Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror

by Jason Zinoman

Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but at the same time that Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorcese were producing their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film. Shock Value tells the unlikely story of how directors like Wes Craven, Roman Polanski, and John Carpenter revolutionized the genre in the 1970s, plumbing their deepest anxieties to bring a gritty realism and political edge to their craft. From Rosemary’s Baby to Halloween, the films they unleashed on the world created a template for horror that has been relentlessly imitated but rarely matched. Based on unprecedented access to the genre’s major players, this is an enormously entertaining account of a hugely influential golden age in American film.

Genres: Horror, Nonfiction, Film, History, Media Tie In, Pop Culture, Audiobook

296 pages, Paperback

First published July 7, 2011

Reviews

[Wil Wheaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fantastic examination of the people and movies that created horror as we know it. If you want to understand why we had so many slasher films in the 80s, or why horror seemed to be completely subverted into weird satire that wasn't particularly scary in the 90s, you should read this book.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Carpenter's Halloween has without question been one of the most influential films of my life. In particular, I think a great deal of my neurotic development over the past twenty-five years has been aptly summarized by the scene wherein Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) breathes an ill-advised sigh of relief against a bedroom door jamb after she has finally 'defeated' her tormentor Michael Myers. Despite being chased relentlessly by this knife-wielding psychopath in a modified William Shatner mask and navy blue coveralls, Laurie turns her back to his motionless body and attempts to recuperate, in whatever provisional way. Her carelessness is, of course, shockingly idiotic, and we all know that lapses in vigilance rarely go unpunished in horror films. Michael Myers, the embodiment of an evil both indefatigable and indefinable, seizes the opportunity. He sits up—abruptly, rigidly, but with no real urgency. It's his doddering pace and listless sadism that makes him all the more terrifying. If we can in fact even call it 'sadism.' Does he enjoy his murders—or is he merely instinctual, programmatic? Do his acts correspond to any scale of morality whatsoever? If not, then why murder as opposed to any other 'hobby'? This limitless uncertainty underscores the terror. When we begin to understand the mechanisms of terror, its effect is proportionally diminished.



This scene is essentially a crib sheet for my paranoia and pervasive dread. We face ambiguous antagonism throughout all our lives. Whether we interpret it as the function of nature and chance or the active malevolence of other humans (or even devils and evil spirits) is of less relevance than finding a way to manage it. At any moment, we might conceivably slump into a complacent sigh of relief, unaware that agents of misfortune or cruelty are awakening just over our shoulders. Disease, loss, war, injury, loneliness, death, et al. Michael Myers comprises them all as a skulking assailant. He is an interpretation or a metaphor: Suffering as active agency.

Welcome to New Horror. Paralleling New Hollywood, which enjoyed its apotheosis in the 1970s, New Horror was a reaction to the dusty, disreputable conventions of the monster movies of the 1950s and 1960s. In Shock Value, Jason Zinoman does an admirable job in putting together a well-researched, entertaining, and informative survey of the motivations and modus operandi of New Horror. The films he addresses (to varying degrees) are George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets, John Carpenter’s Dark Star and Halloween, Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Brian De Palma’s Carrie, and Ridley Scott’s Alien. (He also touches briefly on Black Christmas, Jaws, The Shining, and others.) Almost all of these films are near and dear to my heart, except for Last House on the Left for reasons discussed here and Dark Star, which I haven’t seen.

Zinoman takes horror seriously, but he isn’t stuffy, humorless, or boring, to be sure. His is a film criticism that’s approachable, makes sense, and also considers horror as a function of the society we live in. He analyzes the remarkable shift from the assembly line schlock of the Eisenhower era to a more confrontational, visceral, and auteur-driven horror of the late 1960s and 1970s by addressing each film in its own right but also the films as they influence each other in the community of horror directors, writers, and fans. It’s also fascinating to track a disreputable genre as it graduates from B-status (and worse) to Oscar-nominated prestige with actors and directors who aren’t just ‘slumming it’ anymore and approach horror as a real artistic choice. (Stanley Kubrick, William Friedkin, Jack Nicholson, Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, and Roman Polanski are just a few participants who signal horror’s rising status.)

[brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

best to worst

brian depalma
dressed to kill
carrie
blow out
femme fatale
snake eyes
hi mom!
body double
scarface
the fury
phantom of the paradise
greetings
sisters
carlito's way
raising cain
mission impossible
untouchables
wise guys
casualties of war
obsession
bonfire of the vanities
mission to mars
black dahlia

roman polanski
chinatown
bitter moon
rosemary's baby
death and the maiden
the tenant
repulsion
knife in the water
cul-de-sac
frantic
macbeth
the ghost writer
the pianist
tess
the ninth gate

david cronenberg
dead ringers
the fly
the brood
videodrome
crash
shivers
rabid
scanners
the dead zone
m butterfly
naked lunch
existenz
eastern promises
history of violence
spider

john carpenter
the thing
halloween
starman
they live
ghosts of mars
escape from NY
christine
assault on precinct 13
in the mouth of madness
big trouble in little china
vampires
the fog
escape from LA
village of the damned
prince of darkness
memoirs of an invisible man
pro-life

tobe hooper
texas chainsaw massacre
poltergeist
invaders from mars
texas chainsaw massacre 2
life force

william friedkin
the exorcist
to live and die in LA
the french connection
cruising
the hunted
bug
jade
blue chips

george romero
creepshow
night of the living dead
dawn of the dead
land of the dead
day of the dead
diary of the dead
the dark half

wes craven
nightmare on elm street
scream
red eye
scream 2
the hills have eyes
new nightmare
swamp thing
shocker
the serpent and the rainbow
last house on the left
scream 3
music of the heart
deadly friend
my soul to take
cursed
the people under the stairs
vampire in brooklyn

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shock Value is a book that got me feeling nostalgic for my teenage years, when I first began broadening my taste in horror beyond mainstream movies like "Scream" and "Urban Legend" and into the seedier, rawer realm of their forbears. I remember first finding the earlier films of Craven and Hooper, and discovering the more obscure work of filmmakers like Dario Argento and Mario Bava by reading countless reviews in Slant Magazine, where the critics seemed to dislike most everything but reserved soft spots for the kind of schlock and exploitation that the Eberts and Siskels of the world tended to scoff at. Movies like "Last House on the Left", "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", and "Driller Killer" were in such bad taste, and I was all for it (still am).

Jason Zinoman's book isn't all about nostalgia for the pioneering work done by the standard-setters of the 1970s; it's also a critical reassessment of what Zinoman deems to be the golden age of horror movies. Shock Value offers fresh takes on the films and directors being covered. Dan O'Bannon (who I rather ignorantly knew only as the director of 1985's "Return of the Living Dead") emerges as a temperamental, tortured visionary. "Halloween" director John Carpenter -- the most talented of the crop of '70s horror masters -- is portrayed as a virtuoso douche. Tobe Hooper, perceptively yet unpretentiously directing "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", achieves greatness almost by accident. And Brian De Palma, too often derided as a Hitchcock wannabe, is recast as a deeply personal filmmaker whose voyeuristic protagonists are reflections of De Palma's own self.

Shock Value traces the journey of a genre from the dusty confines of Old Hollywood monster movies and cheese to a new frontier of revitalising violence and creativity with insight and passion. You get the sense that Zinoman really loves the movies he's writing about, which makes it an especially pleasurable read for devotees of the genre. It helps that Zinoman has a keen eye for the stories worth telling about this transitional period. There's the passing of the torch from William Castle to Roman Polanski in the making of "Rosemary's Baby"; the battle over the moral core of William Friedkin's adaptation of William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist ; the ways in which Brian De Palma's mood swings and directorial impulsiveness made "Carrie" such a departure from its source material, and so many more great factoids. Even when Zinoman lurches forward several decades, into a discussion of how active-duty soldiers responded to Eli Roth's "Hostel" (cathartic revulsion, mostly), the writing is so perceptive that you can forgive the diversion.

