Table Of ContentHORROR, THE FILM READER
Horror, The Film Reader brings together key articles to provide a comprehensive resource for stu-
dents of horror cinema. Mark Jancovichs introduction traces the development of horror from The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to The Blair Witch Project, and outlines the main critical debates. Combining
classic and recent articles, each section explores a central issue of horror film, and features an edi-
tors introduction outlining the context of debates. Sections include:
. Theorizing horror traces attempts to identify the defining features of the genre and
account for the enduring appeal of horror films
. Gender, sexuality and the horror film debates masculinity and femininity in horror films,
focusing on female victims and heroes, issues of the gaze and the monstrous, and queer rea-
dings
. Producing horrors looks at the contexts in which films are made, from James Whales
Frankenstein to the Hammer studio, tracing horrors relationship to both low culture and avant-
garde cinema
. Consuming fears considers the reception of horror, studying the marketing of classic hor-
ror, noting the critical reception of The Silence of the Lambs, the exhibition of Psycho and the
ethnography of female horror fans
Contributors Harry M. Benshoff, Rhona Berenstein, Noël Carroll, Brigid Cherry, Carol J. Clover,
Barbara Creed, Paul OFlinn, Joan Hawkins, Peter Hutchings, Mark Jancovich, Andrew Tudor, Linda
Williams, and Robin Wood.
Mark Jancovich is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Nottingham.
In Focus: Routledge Film Readers
Series Editors: Steven Cohan (Syracuse University) and Ina Rae Hark (University of South
Carolina)
The In Focus series of readers is a comprehensive resource for students on film and cinema stud-
ies courses. The series explores the innovations of film studies while highlighting the vital connec-
tion of debates to other academic fields and to studies of other media. The readers bring together
key articles on a major topic in film studies, from marketing to Hollywood comedy, identifying the
central issues, exploring how and why scholars have approached it in specific ways, and tracing
continuities of thought among scholars. Each reader opens with an introductory essay setting the
debates in their academic context, explaining the topics historical and theoretical importance, and
surveying and critiquing its development in film studies.
Exhibition, The Film Reader
Edited by Ina Rae Hark
Hollywood Musicals, The Film Reader
Edited by Steven Cohan
Horror, The Film Reader
Edited by Mark Jancovich
Marketing, The Film Reader
Edited by Justin Wyatt
Forthcoming titles:
Experimental Cinema, The Film Reader
Edited by Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
Hollywood Comedians, The Film Reader
Edited by Frank Krutnik
Music, The Film Reader
Edited by Kay Dickinson
Reception, The Film Reader
Edited by Barbara Klinger
Stars, The Film Reader
Edited by Marcia Landy and Lucy Fischer
HORROR, THE FILM READER
Edited by Mark Jancovich
London and New York
First published 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
© 2002 Mark Jancovich for selection and editorial matter; individual chapters © their authors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photo-
copying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Horror, the film reader/edited by Mark Jancovich.
p. cm. (In focusRoutledge film readers)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Horror filmsHistory and criticism. I. Jancovich, Mark. II. Series.
PN1995.9.H6 H75 2002
791.4326164dc21 2001048569
ISBN 0-203-20484-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-24494-X (OEB Format)
ISBN 0415235618 (hbk)
ISBN 0415235626 (pbk)
Contents
Acknowledgements
General Introduction
PART ONE:
THEORIZING HORROR
Introduction
1. Robin Wood, The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s
2. Noël Carroll, Why Horror?
3. Andrew Tudor, Why Horror? The Peculiar Pleasures of a Popular Genre
PART TWO:
GENDER, SEXUALITY AND THE HORROR FILM
Introduction
4. Linda Williams, When the Woman Looks
5. Barbara Creed, Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection
6. Carol J. Clover, Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film
7. Harry M. Benshoff, The Monster and the Homosexual
PART THREE:
PRODUCING HORRORS
Introduction
8. Paul OFlinn, Production and Reproduction: The Case of Frankenstein
9. Peter Hutchings, The Problem of British Horror
10. Joan Hawkins, Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art: The Place of European Art
Films in American Low Culture
PART FOUR:
CONSUMING FEARS
Introduction
11. Rhona Berenstein, Horror for Sale: The Marketing and Reception of Classic Horror
Cinema
12. Mark Jancovich, Genre and the Audience: Genre Classifications and Cultural
Distinctions in the Mediation of The Silence of the Lambs
13. Linda Williams, Learning to Scream
14. Brigid Cherry, Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female Viewers of the Horror Film
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
1. Robin Wood, The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s, from Hollywood from Vietnam
to Reagan (New York, Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 7080. © 1986 Columbia University
Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
2. Noël Carroll, Why Horror?, from The Philosophy of Horror Or Paradoxes of the Heart
(New York, Routledge Inc., 1990), pp. 15895. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis
Ltd/Routledge, Inc., http://www.routledge-ny.com.
