Horror and the Horror Film

Bruce F. Kawin is Professor of English and Film at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His books include ‘Telling It Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film’, ‘Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-Person Film’, ‘The Mind of the Novel: Reflexive Fiction and the Ineffable’, ‘Faulkner’s MGM Screenplays’ and ‘How Movies Work’. He is also the co-author of ‘A Short History of the Movies’.

• Preface; List of Figures; Part I. Approaching the Genre; 1. Horror; 2. The Monster at the Bedroom Window; 3. Fear in a Frame; Part II. Subgenres: The Book of Monsters; 4. Monsters; 5. Supernatural Monsters; 6. Humans; Part III. Related Genres; 7. Horror Comedy; 8. Horror Documentary; Notes; Films Cited; Selected Bibliography; Index

“Bruce F. Kawin commences one of the most unusual genre studies in recent memory […He] employs the brief and precise declarative sentences traditionally found in instruction manuals to offer largely irrefutable observations about the mechanisms that horror films employ to manipulate viewers […] The result is a highly readable introduction to genre studies rendered in a style that is novel for its precision and brevity, as well as its emphasis on dispassionate observation rather than critical evaluation.” — John-Paul Checkett, “Video Watchdog”