What I struggle to forgive is the suggestion that the horror movies of the 1980s somehow can't compete with their "New Horror" predecessors. As the author of The Shining , Stephen King is well within his rights to crow about how Kubrick bastardised his work, but a film writer who hails the innovations of "Halloween" and "The Exorcist" ought to know better. Then there's "The Hitcher", "The Fly", "The Thing", "A Nightmare on Elm Street": a list that rivals any from Zinoman's preferred era! But I digress.. This is a must-read for horror movie aficionados despite the futile attempt to segregate '70s innovation from '80s elaboration.

[Carla Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so good. The era of "New Horror" it covers goes from 1968 (with the demise of the studio system) to 1980 (the rise of special effects and endless horror sequels). Very interesting and full of new facts. The fact that I've seen the vast majority of the movies covered made it fun to read. (As far as the couple things I haven't seen, I will find a way to watch Dark Star and, despite liking Wes Craven, I just have no interest in seeing The Last House on the Left). I loved that the influence of Mario Bava is recognized.

[Brian Fagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite decade of horror films was the 80's, probably because that is when I got into horror, both written and on film. I rarely read horror these days, but I still enjoy horror movies, mostly older ones that I own or check out from the library. Every October for about the last 15 years my wife and I go through our favorite horror films in the evenings - The Shining, Halloween and Halloween 3 - Season of the Witch, Rosemary's Baby, Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Thing, 'Salem's Lot, The Silence of the Lambs. We also enjoy a couple that are horror with a wink to comedy and campiness - Thinner and The Phantom of the Paradise. Then there are some intense ones that I enjoy but my wife won't watch - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Funhouse and It.

In Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror Jason Zinoman discusses the decade of the 70's in horror, with a few examples just before and after that decade. The most important phrase in his title is "conquered Hollywood". Major film studios did not put much money or effort into horror after the very popular Universal horror films of the 30's and 40's: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Black Cat and The Wolfman. But when the public flocked to the films that Zinoman discusses in the 70's, Hollywood definitely took notice and got in on the action. Obviously the upside of that development was that we started receiving a steady stream of horror. One of the downsides was that independent filmmakers were largely outflanked, so that horror films tended to be more formulaic.

Zinoman uses 9 films of that era to make his point. Each film is reviewed in terms of its strengths, and is used to discuss one particular issue in the horror film "industry". Zinoman uses quotes from their directors, producers and actors. The films and their directors are:

Halloween, John Carpenter
Carrie, Brian De Palma
The Night of the Living Dead, George Romero
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Tobe Hooper
Dark Star, Dan O'Bannon
The Exorcist, William Friedkin
Last House on the Left, Wes Craven
Rosemary's Baby, Roman Polanski
Alien, Ridley Scott

There was a comment by director Wes Craven that I enjoyed:

"The first monster that the audience has to be scared of is the filmmaker. They have to feel in the presence of someone not confined by the normal rules of propriety and decency." I don't think that someone who doesn't agree with that statement can truly enjoy horror. On that subject, although Zinoman did broach the topics, I would have been interested to have seen a much larger discussion on misogyny, gore and gratuitous nudity in horror. I'm sure the latter has primarily to do with revenues, but all can still be important subjects for discussions of artistic and social merit / harm / artistic freedom / censorship, etc., etc.

Other interesting comments had to do with what changed when "New Horror" arrived:

Director John Landis: "The majority of (early) horror and sci-fi films were not badly written, badly acted, or badly made - until the monster shows up. And then it's some guy in a stupid monster suit. The monsters are stupid and the plot is smart. That changed in the seventies when the plots became stupid and the monsters smart."

Author Jason Zinoman: "The New Horror was darker than earlier movies. The gloomy ending became common. ... The central message of the New Horror is that there is no message. The world does not make sense. Evil exists, and there is nothing you can do about it."

[Bridget H · Rating 2 out of 5]

While only slightly more elucidating than perusing IMDb's trivia section, I did enjoy certain parts of Shock Value. The author clearly loves horror and his detailed accounts of behind the scenes negotiations and creative spats are entertaining. However Zinoman is wildly irregular in his approach. He melds history with theory but gravely does a disservice to the latter. For instance, he dismisses gendered readings of slasher films as "sex-obsessed" but occasionally points to Freud as an explanation for why certain things make us spook. Okay, dude. If you want to read a truly great book on horror check out Carol J. Clover's excellent Men, Women, and Chainsaws. The nicest thing I can say about Shock Value is that it made me want to reread Clover.