3. Andrew Tudor, Why Horror? The Peculiar Pleasures of a Popular Genre, from Cultural
Studies 11 (3) (1997) (Taylor & Francis Ltd, 1997), pp. 43363. Reprinted by permission of Taylor &
Francis Ltd.
4. Linda Williams, When the Woman Looks, from Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp
and Linda Williams, eds, Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism Los Angeles, American Film
Institute), pp. 8399.
5. Barbara Creed, Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection, from
Screen 27 (1) JanuaryFebruary (1986), pp. 4454. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University
Press.
6. Carol J. Clover, Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film, from Representations 20
(Fall 1987), pp. 20528. © 1987 The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permis-
sion.
7. Harry M. Benshoff, Introduction: The Monster and the Homosexual, from Monsters in the
Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 128.
Reprinted by permission of Manchester University Press.
8. Paul OFlinn, Production and Reproduction: The Case of Frankenstein, from Literature
and History (2) (Autumn 1983), pp. 194213. Reprinted by permission of Literature and History.
9. Peter Hutchings, The Problem of British Horror, from Hammer and Beyond: The British
Horror Film (Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 1123. Reprinted by permission of
Manchester University Press.
10. Joan Hawkins, Sleaze Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art: The Place of European Art
Films in American Low Culture, from Film Quarterly 53 (2) (Winter 19992000), pp. 1429. © 2000
The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission.
11. Rhona Berenstein, Horror for Sale: The Marketing and Reception of Classic Horror
Cinema, from Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender, Sexuality and Spectatorship in Classic
Horror Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). pp. 6077.
12. Mark Jancovich, Genre and the Audience: Genre Classifications and Cultural
Distinctions in the Mediation of The Silence of the Lambs, from Melvyn Stokes and Richard
Maltby, eds., Hollywood Spectatorship: Changing Perceptions of Cinema Audiences (London, BFI
Publishing, 2001), pp. 3345. Reprinted by permission of BFI Publishing.
13. Linda Williams, Learning to Scream, from Sight and Sound 15, xxx (1995), pp. 1417. ©
Sight and Sound /The British Film Institute.
14. Brigid Cherry, Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female Viewers of the Horror Film, from
Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby, eds, Identifying Hollywoods Audiences (London, BFI
Publishing, 1999), pp. 187203. Reprinted by permission of BFI Publishing.
Horror, The Film Reader
General Introduction
In recent years, it could be argued, the horror film has taken over from the western as the genre
that is most written about by genre critics. In many of these accounts, the horror genre is claimed
to be interesting because of its supposedly marginal, and hence subversive, status as a disrep-
utable form of popular culture. While this current academic interest suggests that the genre no
longer has such a marginal status, if indeed it ever had one, the importance of horror goes far
beyond this current intellectual fad. Like pornography, not only is the horror genre the object of con-
siderable aesthetic criticism, but it is frequently the target of moral panics and calls for censorship.
In other words, the horror film raises questions of cultural analysis as well as cultural policy.
However, while most people use generic categories, and refer to films as westerns, musicals,
romantic comedies or science-fiction movies, the precise meanings of these terms are not always
clear. Certainly such uses try to establish a connection between different films, but the nature of that
connection is usually implicit rather than explicit. As a result, the history of writing on the horror
genre has been dominated by two key questions. First, there is the question of what one might
mean by terms such as horror, and this usually becomes a question of how one defines the horror
genre and so identifies its essential features. This first question also presupposes a second and
more fundamental question: what is a film genre, or more properly, what should be meant by the
term genre when it is used in film studies? Even those writings on horror that have not addressed
these questions directly are almost invariably if not inevitably structured by their definitions of the
term genre in general and the horror genre in particular.
More recently, as we shall see, theorists of genre have come to argue that the study of genre should
not be concerned with the search for the essential or defining features of a genre, and have pro-
posed alternative ways of thinking about genre. These theorists rightly claim that an individual genre
has less to do with a group of artefacts than with a discourse a loose evolving system of arguments
and readings, helping to shape commercial strategies and aesthetic ideologies (Naremore, 19956:
14). For James Naremore, genres should not be conceived of as objects that are composed of a
series of texts that share similar features; rather it is the process of classification itself which cre-
ates a relationship of homogeneity, filiation, authentication of some texts by use of others (p. 14).
Indeed, as Naremore has demonstrated, the films associated with a particular genre can change
within different contexts. During the 1960s and early 1970s, The Innocents (1961), Repulsion
(1965) and even Satyricon (1969) were all discussed as central moments in the history of horror,
although more recent accounts rarely even make mention of them. Alternatively, while German
expressionist classics such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) or Nosferatu (1922) were rarely
seen as horror films in their own day, they are now frequently cited as seminal examples of the
genre.
