Monstrous Adaptations Generic and Thematic Mutations in Horror Film

by Hand, Richard J.; McRoy, Jay

• ISBN13: 9780719076039
• ISBN10: 071907603X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-08-01
• Publisher: MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Summary

The fifteen groundbreaking essays contained in this book address the concept of adaptation in relation to horror cinema. Adaptation is not only a key cultural practice and strategy for filmmakers, but it is also a theme of major importance within horror cinema as a whole. Horror film's history is full of adaptations that have drawn from fiction or folklore, or that have assumed the shape of remakes of pre-existing films. The horror genre itself however, also abounds with its own myriad transformations and transmutations.

Author Biography

Richard J. Hand is Reader in Theatre and Media at the University of Glamorgan in Wales. Jay McRoy is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vii
List of contributors	p. ix
Monstrous adaptations: an introduction	p. 1
From page to scream: literary adaptation and horror cinema
Paradigms of metamorphosis and transmutation: Thomas Edison's Frankenstein and John Barrymore's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde	p. 9
Painting the life out of her: aesthetic integration and disintegration in Jean Epstein's La Chute de la maison Usher	p. 20
The unfilmable? H. P. Lovecraft and the cinema	p. 35
Imperfect geometry: identity and culture in Clive Barker's 'The Forbidden' and Bernard Rose's Candyman	p. 48
Re-imaginings and re-articulations: thematic adaptation in contemporary horror cinema
Out from the realist underground; or, the Baron of Blood visits Cannes: recursive and self-reflexive patterns in David Cronenberg's Videodrome and eXistenZ	p. 67
'These children that you spit on': horror and generic hybridity	p. 82
'Our reaction was only human': monstrous becomings in Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers	p. 95
From avant-garde to exploitation: cinematic experiments as monstrous adaptation
Adapting the occult: horror and the avant-garde in the cinema of Ken Jacobs	p. 111
The Gorgon: adapting classical myth as Gothic romance	p. 127
Marion Crane dies twice	p. 140
Displacements and border crossings: horror cinema and transcultural adaptation
Adapting legends: urban legends and their adaptation in horror cinema	p. 157
Fulcanelli as a vampiric Frankenstein and Jesus as his vampiric monster: the Frankenstein and Dracula myths in Guillermo del Toro's Cronos	p. 172
Gothic horrors, family secrets and the patriarchal imperative: the early horror films of Mario Bava	p. 181
'In the church of the poison mind': adapting the metaphor of psychopathology to look back at the mad, monstrous 80s	p. 192
'Everyone will suffer': national identity and the spirit of subaltern vengeance in Nakata Hideo's Ringu and Gore Verbinski's The Ring	p. 209
Notes	p. 229
Bibliography	p. 238
Index	p. 254
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