[Mike McPadden · Rating 2 out of 5]

The late 90s/early 2000s reeked of academics and pretentious media tastemakers attempting to glom on to yet another "bad kid" underworld (as they did with rock, punk, metal, zines, and anything and everything else) in the form of blank-brained boors chanting memorized blather about how, "THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is actually about the Vietnam war, man."

Go sit on a Black & Decker.

George Romero, most prominently, has forged a decades-long, NPR-blessed professional run out of claiming that he created DAWN OF THE DEAD with intentions beyond showing how awesome it would be if flesh-eating ghouls trashed everything inside a shopping mall.

I love DAWN OF THE DEAD. Romero is a charmer. But I don't now, nor have I ever, bought that con.

SHOCK VALUE author Jason Zinoman may or may not swallow it either, but the book comes off as his attempt to finally format all such nonsense into a handy checklist for the sort of gasbags who'd never actually watch horror movies to reference when befouling their surroundings by talking about horror movies.

If that was his intention: bullseye. And then I'd add another word that starts with the same five letters.

The nonsense about "New Horror" in the mold of EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS' historical re-education pollutes every page., and Zinoman's mission to force the existing high-culture narrative regarding 70s cinema into that boilerplate includes factual bone-ups (intentional or otherwise) on the order of claiming that in LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, lead villain Krug carves the word "LOVE" onto a victim's body.

He doesn't. He carves the word "Krug." But it would be so much heavier if he'd chosen "LOVE", man, so let's just report it as that.

In addition, Zinoman swiped John Waters' book title, and I guarantee he didn't even know he was doing it.

All that bloviated, reading the book itself ain't a half-terrible experience. It moves, it communicates interesting information (although clearly not 100% trustworthy), and it's not dry.

Faint praise, to be sure, but it's something to hold onto until the upcoming septic wave of tomes declaring, "SAW and HOSTEL are really about Halliburton and Guantanamo, man."

[Jill H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit that one of my guilty pleasures used to be horror films and when I saw this book at the library it interested me in that it explained how the Dracula/Frankenstein movies which were the horror movies of another era, morphed into the explicit gut wrenching films which began in the late 1960/70s. It all started with the basement budget "Night of the Living Dead" directed by George Romero. I remember the first time I saw it......at a midnight movie which was packed to the rafters and it scared the living hell out of me. Then came "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and film moved into a whole other era. Audiences wondered why the Dracula/Frankenstein era frightened them when they could now see men wielding chain saws hanging young girls on meat hooks or an innocent child whose head spun around 360 degrees while spewing green vomit. Young directors and screenwriters coming out of such schools as UCLA had different ideas about what frightened people and with the lifting of the Production Code, were able to show pretty much anything that would cause their audiences jump out of their seats or run from the theater. This is a history of those men, Tobe Hooper, George Romero, West Craven, and John Carpenter and the resistance of the studios to this new type of film (many had to be made independently). Once the studios found that these films were making big money, their attitudes changed dramatically. This is a great reference book for the film lover, even if you don't appreciate scary movies. I must add that I no longer watch this genre of film as I can't stomach the egregious violence.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

SHOCK VALUE is one of my favorite books published this year.

Zinoman details the move away from the goofy, safe horror films of the 50s and 60s to the mix of exploitation, confrontation, and art of the late 60s and 70s. Horror movies where the source of the horror is murky, or cannot be easily explained or rationalized away. Exhaustively researched, the main arc of the book’s argument/definition of the modern horror film are: Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, and Alien. Each film and their filmmakers are dissected and discussed within the framework of what was happening in horror and Hollywood at the time. While I sometimes disagreed with the artistic merit of some of these films, Zinoman does the reader the tremendous service of patiently outlining his hypothesis, his case as it were, then meticulously offering his reasons, evidence, etc, for the argument.

