Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe

by Steven Jay Schneider

Horror movies have always found receptive audiences in their home countries. Finally, the genre's most colourful and least familiar directors and stars are given their due in this wide-ranging collection of articles and interviews from a fine assembly of renowned world horror experts. sDiscover such hidden treasures of world cinematic horror as Singapore's pontianak cycle, 1930s Mexican vampire movies, Austrian serial killer flicks, Germany's Edgar Wallace krimis, Bollywood ghost stories, Indonesia's penanggalan tales, the Chinese take on Phantom of the Opera, and the Turkish versions of Dracula and The Exorcist. s24 pulse-pounding chapters with selected filmographies and scores of images from the movies under discussion, including a stunning 16-page full-colour section!

Genres: Horror, Film, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2002

About the author

Steven Jay Schneider is a film critic, scholar, and producer with M.A. degrees in Philosophy from Harvard University and in Cinema Studies from New York University. He is the author and editor of numerous books on world cinema, most notably in the horror genre. They include Eurohorror, The Cinema of Wes Craven: An Auteur on Elm Street, Designing Fear: An Aesthetics of Cinematic Horror, Killing in Style: Artistic Murder in the Movies, Understanding Film Genres, and Traditions in World Cinema. He is also a consultant for film, television, and home video/DVD production companies, a curator for world horror film programs, and a staff member in development for Paramount Pictures. Among his recent titles are 501 Movie Stars and 501 Movie Directors, both available in North America from Barron's. Two additional titles from Barron's are scheduled for publication in Spring 09. They are 101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die and 101 Sci-Fi Movies You Must See Before You Die.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

at times, fear without frontiers was painfully academic (particularly in Part II: Films, Series, Cycles), but for the most part, this was a really interesting, really enjoyable look at genre cinema outside of the english-speaking world.

most interesting were the studies of particular directors, including alejandro jodorowsky, jose mojica marins, paul nashy, sion sono & takashi miike, and the studies of the horror output of particular countries (india, indonesia & france among the most interesting).

one thing entirely unnecessary though is kim newman's incredibly condescending and overly snobby preface. it almost makes you want to only watch american movies out of spite, BUT only almost. instead, this book has made me rather curious to seek out a lot of the movies and directors written about, as well as even those i've already seen, just to view them with a different perspective.

i wouldn't necessarily recommend attempting to read this book from cover to cover without some sort of break in between, being as at times it feels like homework, but i would definitely say that each and every essay within (even those that make you glad you never went to film school) is worth reading.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

More Fab Press goods.

Steven Schneider’s Fear Without Frontiers continues the dismantling of national barriers that Pete Tombs began in Immoral Tales and Mondo Macabro; Schneider devotes 300 pages to research in global horror cinema. It is the most comprehensive scholarly anthology of global horror films in print today with an academic approach.

There are no major claims in Fear Without Frontiers, rather the book aims at collecting various essays with various theoretical models on various exploitation films from across the globe. In other words, it's not a single authored piece of "original scholarship" - it's a brilliantly edited anthology devoted to foreign transgressive cinema. This book is a godsend to me.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, what a tome. In the first part you'll come across actors from countries like (Chile, Mexico, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Tailand, Spain or Cuba). Then the focus is on films, series and cycles (e.g. the lost Edgar Wallace crime episodes from German, the Giallo in Italy). Followed by a great section of movie stills and posters, we have a look at the Italian zombie film and close the book with genre histories and studies from different countries (e.g. the Gallic horror movie or Japanese horror cinema). This was quite a colourfull stroll through horror movies all over the world. Really recommended!