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Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series
Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected Essays and Reviews
Robin Wood—one of the foremost critics of cinema—has laid the groundwork for anyone writing about the horror film in the last half-century. Wood’s interest in horror spanned his entire career and was a form of popular cinema to which he devoted unwavering attention. Robin Wood on the Horror Collected Essays and Reviews compiles over fifty years of his groundbreaking critiques. In September 1979, Wood and Richard Lippe programmed an extensive series of horror films for the Toronto International Film Festival and edited a companion The American Essays on the Horror Film — the first serious collection of critical writing on the horror genre. Robin Wood on the Horror Film now contains all of Wood’s writings from The American Nightmare and nearly everything else he wrote over the years on horror—published in a range of journals and magazines—gathered together for the first time. It begins with the first essay Wood ever published, "Psychoanalysis of Psycho," which appeared in 1960 and already anticipated many of the ideas explored later in his touchstone book, Hitchcock’s Films. The volume ends, fittingly, with, "What Lies Beneath?," written almost five decades later, an essay in which Wood reflects on the state of the horror film and criticism since the genre’s renaissance in the 1970s. Wood’s prose is eloquent, lucid, and convincing as he brings together his parallel interests in genre, authorship, and ideology. Deftly combining Marxist, Freudian, and feminist theory, Wood’s prolonged attention to classic and contemporary horror films explains much about the genre’s meanings and cultural functions. Robin Wood on the Horror Film will be an essential addition to the library of anyone interested in horror, science fiction, and film genre.
506 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 12, 2018
21 people are currently reading
434 people want to read
About the author
Robin Wood
42 books55 followersRobert Paul Wood, known as Robin Wood, was an English film critic and educator who lived in Canada for much of his life. He wrote books on the works of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Arthur Penn. Wood was a longtime member - and co-founder, along with other colleagues at Toronto's York University - of the editorial collective which publishes CineACTION!, a film theory magazine. Wood was also York professor emeritus of film.[2]
Robin Wood was a founding editor of CineAction! and author of numerous influential works, including new editions published by Wayne State University Press of Personal Views: Explorations in Film (2006), Howard Hawks (2006), Ingmar Bergman (2013), Arthur Penn (2014) and The Apu Trilogy (2016). He was professor emeritus at York University, Toronto, and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Robin Wood was a founding editor of CineAction! and author of numerous influential works, including new editions published by Wayne State University Press of Personal Views: Explorations in Film (2006), Howard Hawks (2006), Ingmar Bergman (2013), Arthur Penn (2014) and The Apu Trilogy (2016). He was professor emeritus at York University, Toronto, and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 6, 2022
the nature of the book as a collection has the problem of Robin's insights being repeated a bunch (gee another essay about Nosferatu) but I mean, it's all good writing, so it's hard to get too angry.
Standout essays:
"Psychoanalysis of Psycho"
"In Memoriam : Michael Reeves"
"Return of the Repressed"
"An Introduction to the American Horror Film"
"The American Family Comedy from Meet Me at St. Louis to Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
"Burying the Dead : The Use and Obsolesce of Count Dracula"
"Cronenberg : A Dissenting View"
"Notes for a Reading of I Walked with a Zombie"
Standout essays:
"Psychoanalysis of Psycho"
"In Memoriam : Michael Reeves"
"Return of the Repressed"
"An Introduction to the American Horror Film"
"The American Family Comedy from Meet Me at St. Louis to Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
"Burying the Dead : The Use and Obsolesce of Count Dracula"
"Cronenberg : A Dissenting View"
"Notes for a Reading of I Walked with a Zombie"
August 12, 2022
Too Freudian.
February 11, 2025
Thesis read (dus niet alle hoofdstukken gelezen maar het merendeel). Hoewel repetitief en heel “seksueel onderdrukt”-coded zijn het allemaal heel degelijke, kritische en interessante essays.
January 29, 2026
Like many film critics of the same period—from the late 1960s through to the 1980s (at least as this book frames Robin Wood’s collected writings, which are dominated by work from the 1970s)—Wood frequently uses psychoanalysis as a methodological scalpel for reading genre cinema, particularly horror, of that era. I suspect psychoanalysis was often deployed as a kind of legitimation: a way of arguing that genre films deserve to be taken seriously as art, rather than dismissed as brainless entertainment. Even so, Wood insists that he has no interest whatsoever in Lacanian psychoanalysis and a structuralism that is overly semiotic; instead, he argues for a return to Freud as the primary gateway to discussing ideology in cinema-making—with, of course, a touch of Marx. Perhaps this is what most clearly distinguishes Wood from other critics of his time. That said, there is one long, Barthesian essay on I Walked with a Zombie which, for me, remains entangled in semiotic and structuralist analysis, even though in the postscript Wood stubbornly maintains that this is the appropriate methodology for reading film as a product of ideology.
