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Born in the shadow of marital turmoil and political rupture, it is almost inevitable that Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981) would be caught between two worlds. In Cannes, the film premiered in competition for the illustrious Palme d’Or; in the UK it was put on trial for charges of obscenity as part of the infamous ‘video nasties’ campaign. Beginning with a marital breakdown and ending with an apocalypse, Possession is a fascinating and confounding artefact skirting the boundaries between art and exploitation, visceral horror and cerebral reverie. Shot against the Berlin Wall at the height of the Cold War and replete with tales of a disappearing producer, drunken stunt doubles, and Haitian voodoo trances, the film’s production history is almost as bizarre as the finished product. Possession’s mystique has not dissipated over time; its transgressive imagery, histrionic performances, and spiral staircase logic continue to mesmerise audiences 40 years after its original release. Including new interview material from Sam Neill, extracts from the original shooting script and the BBFC’s archival reports, this book takes a deep dive into Possession’s history, stylistic achievement, and legacy as an enduring and unique work of horror cinema.

Can a film made in one genre be better understood by viewing it as another? This book investigates this question in relation to Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of Cape Fear. Scorsese approached the film as a thriller, but Cape Fear is thematically and formally more coherent when viewed as a horror film. Across an introduction and five chapters, this book explores why this is the case. How Scorsese’s Catholicism and passion for horror has informed artistic decisions throughout his career, and the ways in which it reached an apex when he directed Cape Fear. The ways in which conventions of Gothic literature and fairy tales influenced this richly metatextual film, plus the impact of historical trends in horror cinema. How Robert De Niro’s research into antagonist Max Cady created a character who is closer to cinematic bogeymen rather than the more earthbound villains expected in thrillers. Film theory models around genre are utilised, along with interviews with key personnel on the film. Including a primary source interview with screenwriter Wesley Strick, who relates his experiences. Scorsese’s hyper-stylised directorial technique in Cape Fear is analysed for the ways in which it works to creates sensations typically associated with horror cinema, and the film’s legacy is also reviewed. Sexual politics and the controversy that surrounded Cape Fear’s depiction of sexual threat is also analysed, within the context of Scorsese’s depiction of women and accusations of misogyny that have been levelled against him during his career.

Since its release at the mid-point of the 1980s American horror boom, Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator (1985) has endured as one of the most beloved cult horror films of that era. Greeted by enthusiastic early reviews, Re-Animator has maintained a spot at the periphery of the classic horror film canon. While it has not entirely gone without critical attention, Re-Animator has often been overshadowed in horror studies by more familiar titles from the period. This book, which represents the first book-length study of the film, repositions Re-Animator as one of the more significant American horror films of its era. For Falvey, Re-Animator epitomises various developments that were taking place within the context of 1980s American horror. He uses Re-Animator to explore the rise and fall of Charles Band's Empire Pictures, a prolific if short-lived studio specialising in genre B-movies, the revival of the mad science sub-genre, the emergent popularity of both gore aesthetics and horror-comedies, as well as a new appetite for the works of H.P. Lovecraft in adaptation. This book tracks the film's various legacies, observing not only how Re-Animator's success gave rise to a new Lovecraftian cycle initiated by Gordon’s success here, but also how its cult status has continued to grow, marked by sequels, spin-offs, parodies and re-releases. As such, this book is both about Re-Animator itself and about the various contexts that birthed it and continue to reflect its influence.

From Wild Tales to Zama, Argentine cinema has produced some of the most visually striking and critically lauded films of the 2000s. Argentina also boasts some of the most exciting contemporary poetry in the Spanish language. What happens when its film and poetry meet on screen? Moving Verses studies the relationship between poetry and cinema in Argentina. Although both the “poetics of cinema” and literary adaptation have become established areas of film scholarship in recent years, the diverse modes of exchange between poetry and cinema have received little critical attention. This book analyses how film and poetry transform each another, and how these two expressive media behave when placed into dialogue. Going beyond theories of adaptation, and engaging critically with concepts around intermediality and interdisciplinarity, Moving Verses offers tools and methods for studying both experimental and mainstream film from Latin America and beyond. The corpus includes some of Argentina’s most exciting and radical contemporary directors (Raúl Perrone, Gustavo Fontán) as well as established modern masters (María Luisa Bemberg, Eliseo Subiela), and seldom studied experimental projects (Narcisa Hirsch, Claudio Caldini). The critical approach draws on recent works on intermediality and “impure” cinema to sketch and assess the many and varied ways in which directors “read” poetry on screen.

THE EVIL DEAD is one of the most inventive and energetic of all horror movies. Sam Raimi’s debut feature transcends its small budget and limited resources to deliver a phantasmagoric roller-coaster ride, a wildly absurd and surreal assault on the senses. The first two chapters detail the unique circumstances of the film’s origin - it began life as a short film which was used to encourage financial backing from a variety of investors – and it’s production history which was fraught with problems. Chapter Three examines the concept of the Bad Place (the cabin in the woods) and how the film structurally creates a ‘bad dream’ effect. Chapter Four considers how the film’s ‘macho’ male hero Ash shares similarities with the Final Girl of other horror movies of this period, while Chapter Five explores the critical approaches to the film and its reputation in Britain as a ‘video nasty’. Chapter Six examines how THE EVIL DEAD has influenced other works both within and outside of the horror genre since its release in 1982.

