Change is terrifying, and rapid change, within a small amount of time, is destabilizing to any culture. England, under the tutelage of Queen Victoria, witnessed precipitous change the likes of which it had not encountered in generations. Wholesale swaths of the economy and the social structure underwent complete recalibration, through the hands of economic progress, industrial innovation, scientific discovery, and social cohesiveness. Faced with such change, Britons had to redefine the concept of work, belief, and even what it meant to be English. Victorians relied on many methods to attempt to release the steam from the anxieties incurred through change, and one of those methods was the horror story of everyday existence during an age of transition. This book is a study of how authors Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë turned to horrifying representations of everyday reality to illustrate the psychological-traumatic terrors of an age of transition

An introduction to the horror film genre.

In sharp contrast to many 1960s science fiction films, with idealized views of space exploration, Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) terrified audiences, depicting a harrowing and doomed deep-space mission. The Alien films launched a new generation of horror set in the great unknown, inspiring filmmakers to take Earth-bound franchises like Leprechaun and Friday the 13th into space. This collection of new essays examines the space horror subgenre, with a focus on such films as Paul W.S. Anderson's Event Horizon, Duncan Jones' Moon, Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires and John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars. Contributors discuss how filmmakers explored the concepts of the final girl/survivor, the uncanny valley, the isolationism of space travel, religion and supernatural phenomena.

From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. This book offers a comprehensive chronological survey of Black horror from the 1890s to present day. In this second edition, Robin R. Means Coleman expands upon the history of notable characterizations of Blackness in horror cinema, with new chapters spanning the 1960s, 2000s, and 2010s to the present, and examines key levels of Black participation on screen and behind the camera. The book addresses a full range of Black horror films, including mainstream Hollywood fare, art-house films, Blaxploitation films, and U.S. hip-hop culture-inspired Nollywood films. This new edition also explores the resurgence of the Black horror genre in the last decade, examining the success of Jordan Peele’s films Get Out (2017) and Us (2019), smaller independent films such as The House Invictus (2018), and Nia DaCosta’s sequel to Candyman (2021). Means Coleman argues that horror offers a unique representational space for Black people to challenge negative or racist portrayals, and to portray greater diversity within the concept of Blackness itself. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how fears and anxieties about race and race relations are made manifest, and often challenged, on the silver screen.

H. P. Lovecraft is a major writer of horror stories, in the genre of 'weird fiction'. This new edition brings together his core 'classic' fictions with a full contextual introduction, offering a balanced assessment of an influential cult author whose tales of metaphysical horror create a profound sense of dread and unease.

Horror is a universally popular, pervasive TV genre, with shows like True Blood, Being Human, The Walking Dead and American Horror Story making a bloody splash across our television screens. This complete, utterly accessible, sometimes scary new book is the definitive work on TV horror. It shows how this most adaptable of genres has continued to be a part of the broadcast landscape, unsettling audiences and pushing the boundaries of acceptability. The authors demonstrate how TV Horror continues to provoke and terrify audiences by bringing the monstrous and the supernatural into the home, whether through adaptations of Stephen King and classic horror novels, or by reworking the gothic and surrealism in Twin Peaks and Carnivale. They uncover horror in mainstream television from procedural dramas to children's television and, through close analysis of landmark TV auteurs including Rod Serling, Nigel Kneale, Dan Curtis and Stephen Moffat, together with case studies of such shows as Dark Shadows, Dexter, Pushing Daisies, Torchwood, and Supernatural, they explore its evolution on television. This book is a must-have for those studying TV Genre as well as for anyone with a taste for the gruesome and the macabre.

Faith horror refers to a significant outcropping of mid-1960s and 1970s films and adaptative novels that depict non-Christian communities of evil doers and their activities. Before this period, the classical horror villain was ultimately ineffectual. The demonic monster was an isolated, lone individual easily vanquished by an altruistic Christian protagonist. Alternatively, the villain in faith horror is organized into identity-affirming, likeminded religious congregations that successfully overcome protagonists. Faith horror was a cinematic trend that depicted Satanism, witchcraft and paganism during a cultural deliberation over the "Death of God," which debated the legitimacy of alternative spiritualities and the value of alliance to any faith at all. Covering popular works like Rosemary's Baby, The Wicker Man and The Omen, this book regards these films and their literary sources in relation to this historical moment, providing new ways of understanding both the period and the faith horror movement more generally.

Fun and fright have long been partners in the cinema, dating back to the silent film era and progressing to the Scary Movie franchise and other recent releases. This guide takes a comprehensive look at the comedy-horror movie genre, from the earliest stabs at melding horror and hilarity during the nascent days of silent film, to its full-fledged development with The Bat in 1926, to the Abbott and Costello films pitting the comedy duo against Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy and other Universal Studio monsters, continuing to such recent cult hits as Shaun of the Dead and Black Sheep. Selected short films such as Tim Burton's Frankenweenie are also covered. Photos and promotional posters, interviews with actors and a filmography are included.

From the Golden Age of the 1940s, through the Silver Age of the '60s, up until the early '80s--the end of the Bronze Age. Included are the earliest series, like American Comics Group's Adventures into the Unknown and Prize Comics' Frankenstein, and the controversial and gory comics of the '40s, such as EC's infamous and influential Tales from the Crypt. The resurgence of monster-horror titles during the '60s is explored, along with the return of horror anthologies like Dell Comics' Ghost Stories and Charlton's Ghostly Tales from the Haunted House. The explosion of horror titles following the relaxation of the comics code in the '70s is fully documented with chapters on Marvel's prodigious output--The Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night and others--DC's anthologies--Witching Hour and Ghosts--and titles such as Swamp Thing, as well as the notable contributions of firms like Gold Key and Atlas. This book examines how horror comics exploited everyday terrors, and often reflected societal attitudes toward women and people who were different.

A collection of 10 books with gripping stories of horror, terror, ghosts, supernatural elements, and all things scary! Each book in this collection compiles together some of the best and spookiest stories that keep haunting the readers long after they have kept the book aside. The stories are classic, timeless and hair-raising, and set in dark streets and haunted houses. The weird tales of ghosts, skeletons and dark powers will surely make the readers sit up and look around. The books include horror stories written by famous authors such as Charles Dickens, M.R. James, Ambrose Bierce, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, Guy de Maupassant, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe and several others.