Film: styles & Genres

America in the 1950s was a cauldron of contradictions. Advances in technology chafed against a grimly conservative political landscape; the militar...

The witch, the vampire and the werewolf endure as popular characters in modern horror. These “old monsters” have their origins in the writings of A...

Watching the screen version of a classic mystery novel can be disappointing. By necessity or artistic license (or possibly just ego) changes are...

Late 19th century science fiction stories and utopian treatises focused on morals and attitudes supporting economic, sociological and at times Marx...

The history of the 'video nasties' has been recounted many times and the films that caused so much offence have themselves been endlessly examined....

Journey to Poland addresses crucial issues of memory and history in relation to the Holocaust as it unfolded in the territories of the Second Polis...

This book attempts to clarify the narrative conditions of humanism, asking how we can use stories to complicate our understanding of others, and qu...

 In American Westerns, the main characters are most often gunfighters, lawmen, ranchers and dancehall girls. Civil professionals such as doctors...

ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze is the first collection of essays on this important and original contemporary filmmaker. It looks at his ground-b...

In recent years queer identities have become increasingly visible in Irish cinema, a shift that can be linked to political, economic and social cha...

Following the Second World War, low-budget B-movies that explored and exploited Gothic narratives and aesthetics became a significant cinematic exp...

Often described as 'the Master of Gimmicks', William Castle is best known for the outrageous publicity stunts that characterised his genre films in...

Real Sex Films explores one of the most controversial movements in international cinema through an innovative interdisciplinary combination of theo...

Twenty-first century film and television is overwhelmed with images of the undead. Vampires and zombies have often been seen as oppositional: one a...

Buster Keaton "can impress a weary world with the vitally important fact that life, after all, is a foolishly inconsequential affair," wrote cri...

Giving deserved attention to nearly 150 neglected films, this book covers early sound era features, serials and documentaries with genre element...

The first book-length study in English of a national corpus of state-sponsored informational filmFor three decades, state-sponsored short filmmakin...

In sharp contrast to many 1960s science fiction films, with idealized views of space exploration, Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) terrified audience...

The 1970s were turbulent times and the films made then reflected the fact. Vampire movies--always a cinema staple--were no exception. Spurred by...

While you may think the old adage about oil and water being unable to mix applies perfectly to the cinema of terror and the craft of great actin...

Narrative complexity is a trend in contemporary cinema. Since the late 1990s there has been a palpable increase in complex storytelling in movies. ...

Examining images of gender and violence, this book analyzes selected works of three influential artists of the Irish cinema--Ford, Sheridan and ...

This is the first full-length study of masculinity and film style. Cinema is not just an intellectual or cerebral experience. They also make us fee...

This is a critical study of the happy ending in classical and contemporary Hollywood cinema. The Hollywood happy ending has long been considered am...

The release of Skyfall in 2012 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the James Bond film franchise. It earned over one billion dollars in the worldwid...

Science fiction, fantasy and horror films have spawned more sequels than any other film genre. While the perhaps overly familiar Dracula and Fra...

The fighting female archetype--a self-reliant woman of great physical prowess--has become increasingly common in action films and on television....

In 1969—the counter-cultural moment when Easy Rider triggered a "youthquake" in audience interests—Westerns proved more dominant than ever at the b...

The story of Star Trek's resurrection between the 1969 cancellation of the original series and the 1979 release of Robert Wise's Star Trek--The ...

In the mid-1950s, to combat declining theater attendance, film distributors began releasing pre-packaged genre double-bills--including many horr...

The Marvel Cinematic Universe--comprised of films, broadcast television and streaming series and digital shorts--has generated considerable fan ...

This richly illustrated guide to dozens of California filming locations covers three decades of science fiction, fantasy and horror movies, documen...

Much of 20th century science fiction foretold technological and social developments beyond the year 2000. Since then, a key theme has been: what...

This is the first collection to look at the most recent manifestations of the ancient hero on screen. It brings together a range of perspectives on...

The Italian Gothic horror genre underwent many changes in the 1980s, with masters such as Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda either dying or retiring an...

Focusing on crime fiction and films that artfully combine comedy and misdeed, this book explores the reasons writers and filmmakers inject humor...

After a century of reinvention and, frequently, reinterpretation, Western movies continue to contribute to the cultural understanding of the Uni...

For many years, conspiracy theories have been among the most popular story elements in Hollywood films. According to the "conspiracy culture," G...

This analysis of how filmmakers have portrayed England's Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), and the audience's perception of Elizabeth based upon th...

Best-selling horror novelist Clive Barker had a rocky start with the first attempts to convert his stories into a visual medium. Directors and scre...