James Wan’s 2013 film The Conjuring appears on many critics’ best horror films of the decade lists and was rated R by the MPAA solely “for terror.” Allegedly based on the true story of the Perron family’s experiences in a haunted farmhouse in rural Rhode Island, the film comes from the files of pioneer paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, and tells the story of how the Perron family came under supernatural assault from Bathsheba Sherman, a demonic eighteenth century witch, and how the Warrens investigated and eventually exorcised her. The book examines how Wan created the paragon of virtuosic, effective, terrifying haunted house movies, and then goes on to consider how the film plays with the idea of “a true story,” the role of religion in the film, how children’s games and toys are made the source of adult terror, how The Conjuring is a female-centered but not feminist film, and how the film spawned the “Conjuring Universe,” a growing series of half a dozen sequels, prequels, and related films. The Conjuring is an effective, good, old-fashioned horror film. It is genuinely scary and anxiety-inducing, greater than the sum of its parts and it is greater than its marketing campaign of “based on a true story” would seem to suggest. The book analyses the film on multiple levels and contextualizes it as a twenty-first century horror classic.

Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), starring Catherine Deneuve as a repressed and tormented manicurist, is a gripping, visually inventive descent into paranoia and self-destructive alienation. Emblematic of recurrent Polanski motifs, evinced in his student short films, in his striking debut feature, Knife in the Water (1962), and in subsequent features like Death and the Maiden (1994), Repulsion is a tour de force examination of crippling anxiety and the sinister potency of inanimate objects. Repulsion amplifies the realm of psychological horror by evoking the seething impact of increasing delusion, literal and figurative seclusion, and the consequences of one woman’s foreboding sensitivity to the unsettling world that surrounds her. This Devil’s Advocate considers Repulsion within the context of familiar horror tropes and the prevailing qualities of Polanski’s broader oeuvre. Drawing on the research of Sigmund Freud, Julia Kristeva, Barbara Creed and others, concerning issues of abjection, the ‘monstrous-feminine’, and the psychology of horror spectatorship, this text focuses on central themes of isolation, sexuality and setting. Bookended by introductory biographical details and concluding with a roundup of the film’s reception, Repulsion is situated within the horror genre at large as well as its various off-shoots, such as the rape/revenge subgenre. There is also an analysis of the film’s technical qualities, from its sound design to its brilliantly low-key special effects, all of which define the film as Polanski’s most audaciously stylish realisation of dread and unease.

Seconds: John Frankenheimer's criminally overlooked monolith of paranoia, part Science Fiction, part Body Horror, part noir thriller cum black comedy, a film found at the intersection of the post-McCarthy mindset, European Art Cinema, the suburban identity nightmares of The Twilight Zone and the mid-life crises of malehood aroused by 1960s counterculture. Arguably the bleakest mainstream Hollywood film ever made, it was famously booed at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival and was a box office failure upon release. Over time, the film’s critical reception has gradually turned to acknowledge its significance in the scheme of American Cinema but, throughout the wider Science Fiction Cinema community, it remains surprisingly under appreciated. This book sets out to shed light on the film’s many attributes, from its stylistic significance to its political commentary, countering the critical dismissal of a film suffering from ‘personality disorder’ to suggest that instead Seconds turned its inner identity crisis from a vice into a virtue. In the spirit of the finest Science Fiction, Seconds is both emblematic of the time in which it was made and perpetually relevant to new audiences as a portent of things to come or, for that matter, a startling reveal of the hidden here and now.

Aimed at newcomers to the subject, this book is a guide for the analysis of Shakespeare on film. Starting with an introduction to the main challenge faced by any director — the early-modern language of the plays — there follows exemplars for examining how that challenge is met using as case studies twelve Shakespeare films, including Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and The Tempest. The reader is invited to explore different critical approaches such as how a director can tell the story of the play in a setting that embraces the expectations of realism in cinema, but still pays homage to the theatrical origins of the work. There is a discussion of those films in which the setting provides a visual analogy with the preoccupations of the story, but not at the expense of Shakespeare's language which is extended to show how some films use recent history as a setting, adding a further layer of meaning to the story from the cultural resonances associated with that historical past. These films also rely on an assumption that Shakespeare is so well-known as to form a distinctive, easily recognized brand in the cinema marketplace. Thus, his work can be reimagined in completely different genres such as the teenpic. In considering the latter films the reader will be invited to reflect upon wider issues relevant to the study of Shakespeare on film, principally how, and if, these adaptations of the plays can be recognised as part of the extended canon of Shakespeare in performance.

Transgressive both in its narrative and in its filmmaking, Trouble Every Day (2001) envisions the monster inside, unspeakable urges and an overwhelming need for complete incorporation. A plant discovered in the South American jungle produces in its test subjects a terrible, unnatural and uncontrollable hunger. Vicious, all-consuming desire begets excessive violence and a turn to cannibalism, which situates Trouble Every Day into a tradition of challenging cinema, a film maudit that pushes the boundaries of what can be shown on screen. But while it is certainly an unflinching film, it is deserving of reassessment as part of Clare Denis’ filmography as well as a broader cinematic lineage. Focusing on close textual analysis, this book delves into the surfeit of visual, literary, and non-fiction references that shape Trouble Every Day while thwarting attempts to firmly situate it. It considers its place in a lineage of films that push the boundary of taste and representation, aligned as much with Un Chien andalou (1929) as the New French Extremity. It also considers the film’s relationship to such sub-genres as classic monster movies, video nasties, mad science, gothic, vampire, body horror, and Italo-exploitation cannibal films, and directors such as Abel Ferrara, Brian de Palma, Jean Renoir and Jacques Tourneau. Drawing on a range of disciplines, including art, philosophy and phenomenology, this study explores how Trouble Every Day elicits a visceral response to a cinematic experience that beguiles and violates.