retains, or reworks, a good deal more of the source novel than Losey suggested: the names of the principal characters; the youth gang; the love story; the southern-England setting; the irradiated, bunker-bound children; the helicopter as malign pursuer; the patriarch committing horrors in the name of human survival. The Damned was criticised for its bleakness, but if anything, The Children of Light is bleaker still. The chapter then addresses how The Children of Light attracted the attention of Hammer, before looking at the principal actors of The Damned.
The Living, The Dead and the Damned
Authors: Riddle Nick
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores how Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963) deals with the subject of the nuclear war. In the popular imagination, atomic weapons were simply too big to deal with. In The Damned, nobody mentions nuclear war or atomic weapons by name, and Bernard speaks in allusions and euphemisms. The strategies of allusions and euphemisms reduce the subject of apocalypse to a more manageable, more portable, and more mysterious thing, a 'great whatsit'. Radiation answers this requirement: it is invisible, human-scale, insidious, slower in its effects. The notion of radiation as a virus, like smallpox, that can be used in small amounts to inoculate someone against its own effects is founded on a fallacy — and it is the same fallacy that underlies the irradiated children in The Damned. One can sense, in this uneasy mix of science and superstition, the struggles of post-war culture to come to terms with the puzzling, sinister new world of nuclear physics. The chapter then considers how The Damned experiments with the distinction between living and non-living.
Candyman
Authors: Towlson Jon
Published: February 2021

When Candyman was released in 1992, Roger Ebert gave it his thumbs up, remarking that the film was “scaring him with ideas and gore, rather than just gore.” Indeed, Candyman is almost unique in 1990s horror cinema in that it tackles its sociopolitical themes head on. As critic Kirsten Moana Thompson has remarked, Candyman is “the return of the repressed as national allegory”: the film's hook-handed killer of urban legend embodies a history of racism, miscegenation, lynching, and slavery, “the taboo secrets of America's past and present.” This book considers how Candyman might be read both as a “return of the repressed” during the George H. W. Bush era, and as an example of 1990s neoconservative horror. It traces the project's development from its origins as a Clive Barker short story (The Forbidden); discusses the importance of its gritty real-life Cabrini-Green setting; and analyzes the film's appropriation (and interrogation) of urban myth. The two official sequels (Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh [1995] and Candyman: Day of the Dead [1999]) are also considered, plus a number of other urban myth-inspired horror movies such as Bloody Mary (2006) and films in the Urban Legend franchise. The book features an in-depth interview with Candyman's writer-director Bernard Rose.
House of Usher
Authors: van Leeuwen Evert
Published: February 2021

Despite being the product of Roger Corman's AIP exploitation studio, House of Usher enjoys a high standing. But while the impact and cult status of Corman's Edgar Allan Poe cycle is often discussed in histories of gothic, horror, and exploitation cinema, no extended analysis and critical discussion has been published to date that explores specifically the aesthetic appeal of House of Usher. This book provides a complete study of the aesthetic appeal of Corman's influential first Poe picture. The book explores the underlying narrative structure borrowed from Poe's original story and shows how closely Richard Matheson's script followed Poe's theory of short fiction. It goes on to explore the formal techniques of allegory and symbolism employed to represent the house as a monster before focusing on Corman's imagery, showing how the use of specific camera angles, lenses, colors, and sound effects create and sustain the simultaneously morbid and beautiful atmosphere of gothic decay. Finally, the book situates horror icon Vincent Price's performance as Roderick Usher in the context of the nineteenth-century Romantic misfit and the postwar countercultural antihero, two closely related cultural identities.
The Plot of Usher: Rebuilding the House of Poe
Authors: van Leeuwen Evert Jan
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents a structural analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's story and Richard Matheson's script to highlight House of Usher's (1960) fidelity to Poe's original. ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (1839) is often classified as the story that epitomises Poe's philosophy of composition. From the outset, it hurtles towards a dreadful and inescapable catastrophe from which only the narrator escapes to tell the tale. Adapting Poe properly for the screen means following Poe's method of plotting for unity of effect as well as translating the story's atmosphere of doom, hysterical characterisation, and macabre themes of death and decay into a language understandable to actors, cinematographers, and all the various artists involved in the production design. The chapter's analysis shows that Matheson indeed followed Poe's philosophy of composition carefully, adapting the nineteenth-century writer's literary conventions to create a cinematic narrative of high fidelity to its literary source that was also very filmable and appealing to the audience of the day.
The Look of Usher: Picturing a Story of Death
Authors: van Leeuwen Evert Jan
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the artistic aspects of House of Usher (1960) to reveal how Roger Corman's crew managed to successfully fuse the dark Romantic tradition to which Edgar Allan Poe belongs with a more expressionist horror film aesthetic that made the film more directly appealing to 1960s horror-movie audiences. Used in the context of low-budget horror films, expressionism should be understood as a term denoting ‘art which depends on free and obvious distortions of natural forms to convey emotional feeling’. House of Usher is not expressionistic because its frames resemble the art of Edvard Munch, but because its mise-en-scène is not naturalistic but functions as a visual vehicle for the expression of subjective states of mind and emotions. In developing House of Usher, Corman told his crew: ‘I never want to see “reality” in any of these scenes’. The décor of the Usher mansion is not designed for verisimilitude, but to give the audience a glimpse at the fear that lurks in the darkest corners of Roderick's psyche.
Introduction
Authors: Skaff Sheila
Published: February 2021

This chapter introduces Paweł Pawlikowski's 2013 film titled Ida, which has been hailed by audiences around the world as the Polish-born director's masterpiece. It mentions film critics that laud Ida's mesmerising black-and-white cinematography and excellent acting and cultural critics that praise its courageous storyline. It also explains Ida as a film about meditation that focuses on a teenage novice nun and her world-weary aunt. This chapter reveals Ida's obscure references and ambiguous influences, as well as its essence as a quest for silence in the aftermath of tragedy. It analyses how Ida offers muted reflections on the major forces that have traumatised and shaped the contemporary Western world.