Microbiology and Horror Cinema

Larrie Dudenhoeffer is a Professor of English at Kennesaw State University, USA, in the metro Atlanta area specializing in film and television studies, critical theory, and American studies. He is the author of Embodiment and Horror Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Anatomy of the Superhero Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and Walls without Cinema: State Security and Subjective Embodiment in Twenty-First Century U.S. Filmmaking (2019).

• .- Chapter 1. “The Slime of All My Yesterdays”: Or Putting the “Crud” in Fungal Recrudescence in William Lustig’s Maniac.- Chapter 2 “Some Things in Their Most Natural State Have the Most Vivid Colors”: Folk Horror and Fungal Overgrowth in the “Unholy Trinity”.- Chapter 3   “Evil against Evil”: Parable and Behavior-Altering Parasitism in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist.- Chapter 4 “Of One Mysterious Household”: Endoparasites and Embodiment in Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” Trilogy.- Chapter 5 “Sometimes It’s More of a Trade”: Blackness, Bacterial Infection, and Iain Softley’s The Skeleton Key.- Chapter 6 “See You Later, Alligator”: Natural Disasters and Necrotizing Bacterial Disease in Alexandre Aja’s Crawl.- Chapter 7  “Danger! Do Not Touch Anything!”: Viral Transmission, Tactile Object Disrecognition, and the Annabelle Series.- Chapter 8 “New Faces, Other Minds”: Viral Vectors, Fusiform Gyrus Dysregulation, and Leo Gabriadze’s Unfriended.