Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic

by Linda Badley

This fascinating study relates horror film to recent interpretations of the body and the self, drawing from feminist film theory, psychoanalytic theory, cultural criticism and gender studies. Applying the term horror broadly, this work includes discussions of black comedy, thrillers, science fiction, and slasher films. Central to this book is the view of horror as a modern iconography and discourse of the body. Badley's thought-provoking analysis of films by directors Tim Burton, Tobe Hooper, George Romero, Ridley Scott, Brian De Palma, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Jonathan Demme, and Clive Barker, will be of interest to both scholars and students.

Genres: Film, Horror, Nonfiction, Horror Thriller

Hardcover

Published November 20, 1995

Reviews

[Christian Hendriks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read bits from the book before and was fascinated by her synoptic and creative exploration. Upon re-reading, however, I was less excited: while her analysis is certainly fertile, and her narrowing to a particular decade does make her generalized claims more plausible, many of her individual claims are still unconvincing, probably because she does not spend quite enough time explaining the most complicated readings she makes. Its a hazard of the project: whenever you try to talk about all of a genre, even if only over a decade, you usually do not get to read the individual works closely enough.