Abject Terrors: Surveying the Modern and Postmodern Horror Film

by Tony Magistrale

Abject Terrors is an expansive study of the most significant films from the prolific horror genre – from its origins in the 1920s and 1930s, to its contemporary representations. This survey brings together close analyses of individual motion pictures, demonstrating the interconnections among these filmic texts and their contribution to defining quintessential aspects of the modern and postmodern horror film.

Genres: Nonfiction, Horror, Film

214 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2005

About the author

Tony Magistrale is the author of three books of poetry: What She Says About Love, winner of the 2007 Bordighera Poetry Prize, which was published as a bilingual edition in 2008; The Last Soldiers of Love (Literary Laundry Press, 2012); and Entanglements (Fomite Press, 2013). His poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He is professor of English at the University of Vermont.

Over the past two decades, Magistrale's twenty-plus books and many articles have covered a broad area of interests. He has published on the writing process, international study abroad, and his own poetry. But the majority of his books and articles have centered on defining and tracing Anglo-American Gothicism, from its origins in eighteenth-century romanticism to its contemporary manifestations in popular culture, particularly in the work of Stephen King. He has published three separate interviews with Stephen King, and from 2005-09 Magistrale served as a research assistant to Mr. King. Accordingly, a dozen of his scholarly books and many published journal articles have illuminated the genre's narrative themes, psychological and social contexts, and historical development.

Reviews

[Tatjana · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was in film school, Jungian, Marxist and Feminist theory were the thing. No one deconstructed *anything* using anything else. I was hoping, as time went by and people discovered Asian philosophy and, well, something else... that maybe there would be more to talk about.
Nope.
Still, Magistrale is smart and is academic without being incredible obscure or dry. I didn't always agree with him, but he has some interesting jumping off points for discussions. I would not pay $29.95 for this book, but then, I don't have to pay for some professor's bid for tenure.
Check it out at the library. Chew on it. Make up something new.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magistrale takes us through about a century of horror cinema to offer us insights into its allure and even necessary assaults on our sensibilities. Whether our expectations be gender-based, or historical, Magistrale tutors us in how horror taps into our own sense of isolation and fatalism about the world and its machinations and manifests them to us--not to resolve them per se but to make us all the more aware of them. With chapters on the tropes behind vampires or monsters or the horror of Kubrick, he brings us into the various challenges horror movies present us. My favorite chapter was the one on Hitchcock, in particular the section on Psycho and its role as a possible swerve in horror, taking us from fears of technology (giant ants spawned by our nuclear tests, or aliens wielding their power to show us how irresponsibly we use our own) to the horror of our own psychologies. Magistrale also takes time to delve into the slashers and even the parodies of horror movies like Scream and Rocky Horror. A fine critical overview of a genre I've been enthusiastic about since the days of Creature Double Feature.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comprehensive look at the horror film genre. Cool, but needs an update or a new edition.