Merchants of menace
Subtitle: the business of horror cinema
By: edited by Richard Nowell
Publisher: Bloomsbury, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc; Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2014
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9781623568795; 9781623564209; 9781623569853; 9781623563943
Subjects: Horror films; History and criticism; Production and direction; Marketing
Description: Even though horror has been a key component of media output for almost a century, the genre's industrial character remains under explored and poorly understood. Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema responds to a major void in film history by shedding much-needed new light on the economic dimensions of one of the world's most enduring audiovisual forms. Given horror cuts across budgetary categories, industry sectors, national film cultures, and media, Merchants of Menace also promises to expand understandings of the economics of cinema generally. Covering 1930-present, this groundbreaking collection boasts fourteen original chapters from world-leading experts taking as their focus such diverse topics as early zombie pictures, post-WWII chillers, Civil Rights-Era marketing, Hollywood literary adaptations, Australian exploitation, "torture-porn" Auteurs, and twenty-first-century remakes
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Production lines, trends, and cycles.  "House of horrors": corporate strategy at Universal Pictures in the 1930s / Kyle Edwards; title: The undead of Hollywood and poverty row: the influence of studio-era industrial patterns on zombie film production, 1932-46 / Todd K. Platts; title: By the book: American horror cinema and horror literature of the late 1960s and 1970s / Peter Hutchings; title: Risen from the vaults: recent horror film remakes and the American film industry / Kevin Heffernan; title: Monster factory: international dynamics of the Australian horror movie industry / Mark David Ryan; title: Film content, style, and themes. "Bad medicine": the psychiatric profession's interventions into the business of postwar horror / Tim Snelson; title: Horror film atmosphere as anti-narrative (and vice versa) / Robert Spadoni; title: "A kind of Bacall quality?: Jamie Lee Curtis, stardom, and gentrifying non-Hollywood horror / Richard Nowell; title: "New decade, new rules": rebooting the scream franchise in the digital age / Valerie Wee; title: Movie marketing, branding, and distribution. "Hot profits out of cold shivers!": horror, the first run market, and the Hollywood studios, 1938-42 / Mark Jancovich; title: Strange enjoyments: the marketing and reception of horror in the civil rights era black press / Mikal J. Gaines; title: Bids for distinction: the critical-industrial function of the horror auteur / Joe Tompkins; title: Low budgets, no budgets, and digital-video nasties: recent British horror and informal distribution / Johnny Walker; title: Hammer 2.0: legacy, modernization, and hammer horror as a heritage brand / Matt Hills.