100 American Horror Films - Paperback

by Barry Keith Grant (Author)

[A] well-plotted survey. Total Film

In 100 American Horror Films, Barry Keith Grant presents entries on 100 films from one of American cinema's longest-standing, most diverse and most popular genres, representing its rich history from the silent era - D.W. Griffith's The Avenging Conscience of 1915 - to contemporary productions - Jordan Peele's 2017 Get Out.

In his introduction, Grant provides an overview of the genre's history, a context for the films addressed in the individual entries, and discusses the specific relations between American culture and horror. All of the entries are informed by the question of what makes the specific film being discussed a horror film, the importance of its place within the history of the genre, and, where relevant, the film is also contextualized within specifically American culture and history. Each entry also considers the film's most salient textual features, provides important insight into its production, and offers both established and original critical insight and interpretation.

The 100 films selected for inclusion represent the broadest historical range, and are drawn from every decade of American film-making, movies from major and minor studios, examples of the different types or subgenres of horror, such as psychological thriller, monster terror, gothic horror, home invasion, torture porn, and parody, as well as the different types of horror monsters, including werewolves, vampires, zombies, mummies, mutants, ghosts, and serial killers.

Author Biography

Barry Keith Grant is Professor of Film Studies and Popular Culture at Brock University, Canada. He is the author of 100 Science Fiction Films (2013) in the BFI Screen Guides series and co-author of 100 Documentary Films (2009), author of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (BFI Film Classics, 2010), Monster Cinema (2018), and two influential anthologies, Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film (second edition 2004), the first scholarly anthology on the horror film, and The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (second edition 2015). He recently edited Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected Essays and Reviews (2018).