Euro Horror: Classic European Horror Cinema in Contemporary American Culture

280 Pages·2013·2.41 MB·English

by  Ian Olney

Euro Horror
New Directions in National Cinemas
Jacqueline Reich, editor
EUro Horror
Classic European Horror Cinema in
Contemporary American Culture
ian olney
Indiana University Press
Bloomington & Indianapolis
This book is a publication of Manufactured in the
United States of America
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street Library of Congress
Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA Cataloging-in-Publication Data
iupress.indiana.edu Olney, Ian.
Euro horror : classic European
Telephone orders 800-842-6796 horror cinema in contemporary
Fax orders 812-855-7931 American culture / Ian Olney.
p. cm. – (New directions
© 2013 by Alexander Ian Olney in national cinemas)
Includes bibliographical
All rights reserved references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00648-6 (cl : alk.
No part of this book may be reproduced paper) – ISBN 978-0-253-00652-3 (pb :
or utilized in any form or by any means, alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-253-00658-5
electronic or mechanical, including (eb) 1. Horror films – Europe – History
photocopying and recording, or by and criticism. 2. Motion picture
any information storage and retrieval audiences – United States. I. Title.
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For Jill – love always
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You had been set adrift in a world of European exploitation
movies, unstable mixtures of poetry and gothic melodrama
and outright pornography – Belgian vampires, Italian
cannibals, Spanish sex murderers, hooded inquisitors
from Portugal – and now there was no easy way out.
Geoffrey O’Brien, The Phantom Empire
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ContEnts
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
Note on Film Titles xix
Part 1 Toward a Performative Theory of
Euro Horror Cinema
1 Academic Hot Spots and Blind Spots:
Horror Film Studies and Euro Horror Cinema 3
2 Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control:
The Academic Case against Euro
Horror Cinema 23
3 Playing Dead, Take One:
Euro Horror Film Production 46
4 Playing Dead, Take Two:
Euro Horror Film Reception 61
5 Return of the Repressed: Euro Horror Cinema
in Contemporary American Culture 83