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While top-rank independent filmmaking was absorbed by Hollywood and its major studios, low-end independent filmmaking persisted but it was reinvented, especially once exploitation cinema techniques started making their presence strongly felt both in the narratives of these films and in their advertising and marketing. The chapter argues that the introduction of television put an end to low-end independent cinema of the 1930s and 1940s as television delivered a similar type of cheap entertainment for free, while the double bill was gradually being phased out. However, the emergence of the youth audience in the 1950s as a key demographic and the studios' persistence in providing entertainment for a mass audience gave low-end independent filmmakers a new, clearly defined market in which they have operated successfully. The chapter then explores the ways low-end independent producers and distributors exploited the youth market with specific reference to American International Pictures, and other key players such as Roger Corman and William Castle. Case study: Rock around the Clock (Sears, 1956).

This chapter juxtaposes Edgar Allan Poe's and Roger Corman's artistic theory and artistic method to shine a light on the creative synergy of their collaboration. Poe and Corman are existential artists, fascinated by the theme of death not as a source of outright horror — to shock an audience with graphic portrayals of murder and mayhem — but as a trope through which to explore questions concerning the meaning and purpose of individual as well as collective human lives. Poe expressed this most succinctly in his poem ‘The Conqueror Worm’. That Corman also reflected on the meaning of human lives and the ethics of human thought and behaviour in his art becomes apparent by his inclusion of the voice of God in the opening sequence of Attack of the Crab Monsters (1956). While it may be tempting to call Poe a poor man's Percy Shelley and Corman a cheapskate Jack Arnold, the chapter considers them both producers of the thinking person's fantastic fiction.

This chapter discusses how British horror and American horror influenced each other. It talks about how the first wave of American horror in the 1930s was made possible by the input of British writers, actors and directors. It also discusses the contribution of American International Pictures to British horror. The chapter discusses the works of several American directors. It discusses Roger Corman, and how his work impacted some of the most legendary figures in the genre. It talks about the Poe series and how Vincent Price became one of the most distinctive voices in cinema. It describes Poe's stories as having unreliable narrators, a fixation on extreme psychological states and disturbing ambiguity. It discusses how his works have been adapted and reworked, not only by film-makers but also by musicians, authors and theatre companies, and how the chaos, madness and all-pervading sense of impending catastrophe which permeate his work are still relevant today. The chapter then discusses the representation of murder as performance art/artistic expression. It talks about the notion of the 'artist killer' and the long tradition of the 'cultured monster'.

This chapter analyses the artistic aspects of House of Usher (1960) to reveal how Roger Corman's crew managed to successfully fuse the dark Romantic tradition to which Edgar Allan Poe belongs with a more expressionist horror film aesthetic that made the film more directly appealing to 1960s horror-movie audiences. Used in the context of low-budget horror films, expressionism should be understood as a term denoting ‘art which depends on free and obvious distortions of natural forms to convey emotional feeling’. House of Usher is not expressionistic because its frames resemble the art of Edvard Munch, but because its mise-en-scène is not naturalistic but functions as a visual vehicle for the expression of subjective states of mind and emotions. In developing House of Usher, Corman told his crew: ‘I never want to see “reality” in any of these scenes’. The décor of the Usher mansion is not designed for verisimilitude, but to give the audience a glimpse at the fear that lurks in the darkest corners of Roderick's psyche.

This concluding chapter addresses the genre of Roger Corman's House of Usher (1960), which contains neither a gothic monster nor a villain. It is better to categorise House of Usher as a film belonging to a subgenre of haunted-house narratives identified as revolving around ‘tragic families and the influence of the past on the present’. Roderick and Madeline Usher are only haunted metaphorically by their knowledge of the family evil. Their ancestors do not float about the corridors in white robes, clanging their chains to shock intruders. Roderick is ‘haunted’ by the evil deeds of his ancestors because their horrific and unlawful actions have tainted the family name, and according to Roderick, have literally infected the environment and the very atmosphere he breathes. He is suffering the consequences of their crimes.

This chapter discusses James Cameron's first films, Xenogenesis (1978) and Piranha 2: The Spawning (1981). Cameron's first film as writer and director was an independent short project entitled Xenogenesis. The film expresses the relationship of humans to technology and natural world, and the simulation of the biological. The film led to Cameron's employment at Roger Corman's New World production house as an art director. He later contributed to the visual effects for Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). Piranha 2: The Spawning was a sequel in name only to the original Piranha. The film contains a number of elements that are essential in Cameron's films, especially illicit military activities, including a scene where the military is performing experiments out in the ocean; in this way, it anticipates later Cameron films, particularly Avatar (2009), in provoking commentary on military activity.