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Cruising
In the fading atmosphere of the New Hollywood era, William Friedkin – the wunderkind director with an Academy Award for his cop drama, The French Connection (1971) who then scored an even bigger success with The Exorcist (1973) – began work on what would prove to be the most controversial film of his career: Cruising (1980). In the process he established a template for a sub-genre, the serial killer thriller, that would thrive long after his film had left theatres, having caused widespread offence among the very audience he'd hoped to appeal to, via a campaign mobilised by the counter-culture press. As such, Cruising can be read as a bitter farewell to the seventies and its cinema and industry. This Devil's Advocate dives deep into the phenomenon that is Cruising, examining its creative context and its protagonists, as well as examining its ongoing popularity as it turns 40 in 2020.
The Wicker Man
Many fans of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) may know that this classic is considered a fine sample of folk horror. Few will consider that it’s also a prime example of holiday horror. Holiday horror draws its energy from the featured festive day, here May Day. Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward), a “Christian copper,” is lured to the remote Scottish island Summerisle where, hidden from the eyes of all, a thriving Celtic, pagan religion holds sway. His arrival at the start of the May Day celebration is no accident. The clash between religions, fought on the landscape of the holiday, drives the story to its famous conclusion. In this Devil’s Advocate, Steve A. Wiggins delineate...
On Everyone’s Lips
Mund, Lippen, Zunge und Zähne – Sprache, Schmerz und Schrei – Essen, Schlingen, Speien und Spucken – Lust und Leidenschaft: Die Mundhöhle ist im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes eine äußerst reizvolle Körperzone. Ihrer Erkundung haben sich dabei nicht nur Wissenschaft und Medizin gewidmet, Gleiches gilt auch für die Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte – von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Diesen breit gefächerten motivgeschichtlichen Pfad verfolgt das Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg im Herbst 2020 erstmals in einer umfassenden Ausstellung rund um den Mund. Der begleitende Bildband bietet mit seinen anschaulichen Essays nicht nur inhaltliche Vertiefungsebenen an, sondern reicht weit über die Ausstellung hinaus. Hier wird der Mund mit seinen Fähigkeiten auch im Bereich der Filmgeschichte, Ethnologie, Literaturwissenschaften und Architektur unter die Lupe genommen.
Nazisploitation!
A brilliant line-up of international contributors examine the implications of the portrayals of Nazis in low-brow culture and that culture's re-emergence today
Between the Forest and the Road
Audiences for contemporary German film and television are becoming increasingly transnational, and depictions of German cultural history are moving beyond the typical post-war focus on Germany’s problematic past. Entertaining German Culture explores this radical shift, building on recent research into transnational culture to argue that a new process of internal and external cultural reabsorption is taking place through areas of mutually assimilating cultural exchange such as streaming services, an increasingly international film market, and the import and export of Anglo-American media formats.
Gothic Cinema
Gothic Cinema closes a gap in German-language film discourse: for the first time, the volume sheds light on a hitherto little-discussed film context. It considers Gothic Cinema as a form of unofficial historiography that allows a look not only at the history of film and its technique, but also at moral concepts, gender relations, collective fears or aesthetic currents. A delimitation and definition of the term and the central elements of the Gothic are followed by a comprehensive historical overview from 1896 to the present day. Three in-depth analyses of individual post-2015 gothic films and television series round out the review. On the one hand, the examples examined are representative in terms of typical elements, motifs or topoi, and on the other hand, they exhibit peculiarities and breaks that prove fruitful for a cultural and media studies investigation.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
There is something weird and eerie going on in the oneiric Iranian ghost-town Bad City. A mysterious female vampire, clad in a long-black veil, imbued with occult and erotic power, has newly arrived in town and is summarily dispensing with its unsavory characters. Through a chance encounter in a night of luminal darkness, an eternally dark romance begins – baptized in love’s blood. Shot in dazzling anamorphic black and white cinematography and accompanied with an intoxicating and mesmeric soundtrack, Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut feature film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014), was an instant popular and critical success. Dubbed ‘the first Iranian vampire western’ the genre-bending film is a pastiche of genres such as vampire cinema, gothic and horror films, spaghetti westerns, graphic novels, and Iranian cinema; yet the film stands as a new vampire fairy-tale with a unique style all its own. The first full-length study dedicated to the film since its release, this book in the Devil’s Advocate series provides a unique approach to the film situated within three theoretical coordinates: the vampire genre, psychoanalytic (film) theory and German Idealism.
Cape Fear
Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear (1991) opens with a shot of water and climaxes on a raging river. Despite, or perhaps because of, the film’s great commercial success, critical analysis of the film typically does not delve beneath the surface of Scorsese’s first major box office hit. As it reaches its 30th anniversary, Cape Fear is now ripe for a full appraisal. The remake of J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 Cape Fear was originally conceived as a straightforward thriller intended for Steven Spielberg. Author Rob Daniel investigates the fascinating ways Scorsese’s style and preoccupations transform his version into a horror epic. The director’s love of fear cinema, his Catholicism and filmmaking techniques shift Cape Fear into terrifying psychological and psychosexual waters. The analysis also examines the influence of Gothic literature and fairy tales, plus how academic approaches to genre aid an understanding of the film.
I Walked With a Zombie
I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Val Lewton's second feature for RKO Radio Pictures, was described by critic Robin Wood as 'perhaps the most delicate poetic fantasy in the American Cinema.' Following immediately in the wake of the groundbreaking Cat People (1942), Zombie pioneered an even more radical narrative approach yet proved to be the critical and commercial equal of its predecessor, cementing the reputation of both Lewton and his director, Jacques Tourneur. Despite the lurid, studio-imposed title, I Walked with a Zombie is a subtle and ambiguous visual poem that advanced a daring condemnation of slavery and colonialism at a time when such themes were being actively suppressed by governm...
IT Chapters One and Two
Drawing on critical analysis of film, the horror genre, the Gothic, and Stephen King scholarship, this book considers Andy Muschietti’s IT Chapter One (2017) and IT Chapter Two (2019) on multiple levels: as film (both as individual films and through their interconnected narrative), as adaptation, and as a barometer of the horror film’s popularity among fans. Key points of consideration include the significance of the fictional town of Derry as a traditionally Gothic “bad place,” the role of 1980s nostalgia in these two films, the complex navigation of memory and trauma, gender representation, queer representation, and the return of the repressed. The terrifying figure of Pennywise th...
