Pleasures of Horror is a stimulating and insightful exploration of horror fictions—literary, cinematic and televisual—and the emotions they engender in their audiences. The text is divided into three sections. The first examines how horror is valued and devalued in different cultural fields; the second investigates the cultural politics of the contemporary horror film; while the final part considers horror fandom in relation to its embodied practices (film festivals), its "reading formations" (commercial fan magazines and fanzines) and the role of special effects. Pleasures of Horror combines a wide range of media and textual examples with highly detailed and closely focused exposition of theory. It is a fascinating and engaging look at responses to a hugely popular genre and an invaluable resource for students of media, cultural and film studies and fans of horror.

In Recreational Terror, Isabel Cristina Pinedo analyzes how the contemporary horror film produces recreational terror as a pleasurable encounter with violence and danger for female spectators. She challenges the conventional wisdom that violent horror films can only degrade women and incite violence, and contends instead that the contemporary horror film speaks to the cultural need to express rage and terror in the midst of social upheaval.

In this Routledge Film Guidebook, audience researcher and film scholar Brigid Cherry provides a comprehensive overview of the horror film and explores how the genre works. Examining the way horror films create images of gore and the uncanny through film technology and effects, Cherry provides an account of the way cinematic and stylistic devices create responses of terror and disgust in the viewer.

The horror film generally presents a situation where normality is threatened by a monster. From this premise, Theatricality in the Horror Film argues that scary movies often create their terrifying effects stylistically and structurally through a radical break with the realism of normality in the form of monstrous theatricality. Theatricality in the horror fi lm expresses itself in many ways. For example, it comes across in the physical performance of monstrosity: the overthe-top performance of a chainsaw-wielding serial killer whose nefarious gestures terrify both his victims within the film and the audience in the cinema. Theatrical artifice can also appear as a stagy cemetery with broken-down tombstones and twisted, gnarly trees, or through the use of violently aberrant filmic techniques, or in the oppressive claustrophobia of a single-room setting reminiscent of classical drama. Any performative element of a film that flaunts its difference from what is deemed realistic or normal on screen might qualify as an instance of theatrical artifice, creating an intense affect in the audience. This book argues that the artificiality of the frightening spectacle is at the heart of the dark pleasures of horror.

Dreadful Pleasures offers a lively look at those stories that make our hair stand on end--their persistence in our culture, their manifestations in art, and our need for the frissons they provide. James Twitchell traces our fascination with horror from the cave paintings at Lascaux to the "slasher" movies today. Twitchell finds that three particular stories have had a special resonance in our culture: the bloodsucker (Dracula), the deformed creature (Frankenstein), and the transformation monster (The Wolfman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). Why have these stories persisted to the point of becoming mythic and to the exclusion of others? Whatever happened to the Phantom of the Opera or the Hunchback of Notre Dame or the Creature from the Black Lagoon? Using a psychoanalytic approach, Twitchell argues that the stories we seek out and preserve are th ones that carry certain information as well as horror. These myths, he contends, warn their adolescent audiences of the dangers of careless sexual behavior: they seem to say--subliminally--that sex itself is not horrible, but sex with certain people is. Whether discussing the engravings of William Hogarth or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Twitchell is consistently insightful, provocative, and entertaining. Film buffs and scholars literary critics and devotees of the Gothic novel will all welcome this study. About the Author: James B. Twitchell is Professor of English at the University of Florida, Gainesville. His previous books include GThe Living Dead: The Vampire in Romantic Literature and Romantic Horizons: Aspects of the Sublime in English Poetry and Painting.

Examining the popularity of low-budget cinema, particularly slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films, the author argues that, while such films have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasure to their mostly male audiences, in actuality they align spectators not with the male tormentor but with the females being tormented--particularly the slasher movie's "final girls"--Who endure fear and degradation before rising to save themselves.--Adapted from publisher description.

Each of the seven tales that Michael Aronovitz brings together in his first collection of stories is a powerful, hard-hitting specimen of contemporary weird fiction. From "How Bria Died," which tells of a baleful entity lurking in the bowels of a placid-seeming high school, to "Quest for Sadness," with its searing analysis of an aberrant mind, to "The Legend of the Slither-Shifter," in which a babysitter discovers far more than she expected in an urban household, Aronovitz displays an enviable skill in the handling of supernatural conceptions. The capstone of the collection is a long novella, "Toll Booth," a richly complex tale of death and betrayal among teenagers. Michael Aronovitz is a new voice in horror fiction, but it is one that will be heard far and wide. "Seven Deadly Pleasures is a startlingly good collection. With the assuredness of a born storyteller, Aronovitz rips the bland surface off the everyday to reveal the rolling horrors that lie beneath. These stories are raw with emotion, and the true terror of life, but be careful as they drag you down into the darkness, because you won't return the same."-William Lashner, author of Blood and Bone "Seven Deadly Pleasures is scary smart-more than just monsters and ghosts, these stories are beautifully crafted pieces of writing that tap into the darkest places of the human psyche. Lovers of both beautiful writing and spine-tingling terror will fall in love with this collection."-Dr. Annalisa Castaldo, Widener University "What is impressive about Aronovitz's tales is their range of tone, mood, and substance. . . . His surehandedness in prose, in character portrayal, and in the pacing and development of the short story mark him as a veteran."-From S. T. Joshi's Foreword