The first of its kind, this study examines the exemplars of hardcore horror--Fred Vogel's August Underground trilogy, Shane Ryan's Amateur Porn Star Killer series and Lucifer Valentine's "vomit gore" films. The author begins with a definition and critical overview of this marginalized subgenre before exploring its key aesthetic convention, the pursuit of realist horror. Production practices, exhibition and marketing strategies are discussed in an in-depth interview with filmmaker Shane Ryan. Audience reception is covered with a focus on fan interaction via the Internet.

"Examines the many trends and sub-genres that have contributed to horror cinema over the last fifteen years. 'The New Flesh'--over the course of an ongoing series of tomes, collectively and over time--is designed to provide a definitive reference guide to the seemingly bottomless pit of movies striving to keep the flames burning in recent times. . .'The New Flesh' embraces a selection of sub-genres, as well as covering a small number of those non-horror features that fans owe it to themselves to check out."--Back cover

"Fans of hardcore horror would fair well with this compendium" - Horrornews.net Beyond The Darkness is the first and only reference guide on the market to explore the most shocking, disturbing, and controversial films ever made. Along with plot synopsis, analysis, and background on the directors and actors, there are also details on censorship and the controversy sparked. The book also includes chapters on Spanish Horror under the Franco regime, the CAT III phenomenon, Mondo movies and shockumentaries, and an interview with legendary underground filmmaker, Nick Zedd. Everything from big budget mainstream films to arthouse oddities and obscurities and underground flicks are covered. In this book you're just as likely to read about despised filmmakers such as Andrey Iskanov, Fred Vogel, and Uwe Boll as you are such vital artists as Abel Ferrara, David Cronenberg, and Lars Von Trier. With more than 200 films covered it's a must-read for anyone interested in the darkside of cinema. "For fans of the horror genre this is a ***** Five star book" - Goodreads

In 11:59 AND COUNTING, Paul Counelis (Rue Morgue) talks to a host of horror hosts, delving into what makes them tick, insights into what its like to do what they do and how they stay relevant in today's media overloaded world. A fun and engrossing look at a rich, intriguing and spooky tradition and a must read for fans of horror movies and the men and women who introduce them.

The taste for horror is arguably as great today as it has ever been. Since the turn of the millennium, the horror genre has seen various developments emerging out of a range of contexts, from new industry paradigms and distribution practices to the advancement of subgenres that reflect new and evolving fears. New Blood builds upon preceding horror scholarship to offer a series of critical perspectives on the genre since the year 2000, presenting a collection of case studies on topics as diverse as the emergence of new critical categories (such as the contentiously named ‘prestige horror’), new subgenres (including ‘digital folk horror’ and ‘desktop horror’) and horror on-demand (‘Netflix horror’), and including analyses of key films such as The Witch and Raw and TV shows like Stranger Things and Channel Zero. Never losing sight of the horror genre’s ongoing political economy, New Blood is an exciting contribution to film and horror scholarship that will prove to be an essential addition to the shelves of researchers, students and fans alike.

An introduction to the horror film genre.

This book focuses on how the abject spectacle of the ‘monstrous feminine’ has been reimagined by recent and contemporary screen horrors focused on the desires and subjectivities of female monsters who, as anti-heroic protagonists of revisionist and reflexive texts, exemplify gendered possibility in altered cultures of 21st century screen production and reception. As Barbara Creed notes in a recent interview, the patriarchal stereotype of horror that she named ‘the monstrous-feminine’ has, decades later, ‘embarked on a life of her own’. Focused on this altered and renewed form of female monstrosity, this study engages with an international array of recent and contemporary screen entertainments, from arthouse and indie horror films by emergent female auteurs, to the franchised products of multimedia conglomerates, to 'quality' television horror, to the social media-based creations of horror fans working as ‘pro-sumers’. In this way, the monograph in its organisation and scope maps the converged and rapidly changing environment of 21st century screen cultures in order to situate the monstrous female anti-hero as one of its distinctive products.

Horror’s longstanding reputation as a popular but culturally denigrated genre has been challenged by a new wave of films mixing arthouse minimalism with established genre conventions. Variously dubbed 'elevated horror' and 'post-horror,' films such as The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, It Comes at Night, Get Out, The Invitation, Hereditary, Midsommar, A Ghost Story, and mother! represent an emerging nexus of taste, politics, and style that has often earned outsized acclaim from critics and populist rejection by wider audiences. Post-Horror is the first full-length study of one of the most important and divisive movements in twenty-first-century horror cinema.

Beginning in the 1950s, "Euro Horror" movies materialized in astonishing numbers from Italy, Spain, and France and popped up in the US at rural drive-ins and urban grindhouse theaters such as those that once dotted New York's Times Square. Gorier, sexier, and stranger than most American horror films of the time, they were embraced by hardcore fans and denounced by critics as the worst kind of cinematic trash. In this volume, Olney explores some of the most popular genres of Euro Horror cinema—including giallo films, named for the yellow covers of Italian pulp fiction, the S&M horror film, and cannibal and zombie films—and develops a theory that explains their renewed appeal to audiences today.