He also wisely leaves room for the reader to disagree. He never speaks down at the reader or authoritatively; he never pulls the don’t-look-behind-the-curtain Oz thing that too many non-fiction writers fall prey to. And the result is an extremely well-written, wildly informative, entertaining book; one that, for me, has put the origins of some of the movies and directors I don’t like (Wes Craven for one) in a new light.

[Baal Of · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given how much I love a lot of the horror movies covered in this book it was inevitable that I would like it, but this book went beyond my expectations. The thoughtfulness with which the author approached the subject hit the right tone for me, and I thought he did a good job contrasting the artistic intentions of the film makers against the desires to just make something cool. As is often the case, I was struck by just how much contingency affected the outcomes of many of the films I love, and how in retrospect it seems amazing that some of these films even exist. I still think The Exorcist is overrated, and not at all scary, but it was interesting getting some background on just why it had the impact that it did. Of all the films discussed, the one mentioned the most that I still haven't seen is The Last House On The Left; I should probably remedy that situation.

Addendum:
Jokes on me, turns out I had already seen The Last House On The Left. It's a good thing I have external memory storage, although if I ever lose my Netflix I'm going to be screwed.

[Luke McCarthy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too light on information/meaningful analysis to be revelatory to anyone who's actually interested in 1970's New Horror, and yet too niche to appeal to anyone else. Some vaguely interesting connections made between the different landmark films Zinoman chooses to write about, but nothing that reads as overly astute or groundbreaking (also a lot of questionable leaps in logic here for anyone well-versed in the films he's writing about).
Not really sure who this was written for.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should preface this by saying that one of my favorite books about movies is Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. I read that book when I was a teenager and I clearly remember thinking, as I got to the end, "Biskind didn't really write about Halloween or Alien!" Two of my favorite movies from the '70's are given passing mention in his book but, by and large, Biskind stayed away from the horror genre (The Exorcist notwithstanding) and focused on the maverick directors of the 1970's like Coppola, Scorsese, and Spielberg.

With that in mind, I thoroughly enjoyed Shock Value, an exhaustive and entertaining look at the horror genre in the 1970's that takes many of its' cues from Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Zinoman give his readers a comprehensive look at the directors and writers who brought horror from the midnight screenings to the mainstream. George Romero, John Carpenter, Brian DePalma, William Friedkin, Roman Polanski, Tobe Hooper are all given equal consideration. While documenting the process of their movies, the author also gives cultural context to the successes of the movies in a time in America full of political and social upheaval.

Although some interesting points are made, I'd argue a little too much time is given over to Peter Bogdanovich's Targets, a movie I don't really consider a horror movie despite the Zinoman's arguments. However, it's nice to see the author give so much praise over to Dan O'Bannon, an relatively unsung father of modern horror and sci-fi.

[Maria Lago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esta editorial es pésima y siempre tiene unas ediciones llenas de erratas, pero, milagrosamente, en este tomo solo hay unas pocas y el ensayo de Zinoman es fascinante. Me ha hecho pensar en una frase que se ha convertido ya en una máxima del cine de terror: "el miedo a lo desconocido". Pienso que el miedo a lo conocido supera con creces a éste otro. Si ya has sufrido, si ya te han pegado, si ya te has quemado, si ya te has caído, si ya has visto algo asqueroso... siempre querrás evitar volver a pasar por eso a toda costa. A mí me pasa que cuando veo una película de terror, siempre comienzo a sentirme mal después del primer susto, porque no quiero que la historia vuelva a pillarme desprevenida. En fin, que me ha parecido un libro realmente estupendo.

[Sistermagpie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My least favorite thing about this book was that it was too short. I love horror movies and I love reading about horror movies. This book focuses on that really golden age when low budget independent directors were changing the genre and making it mainstream by seeming to be anything but.

Even if I didn't like the genre it's always exciting reading about people getting together and making things that are going to turn out to be really special since they couldn't have known it at the time. Most of all liked hearing the different creators' theories about horror when that came into it.

[Becky]

Another one I'm shelving for now. I need to read it rather than listen because so much of it is new information to me. Although if I read it next year for Halloween, I think it will hit different as I spent quarantine catching up on all the Halloween classics I had never watched!

