The Horror Film

Rutgers Depth of Field Series

by Stephen Prince

In this volume, Stephen Prince has collected essays reviewing the history of the horror film and the psychological reasons for its persistent appeal, as well as discussions of the developmental responses of young adult viewers and children to the genre. The book focuses on recent postmodern examples such as The Blair Witch Project. In a daring move, the volume also examines Holocaust films in relation to horror.

Part One features essays on the silent and classical Hollywood eras. Part Two covers the post–World War II era and discusses the historical, aesthetic, and psychological characteristics of contemporary horror films. In contrast to horror during the classical Hollywood period, contemporary horror features more graphic and prolonged visualizations of disturbing and horrific imagery, as well as other distinguishing characteristics. Prince’s introduction provides an overview of the genre, contextualizing the readings that follow.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Horror, Cultural

280 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 26, 2004

About the author

Stephen Prince teaches film history, criticism, and theory at Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts . He received his Ph.D from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Sistermagpie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting collection of essays about horror movies. I especially liked the ones that tried to look at things that a lot of writing on the subject ignores, like the question of exactly what makes a horror film effective. Unfortunately, the essay on that subject didn't have a lot of data, so it was more about how somebody should really look at the handful of horror films since 1960 that seem to genuinely have lasting power to scare people and see what makes them work. But the author couldn't do it themselves because they didn't have that study.

The final essay was also really interesting, looking at studies of why people like horror movies. There were times when I was a little wary of it because I was of course worried about the usual idea that people watch horror movies because they're men who lack empathy and like watching bad people (i.e., women who have sex etc.) get what's coming to them or just like gore. Or that girls go to horror movies with guys so guys can be strong and protect them. But the essay made a point to talk about "thrillers"--movies that are basically about terror and suspense but lack gore, and pointed out that women are often big fans of horror that's less violent like "The Sixth Sense" and "The Others," two movies that had recently come out when the book was written.

I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who likes horror and likes reading about horror.

[Benjamin Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took a class on horror films in college, and this was the textbook. Of course, being a college student, I didn't read very much of it so I went back and read through it a few years later. It covers a variety of themes and subgenres within the field of horror and was fairly interesting.