Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde

by Joan Hawkins

Joan Hawkins offers an original and provocative discussion of taste, trash aesthetics, and avant-garde culture of the 1960s and 1970s to reveal the subversiveness of the horror film as a genre. Full of unexpected insights, Cutting Edge calls for a rethinking of high/low distinctionsOCoand a reassigning of labels at the video store."

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Horror

Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Valery · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book about the meeting between horror and art house movie aesthetics. I’m in an art house/indie movie kick right now, and this book hit the spot (recommended by, of all things, a Robert Eggers subreddit). I would love to see an update, especially when it comes to the “elevated horror” subgenre.

Recommended for anyone interested in horror movies, art house movies, or a combination of both.

[t.s. cronenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I realllly wanted her to touch more on the subversive cultural/sociological aspects and also how body genres use (& often abuse) women's bodies (any more than any other form of cinema though? or is this just a classist target/scapegoat criticism?) when she seemed to begin to touch upon it, but since that wasn't the thesis of the book I suppose it makes sense she never went full flung into that conversation which is worth another book alone (in fact there's probably another book on that out there already - which reminds me I still need to finish Men Women and Chainsaws) so I'd feel nitpicky detracting a star for that. Still, it would've been nice. Mostly I just wanna have a conversation with her ;_;.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like this is a prime candidate for a follow-up/revision, twenty years on... how has the paracinematic impulse mutated and changed? Hawkins' monograph here is almost as valuable as a piece of historical documentation as it is a piece of film theory and analysis. It's so invested in the moment before cinephilia completely adapted to the internet as a way not only to talk about movies but experience movies themselves. The analysis here is good, but I feel like it could go a bit further beyond connecting all of the dots that Hawkins locates between art film and genre movies, but maybe those connections feel a bit more apparent to a 2020 reader than they would to a 2000 reader? I don't want to be presumptuous, though!