It is fascinating to read Wood’s fierce debate with Cronenberg, even if I do not agree with his categorisation of Cronenberg’s films as reactionary. For me, Cronenberg’s early work is misanthropic and doomy not as evidence of Cronenberg’s reactionary stance or his obstinate refusal to imagine change or a new world, but rather as a representation of the West’s corruption in the way it understands science—and its treatment of science and technology as a solution to every problem in life. Certainly, I agree with Wood that Cronenberg’s films are vicious towards women and ambivalent about sexual liberation; nonetheless, they still demonstrate how Cronenberg’s work differs from other “reactionary” mainstream horror/sci-fi films of the same decade. I also agree with Wood that Cronenberg’s dismissal of Cohen’s films—branding them “awful”—is misguided. Like Wood, I champion Cohen’s work, and I consider him a radical director within mainstream horror at the time—perhaps the most radical of the lot, ideologically, politically, and aesthetically. By comparison, Carpenter, Hooper, Craven, and other masters of horror largely remain within a mode that repeats the operations of white male directors from the beginning of Hollywood studio cinema (Romero being something of an exception). Wood’s appraisal of Cohen makes his view of Tourneur all the more interesting too, because Wood persistently defends his Freudian “return of the repressed” framework for understanding how horror disturbs the status quo through the Other and the eruption of what unsettles “normality” (and he also tends to read horror as a critique of the nuclear family).
It is fascinating to read Wood’s fierce debate with Cronenberg, even if I do not agree with his categorisation of Cronenberg’s films as reactionary. For me, Cronenberg’s early work is misanthropic and doomy not as evidence of Cronenberg’s reactionary stance or his obstinate refusal to imagine change or a new world, but rather as a representation of the West’s corruption in the way it understands science—and its treatment of science and technology as a solution to every problem in life. Certainly, I agree with Wood that Cronenberg’s films are vicious towards women and ambivalent about sexual liberation; nonetheless, they still demonstrate how Cronenberg’s work differs from other “reactionary” mainstream horror/sci-fi films of the same decade. I also agree with Wood that Cronenberg’s dismissal of Cohen’s films—branding them “awful”—is misguided. Like Wood, I champion Cohen’s work, and I consider him a radical director within mainstream horror at the time—perhaps the most radical of the lot, ideologically, politically, and aesthetically. By comparison, Carpenter, Hooper, Craven, and other masters of horror largely remain within a mode that repeats the operations of white male directors from the beginning of Hollywood studio cinema (Romero being something of an exception). Wood’s appraisal of Cohen makes his view of Tourneur all the more interesting too, because Wood persistently defends his Freudian “return of the repressed” framework for understanding how horror disturbs the status quo through the Other and the eruption of what unsettles “normality” (and he also tends to read horror as a critique of the nuclear family).
June 22, 2024
Wood's essays aren't for the faint-hearted. He plunges into the murky waters of the unconscious mind, dissecting fears, desires, and repressed nasties.
Picture Freud on steroids, analyzing "The Exorcist" like a deranged therapist. Heads spin, pea soup flies, and we're all scarred for life.
Wood doesn't just watch movies; he interrogates them. His lens? Ideology. He peels back layers, revealing societal anxieties and political skeletons.
In "Rosemary's Baby," he whispers, "Hey, that devil baby? It's capitalism incarnate." Mind blown.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"? Wood's like, "Leatherface? Nah, he's the embodiment of post-industrial alienation." Chainsaw-wielding existentialism, anyone?
In sum, "Robin Wood on the Horror Film" is a black magic grimoire. Read it, and you'll never see horror—or reality—the same way.
Picture Freud on steroids, analyzing "The Exorcist" like a deranged therapist. Heads spin, pea soup flies, and we're all scarred for life.
Wood doesn't just watch movies; he interrogates them. His lens? Ideology. He peels back layers, revealing societal anxieties and political skeletons.
In "Rosemary's Baby," he whispers, "Hey, that devil baby? It's capitalism incarnate." Mind blown.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"? Wood's like, "Leatherface? Nah, he's the embodiment of post-industrial alienation." Chainsaw-wielding existentialism, anyone?
In sum, "Robin Wood on the Horror Film" is a black magic grimoire. Read it, and you'll never see horror—or reality—the same way.
July 14, 2023
Insightful analysis into horror of the 70's (and before) with themes, critical theory and influences explored. This collection of all his horror related essays showcases not only the author's growth but how earlier works influenced those who came after, how Freud is in everything, the rise of feminism in film and, in his opinion, the downfall of horror in the 80's (sorry, not sorry, I love the "teenie kill" movies as he calls them).
Standout article if you only read one is The American Nightmare - Originally published for TIFF in 1978.
Props if you think Cronenberg is an overrated misogynist like me and loved reading him torn apart in one of the essays.
Standout article if you only read one is The American Nightmare - Originally published for TIFF in 1978.
Props if you think Cronenberg is an overrated misogynist like me and loved reading him torn apart in one of the essays.
February 2, 2026
A nice collection of some very good criticism. I've found Robin Wood's "Return of the Repressed" formulation of the horror movie fascinating for the last half year or so, and impossible to ignore in watching movies. It was great to read the full essay as well as American Nightmare, and Wood's general psycho-analyses of trends in horror. I also really enjoyed the close reading of Psycho. The essay on Tourneur was also great (I am a fan of Tourneur) though I feel his close read of I walked With a Zombie with reference to Barthes went a bit over my head.
October 18, 2023
3.5. The guy's got an interesting Marxist-Freudian perspective, and he inspired me to go back and watch quite a few movies - I Walked With a Zombie and Death Line in particular. His essays are clearly not meant to be read as a single collection; he revisits the same points and scenes over and over.
January 19, 2023
There are a few compelling essays here, but taken as a bulk, it can feel rather repetitive at times. Still, Wood remains an important scholar in horror studies and a must read for any one interested in the sociology of horror.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews