Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear edited by Steffen Hantke with
essays by Stacey Abbott, Michael Arnzen, Blair Davis, David Scott
Diffrient, Richard J. Hand, James Kendrick, Claire Sisco King, K. A.
Laity, Jay McRoy, Lorena Russell, Philip L. Simpson, and Catherine
Zimmer In large part due to their emphasis on gore, screaming teenage
girls, and otherworldly elements, horror films have received little
critical attention from mainstream movie magazines and film-studies
journals. In Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear, essayists focus
primarily on how film technology, marketing, and distribution
effectively create the aesthetics and reception of horror films.
Previously unpublished, these essays cover several styles of horror
film-including the silent German Expressionist masterpiece Nosferatu,
the jittery mock-documentary The Blair Witch Project, and the gracefully
shot The Exorcist. Essayists question how lighting, editing techniques,
sound, and camera and film equipment affect how viewers perceive a
horror movie. Some essays focus on groundbreaking films such as Michael
Powell's Peeping Tom and Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby
Jane? Most concentrate on a specific technique and how it is used in a
variety of horror movies. Contributors explore how the evolution of
editing in horror films and more realistic special effects have changed
how these movies are made. Marketing and distribution are also explored
to ascertain how the genre has become part of the American mainstream.
Using a variety of critical approaches and concentrating on aspects of
horror film that have been overlooked, Horror Film: Creating and
Marketing Fear is a valuable, original addition to the growing body of
work on the genre. Steffen Hantke is a professor of English at Sogang
University in Seoul, South Korea.
