Benshoff - A Companion to the Horror Film

This edition first published 2014

2014 John Wiley and Sons, Inc

Registered Office

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial Offices

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of Harry M. Benshoff to be identified as the author(s) of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author(s) have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to the horror film / edited by Harry M. Benshoff.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-67260-0 (cloth)

1. Horror filmsHistory and criticism. I. Benshoff, Harry M., editor of compilation.

PN1995.9.H6C65 2014

791.436164dc23

2014007067

HB: 9780470672600

Cover image: Evil Dead, 2013, directed by Fede Alvarez. Filmdistrict / The Kobal Collection.

Cover design by Simon Levy Associates

1. Harry M. Benshoff is a Professor of Radio, Television, and Film at the University of North Texas. Among his books are Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film, Dark Shadows, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies, and Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America.
2. John Edgar Browning is a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow in the Writing and Communication Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a Ph.D. from the Department of Transnational Studies at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), where he was an Arthur A. Schomburg Fellow in the American Studies Program. Browning has contracted, co-/edited, or co-/written 12 academic and popular trade books and 40 articles, book chapters, and reviews on subjects that cluster around Cultural Studies, horror, the un-dead, Bram Stoker, and the Gothic. His books include Speaking of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology, with Caroline J. S. Picart (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), The Forgotten Writings of Bram Stoker (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), and two forthcoming volumes, The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Bram Stoker and a book on Dracula for Cornell University Press.
3. Chris Dumas is the author of Un-American Psycho: Brian De Palma and the Political Invisible. His work has appeared in Critical Inquiry, Cinema Journal, and Camera Obscura.
4. Steffen Hantke is author of Conspiracy and Paranoia in Contemporary Literature (1994) and editor of Caligari's Heirs: The German Cinema of Fear after 1945 (2007) and American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium (2010). He teaches at Sogang University in Seoul.
5. Adam Charles Hart received his PhD from the University of Chicago, where his dissertation was titled A Cinema of Wounded Bodies: Spectacular Abjection and the Spaces of Modern Horror.
6. Joan Hawkins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University Bloomington. She is the author of Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-garde (2000; University of Minnesota Press) and numerous articles on horror, experimental, and independent cinema.
7. Kevin Heffernan is Associate Professor in the Division of Film and Media Arts at Southern Methodist University. He is currently writing a book on contemporary East Asian cinema tentatively titled A Wind From the East and another book tentatively titled Porn in the USA: Hidden Empires of American Popular Culture.
8. Matt Hills is Professor of Film and TV studies at Aberystwyth University. He is the author of five books, including Fan Cultures (Routledge 2002), The Pleasures of Horror (Continuum 2005), and Triumph of a Time Lord (IB Tauris 2010). He is also the editor of New Dimensions of Doctor Who (IB Tauris, 2013). Matt has published widely on cult media and fandom, and his recent horror-related work includes contributions to the edited volumes Horror Zone (2010), and Horror After 9/11 (2012).
9. Dale Hudson teaches at New York University Abu Dhabi, specializing in transnational and postcolonial frameworks for understanding contemporary media. His work has appeared in Afterimage, American Studies, Cinema Journal, French Cultural Studies, Screen, and other journals and anthologies. With Patricia R. Zimmermann, he is coauthor of Thinking through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places (Palgrave, forthcoming in 2015).
10. Daniel Humphrey is Associate Professor of Film Studies and Women's and Gender Studies at Texas A&M University. He is the author of the book Queer Bergman: Gender, Sexuality and the European Art Film and articles published in Screen, GLQ, Post Script, and Criticism.
11. I.Q. Hunter is Reader in Film Studies at De Montfort University, Leicester. His publications include British Trash Cinema (BFI/Palgrave, 2013).
12. Peter Hutchings is Professor of Film Studies at Northumbria University. He is the author of Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film, Terence Fisher, The British Film Guide to Dracula, The Horror Film, and The Historical Dictionary of Horror Cinema.
13. Mark Jancovich is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. His books include Rational Fears: American Horror in the 1950s (MUP, 1996) and Horror, The Film Reader (Routledge, 2001). He is currently writing a history of horror in the 1940s.
14. James Kendrick is an associate professor of Film & Digital Media at Baylor University. He is the author of