Merchants of Menace The Business of Horror Cinema

Even though horror has been a key component of media output for almost a century, the genre's industrial character remains under explored and poorly understood. Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema responds to a major void in film history by shedding much-needed new light on the economic dimensions of one of the world's most enduring audiovisual forms. Given horror cuts across budgetary categories, industry sectors, national film cultures, and media, Merchants of Menace also promises to expand understandings of the economics of cinema generally. Covering 1930-present, this groundbreaking collection boasts fourteen original chapters from world-leading experts taking as their focus such diverse topics as early zombie pictures, post-WWII chillers, Civil Rights-Era marketing, Hollywood literary adaptations, Australian exploitation, "torture-porn" Auteurs, and twenty-first-century remakes.

Richard Nowell, currently lecturing in Prague, has taught for the University of Miami, US, University of Salford, UK, University of East Anglia, UK, and University of Heidelberg, Germany. He has essays published or forthcoming in, among others, the Journal of Film and Video, Cinema Journal, Post Script, and the New Review of Film and Television Studies, and he is currently guest editing a special English-language edition of the Czech Replublic's leading film studies journal, Iluminace, on the subject of genre and the movie business.

Introduction: There's Gold in them there Chills - Richard Nowell (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic) Section One: Production Logic, Strategies, and Trends
Chapter 1. Vicious Cycles: The Industrial Development of the 1940s Horror Film - Mark Jancovich (University of East Anglia, UK)
Chapter 2. The Undead of Hollywood and Poverty Row: The Economics of Innovation, Differentiation, and Hybridity in Zombie Film Production, 1932-46 - Todd Platts (University of Missouri, US)
Chapter 3. By the Book: Horror Cinema and 1970s American Horror Literature - Peter Hutchings (Northumbria University, UK)
Chapter 4. 'Cannibalizing the Past?': Horror Remakes in the New Hollywood - Kevin Heffernan (Southern Methodist University, US)
Section Two: Delivery, Packaging, and Branding
Chapter 5. Monster Factory: International Dynamics of the Australian Horror Movie Industry - Mark David Ryan (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
Chapter 6. 'Eight Films to Die For': After Dark Films, Horrorfest, and Contemporary Horror Branding - Gareth James (Independent Scholar)
Chapter 7. 42nd Street Forever?: Nostalgia, Retrosploitation, and the Remediation of Grindhouse Movie Trailers - David Church (Indiana University, US)
Chapter 8. Hammer Time?: The Neo-nostalgic Branding of Hammer Horror in the Twenty-first Century - Matt Hills (Cardiff University, UK)
Section Three: Human Resources and Public Personae
Chapter 9. Terror on 42nd Street: Arthur Mayer, the Rialto Theatre, and the Business (and Politics) of Horror in Interwar New York City - Nathaniel Brennan (New York University, US)
Chapter 10. 'A Kind of Bacall Quality': Jamie Lee Curtis, Stardom, and Gentrifying Non-Hollywood Horror - Richard Nowell (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)
Chapter 11. Flogging Female Authorship: Commodity Feminism in The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) and Jennifer's Body (2009) - April Miller (University of Northern Colorado, US)
Chapter 12. Auteurs of Commerce: The Business of Performing Horror Film Authorship - Joe Tompkins (University of Minnesota, US)
Section Four: Horror Commerce and Reception Cultures
Chapter 13. Atmosphere (from the Bottom Up) in Classic Horror Films - Robert Spadoni (Case Western Reserve University, US)
Chapter 14. 'Shock - A Film to be Shocked About': Psychiatric Interventions into the Business of 'Horror' after World War Two - Tim Snelson (University of East Anglia, UK)
Chapter 15. Strange Enjoyments: The Marketing and Reception of Horror in the Civil Rights Era Black Press - Mikel J. Gaines (College of William and Mary, US)
Chapter 16. Halloween (1978): The Marketing, Distribution, and Reception of a 'Cult Film in Reverse' - Kate Egan (Aberystwyth University, UK) & Jamie Sexton (Northumbria University, UK)