[N Lopez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun stories. The author did a lot of good research. However, it suffers from poor structuring at all levels: some sentences I had to read multiple times to try to parse. Some chapters had no discernible organization, leaving me distracted while I tried to figure out why a person was suddenly mentioned.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subject of this fascinating book is the cycle of really exciting horror films that began in the late 60’s and continued until the end of 70’s. The author dubs these movies “New Horror,” as they broke with the conventions of the past, introducing adult themes, moral ambiguity and auteur-driven, seat-of-the-pants filmmaking that continue to influence filmmakers even today. Some of the titles discussed are among my all-time favorites, horror or no: Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, Carrie, Halloween and Alien. Zinoman writes with the insight of a born critic, avoiding dry academic-speak but never tipping over into fanboy gush (the latter a trap to which many authors of pop culture tomes fall prey). He delves into the gestation, creation, aesthetic principles and impact of each of the films, focusing particularly on the directors (Polanski, Romero, Craven, Hooper, etc.) and creators (Dan O'Bannon, screenwriter of Alien). A highly readable and entertaining look back at an important, long-gone era.
March 2019: liked this even more this time around, it’s so good.

[molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

the subject is really interesting, but the writing is weak. i was interested to learn more about people like dan o'bannon, a man largely responsible for getting "alien" off the ground, but surprised by the short shrift granted directors like cronenberg and raimi.

ETA - i think zinoman's take on feminism and the figure of the woman in horror films was kind of glib. like he knew he had to address it, but wasn't up for or interested in the task of really taking it apart in a critical way. mostly he just agreed with what the directors said in their interviews, that a naked girl and a knife is a hard combination to pass up.

[Autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book like a zombie at an organ donor center. It was so exciting to think about the differences between old and new horror and to get a historical perspective on how the split happened. Like everything else awesome, it was apparently invented by a bunch of geeks who read Lovecraft at a tender age. But really, Zinoman combines research, interviews, contemporary reviews and close viewing to figure out why these movies happened and why they are still regarded as the basis of modern horror.

[Josh LaFollette]

Just over a year ago, I wrote my senior research on the development of exploitation films in America. My enduring interest in this little slice of pop culture history inevitably drew me to this book. In retrospect, I wish I had used it as a resource for my project. Nevertheless, Shock Value turned out to be a worthwhile read. Perhaps it should go without saying, but I would only recommend this book to readers with at least a passing knowledge of the subject matter.

Shock Value is a portrait of a select group of writers, directors, and producers who stumbled into film history. This book is Zinoman's love letter to filmmakers like George Romero, John Carpenter, and Wes Craven. To his credit, he confronts the humanity of his heroes, never slipping into hagiography. He recounts their failures alongside their successes, noting their shortcomings as he sings their praises. Though Zinoman weaves multiple perspectives together, often allowing the filmmakers to speak for themselves. This engaging mix of personalities drew me even deeper into the story.

Readers hoping for a comprehensive history of horror should look elsewhere. Shock Value touches on developments like the growth of independent cinema and the collapse of the studio system, but only as background to the story at hand. I don't agree with all of Zinoman's conclusions, but it's a testament to his writing ability that I enjoyed the book even when I though it was wrong. The book contains a wealth of behind-the-scenes stories and intriguing anecdotes, but its true strength lies in its organization. Even as it jumps from year to year and references countless films, Shock Value is anchored by a coherent narrative thread from beginning to end.

