Ian Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780993071737
- eISBN:
- 9781800341937
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9780993071737.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses how British horror films reveal the British national psyche as the heritage film or the social realist drama. It describes the British horror film as the site where high- and ...
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This chapter discusses how British horror films reveal the British national psyche as the heritage film or the social realist drama. It describes the British horror film as the site where high- and low-culture converge. It also talks about real-life horror and how it is easily transformed into generic fantasy. The chapter discusses the English fascination with murder. It talks about the importance of the gothic novel of the late eighteenth century as a kind of anti-Enlightenment vision of the spooky, and its influence to the cheap mass-market publications or 'Penny Dreadfuls'. It also talks about the influence of this low-brow popular literature that can be observed in the pulp fiction and horror comics which would cause a moral panic in the 1950s. The chapter discusses serial killers and 'Ripperology', the small industry that sprung up around Jack the Ripper that has cast a remarkable shadow over the British horror cinema.Less
This chapter discusses how British horror films reveal the British national psyche as the heritage film or the social realist drama. It describes the British horror film as the site where high- and low-culture converge. It also talks about real-life horror and how it is easily transformed into generic fantasy. The chapter discusses the English fascination with murder. It talks about the importance of the gothic novel of the late eighteenth century as a kind of anti-Enlightenment vision of the spooky, and its influence to the cheap mass-market publications or 'Penny Dreadfuls'. It also talks about the influence of this low-brow popular literature that can be observed in the pulp fiction and horror comics which would cause a moral panic in the 1950s. The chapter discusses serial killers and 'Ripperology', the small industry that sprung up around Jack the Ripper that has cast a remarkable shadow over the British horror cinema.
Ted Geier
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474424714
- eISBN:
- 9781474434522
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474424714.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Considers mass readership and the ‘tastes’ it produces. Maps the history of criminals and execution spectacles, particularly as addressed by the London ‘public’ voices of Defoe and Dickens. Connects ...
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Considers mass readership and the ‘tastes’ it produces. Maps the history of criminals and execution spectacles, particularly as addressed by the London ‘public’ voices of Defoe and Dickens. Connects these mass events to the new mass print culture and circulation forms, such as the penny dreadfuls and their Newgate novel precursor. This shows the development of the public’s ‘taste for blood’, anxieties at an encroaching nonhumanity, and an infatuation with the inhuman from Jack Sheppard to Sweeney Todd and Dracula.Less
Considers mass readership and the ‘tastes’ it produces. Maps the history of criminals and execution spectacles, particularly as addressed by the London ‘public’ voices of Defoe and Dickens. Connects these mass events to the new mass print culture and circulation forms, such as the penny dreadfuls and their Newgate novel precursor. This shows the development of the public’s ‘taste for blood’, anxieties at an encroaching nonhumanity, and an infatuation with the inhuman from Jack Sheppard to Sweeney Todd and Dracula.
Wheeler Winston Dixon
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781911325345
- eISBN:
- 9781800342279
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781911325345.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyses how Terrence Fisher's and Hammer Studios's use of a mechanistic medium to distribute film mirrors the use of the printing press to first publish the “Penny Dreadfuls” in ...
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This chapter analyses how Terrence Fisher's and Hammer Studios's use of a mechanistic medium to distribute film mirrors the use of the printing press to first publish the “Penny Dreadfuls” in Victorian England. It mentions James B. Twitchell, who notes in his study Dreadful Pleasures that the key to the central elements of the Gothic mythos for the public is “repeatable image-making”. It also notes Fisher as the first Gothicist to have precisely the right censorial climate and the sensibility to be able to translate the term “implicit” to the screen. The chapter discusses how Fisher adamantly stated in a 1975 interview that he had not originated either Dracula or The Curse of Frankenstein as a project. It looks at Fisher's insistence to have very little input on casting in Dracula, which was subordinate to his interests in the narrative.Less
This chapter analyses how Terrence Fisher's and Hammer Studios's use of a mechanistic medium to distribute film mirrors the use of the printing press to first publish the “Penny Dreadfuls” in Victorian England. It mentions James B. Twitchell, who notes in his study Dreadful Pleasures that the key to the central elements of the Gothic mythos for the public is “repeatable image-making”. It also notes Fisher as the first Gothicist to have precisely the right censorial climate and the sensibility to be able to translate the term “implicit” to the screen. The chapter discusses how Fisher adamantly stated in a 1975 interview that he had not originated either Dracula or The Curse of Frankenstein as a project. It looks at Fisher's insistence to have very little input on casting in Dracula, which was subordinate to his interests in the narrative.