Through in-depth research and numerous interviews with his subjects, Zinoman unearths a compelling story about a cluster of brilliant weirdos who rewrote the rules of filmmaking. Shock Value's limited focus is more of an asset than a weakness, offering an in-depth look at a brief moment in history rather than a surface reading of a whole genre. Even the most obsessive horror fans will find a surprise or two in these pages.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explores what the author calls "New Horror," referring to a select group of low-budget, take-no-prisoners horror movies from the 60's and 70's whose important innovation was to successfully mix grindhouse with arthouse.
The book explains how we went from Boris Karloff and Vincent Price to Wes Craven and George Romero, all within the span of a single generation. The author credits Hitchcock for launching "New Horror" back in 1960 with his ground- and rule-breaking PSYCHO, which effectively re-invented the whole horror genre. In 1968, the films NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and TARGETS further cemented the notion of a new type of horror, paving the way for a host of hard-to-categorize horror films throughout the 1970's. Movies like THE EXORCIST, CARRIE, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, ALIEN, JAWS, and ROMEMARY'S BABY. Such films defied the usual horror conventions and earned the genre a begrudging new respectability among critics. Meanwhile, carefully crafted shockers like HALLOWEEN and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE became huge hits and, in doing so, pushed grindhouse cinema out into the mainstream, where bigger budgets resulted in safer, glossier projects, thereby effectively nipping "New Horror" in the bud.
SHOCK VALUE also has a great chapter on why such unpleasant and hard-to-justify horror films as THE HILLS HAVE EYES and DAWN OF THE DEAD have such rabid fanbases, and why the directors of those films had such a strong distaste for the later "torture porn" films that their work inspired. (Wes Craven walked out in disgust halfway through Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS, and George Romero seems genuinely appalled at the violence depicted in movies like HOSTEL.) The author of this book really seems to know his stuff, and his analysis of New Horror films enhanced my admiration for the craftsmanship and innovative ideas that went into their creation, despite the fact that John Carpenter is the only one of these New Horror filmmakers I'm actually a fan of.
Still, a fun and informative read from cover to cover.

[Kristy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love a good "behind the scenes" book, and I was so excited about this because I love horror films. But dear God, the lack of critical thinking that went into this novel is just absurd. The casual sexism sprinkled throughout without the slightest bit of self-awareness or contextualization was like listening to a comedy writer talk about their love for Woody Allen.

Thinking about the number of white men who must have read this book by a white man lionizing a bunch of white men who were clearly misogynists (and then went on to write and direct more movies) without even a casual mention of Roman Polanski's extracurricular activities is a phenomenal depiction of why Hollywood has such a gaping diversity problem. (There's a super fun part where one of the directors calls all French women ugly, and another where the author describes why sexually assaulting women on screen is just such a wonderful tool for 'shock value' that genuinely made me want to move to a cultural wasteland and never watch a film again.)

This novel proved to me that I am a straight woman because I swear to God if something could have turned me off of men, reading this would have done it.

[Brian Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t say I learned a lot between film school and my own personal education on horror films, which is pretty extensive, but there was some great background I didn’t know about the filmmakers and I liked and agreed with a lot of the analysis. It definitely made me want to revisit the classics. I also appreciated the acknowledgment that none of the filmmakers really lived up to their early promise.

And man, Pauline Kael really knew how to make snobbery sound like intelligence.

[Michael Allhands · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this with some trepidation-I am slightly exhausted by the constant examinations of the New Hollywood era of the 1970’s. However, this was an excellent look of at the horror movies of that time. The genre is treated with respect for its artistic worth. This is a really thoughtful and shows how much of creative success can require collaboration and lucky timing. It also is an excellent look at the evolution of the horror film through the early 2000s.

[Aussiescribbler Aussiescribbler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overwhelming terror may be the closest we ever get to the feeling of being born.

Jason Zinoman knows how to tell a compelling story, and he has some great ones to tell, about the lives of the men behind the iconic horror movies of the 1970s and how those movies came into being.

Zinoman is a journalist specialising in theatre. One of the most interest aspects of the book is the way he explains the influence of the theatre of Harold Pinter, Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett on some of the writers and directors of classic 1970's horror films, particularly through the concept that the unexplained is far more unnerving than that which can be given a rational context.

Films like Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary's Baby, Last House on the Left, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Carrie, Halloween and Alien where the product of commercial considerations, imaginative expressions of personal anxieties and philosophical conflicts as well as arguments in an ongoing debate about how to best go about scaring audiences. By the late sixties, horror in the cinema had become associated with the cosily gothic or campy and with men in bad monster suits. The easing up of censorship in the U.S. with a new ratings system coincided with the entry into the movie business of a bunch of serious horror fans inspired by E.C. comics and the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. There ideas on how to transfer the feelings of dread they loved to the big screen differed. Some, like Wes Craven, believed in unflinching depiction of realistic violence. Others, like Roman Polanski in Rosemary's Baby and John Carpenter in Halloween believed that what was suggested was far scarier than what was shown. (Yet, Polanksi and Carpenter would both later resort to explicit gore in Macbeth and The Thing respectively.) Some, like Kim Henkel, co-writer of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, felt that a sense of gritty realism in setting was crucial to getting the audience to take the story seriously, while Brian De Palma deliberately downplayed the realism when adapting Stephen King's novel Carrie, turning it from the story of an overweight unattractive girl in a realistic high school to that of a strangely beautiful girl in the kind of high school full of beautiful people which only exists in movies. Both approaches worked.

The auteur theory encourages us to view movies as the personal expression of their director. While this is appropriate where a director has had almost total control over the proceedings, as with Ingmar Bergman or Federico Fellini, it is misleading in most cases because film-making is a collaborative process which is not in anyone's total control. Zinoman does a great job of showing how films like The Exorcist and Alien were the product of competing viewpoints. William Peter Blatty, as a Catholic, wanted The Exorcist to be an expression of faith. William Friedkin, the director, was an agnostic who was more interested in leaving the existence of God and the Devil more enigmatic. The film which was originally released was closer to Friedkin's vision. Blatty was not happy, but in 2000 he got his wish and the film was re-released in a version which re-instated some of the dialogue which underlined the religious theme of the movie as well as his less ambiguous ending. Dan O'Bannon, who co-wrote the script for alien, had a good deal of influence on the making of the film, being able to persuade the producers to hire controversial artist H. R. Giger to design the alien, however he was kicked off of the set when he kept insisting that director Ridley Scott was pacing the film too slowly. Also, Walter Hill changed O'Bannon's script to make it leaner and to make the main character a woman. The brilliance of the final film comes from the fact that the visions of O'Bannon, Giger, Hill and Scott all fed into it. Sometimes this kind of process leads to a watering down, but sometimes it leads to something which is greater than the contributor's individual visions.

There are loads of juicy stories about how the personal lives of these men fed into their work. De Palma's obsession with voyeurism arising from a time when he tried to help his mother by spying on his father's sexual infidelity. The chest-burster idea for Alien being inspired by Dan O'Bannon's battle with Crohn's Disease. Wes Craven being raised by his religious fanatic mother.

The only short-coming to the book is that Zinoman is prone to a few factual inaccuracies. Krug did not carve the word "Love" into the girl's chest in Last House on the Left. He carved his name. There is no scene in Herschell Gordon Lewis's 2000 Maniacs in which a girl has her nipples cut off and milk squirts out. That occurs in his much later film The Gore Gore Girls. And Hammer's movie Curse of the Werewolf was not a remake. It was the first and only film adaptation of Guy Endore's novel The Werewolf of Paris. But don't let that discourage you from reading a book which may have you looking at the classic horror movies of the 1970s, and those of today, in a whole new light.

[Sarospice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wes Craven. John Carpenter. Tobe Hooper. George Romero. Dan O'Bannon. If those names mean anything to you without having to google them, you'll love this book. An interesting plunge into artist who changed the world of horror because they were simply trying to survive. Makes you want to watch every movie mentioned. again.

[Loki · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable look at the key directors and the important films that transformed horror cinema from the late sixties through to the dawn of the eighties. Has a tendency to focus on one early film for each director and treat that as a Rosetta Stone for their career, but is great with its attention to each of those films.

[Stewart Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic look at the golden age of horror that provides some interesting insights instead of simply detailing the release of the 70s classics. Made me appreciate some movies that I didn’t initially love, and made me love others even more than I already did. Perfect read for movie buffs as well as anyone interested in horror - perfect read for October.

[Brian J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-researched history of some of the great horror films, and how they affected and/or changed the game at various points in time. If you're a serious horror movie fan you're going to already know a lot of these stories, but there's some interesting facts and info surrounding the inception of these films that the author brings to light in a clear, readable tome.