Search results
sequence prior to the twins’ first transformation in which Persephone helps Neo, Morpheus and Trinity to rescue the Keymaker. The Keymaker’s guards are surprised while watching the film Brides of Frankenstein. Persephone enters the room as the film shows the undead Constable_01_Text.indd 107 4/3/09 14:35:59 108 Adapting philosophy occupant of a coffin throwing off the lid. There is a cut to a medium long shot of the first henchman who sits up, having been lying down on the sofa, followed by a medium shot of the second jumping to his feet. The full movement from
alternative history of ‘political and cultural fragments’.50 Films like this offer highly inventive and idiosyncratic views of aspects of British history and explore pressing issues concerning questions of British national identity.51 But other films of the period focus primarily on threats to rural Englishness. I now want to move on to consider filmic representations of specific parts of the English countryside. Notes 1 I develop these points in the article ‘The Grateful Un-Dead: Count Dracula and the Transnational Counter Culture in Dracula A.D. 1972’, pp. 135–51. 2
figure conjures up; however, we might best understand the use of ghosts in popular culture as representing the return of the past, or what is commonly referred to as history. As noted previously, Eagleton suggests that if the past is no longer with us, its effects most certainly are. (1981: 51) So we can read the presence of ghosts, or the undead, as traces of the past operating in the present or, as is more often the case, as traces of a past that has not been settled, a past that has not yet been laid to rest and that continues to haunt the present. Drawing on Freud
in a morally grey world. There is very little black and white in morality in the real world which gets lost in most fantasy/sci fi such as Harry Potter , Star Wars , Lord of the Rings . Those are all about heroes that shine like beacons of honor fighting back the tides of dark evil. Game of Thrones is more of different greys all converging in a swirl around one central theme: Power. Some want it, some don't. Some think it should be used to help the poor, to overthrow a kingdom, to re-conquer, to hold back tides of undead, etc. They all have different ideas of
Death Wheelers ) (Don Sharp, 1972 ) tells the story of a biker gang that hangs out at a pagan stone circle situated in the English countryside. They commit suicide so they can return as the ‘undead’, and then take trips into town in order to wreak havoc on the living. The bikers in Psychomania , led by Tom (Nicky Henson), call themselves ‘The Living Dead’. A key
’s Judgment’, according to Anna’s moralistic landlady, who has discovered that Hugh was not her husband after all, but her lover. After Hugh’s death, a distraught Anna wanders the beach where they spent time together, as if willing him to return. Subsequently, he does reappear, mysteriously knocking on the cottage door at night, as if nothing has happened. Anna invites him to stay with her, but he remains strangely mute. It turns out that he is now ‘undead’. Despite this, Anna inconceivably takes this strange, silent figure back with her on a plane to Jersey (their ‘home
), ‘Did anyone ever explain to you what “secret identity” means? Race and displacement in Buffy and Dark angel ’, in E. Levine and L. Parks (eds), Undead TV: Essays on ‘ Buffy the vampire slayer ’ (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press), pp. 96–115. Reprinted in D. Lavery and R. V. Wilcox (eds) (2007), Slayage 6:4 [24] (Summer). Jones, Bethan (2015), ‘Fannish tattooing and sacred identity’, Transformative works and culture 18. Jowett, Lorna (2005), ‘To the Max: Embodying intersections in Dark
), and We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011), for example.8 Sometimes the frightening creature is only partly human – such as the undead, vampire, werewolf, hybrid human-alien, or cyber-human – but nevertheless has a human form or history (Dracula, 1931; Frankenstein, 1931; The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951; Night of the Living Dead, 1968; An American Werewolf 100 Security in London, 1981; The Hunger, 1983; Interview with the Vampire, 1994; Species, 1995; The Wolfman, 2010). Still others are beyond the human – for instance, malevolent paranormal forms or forces. In
‘a maze in which you can get lost’ 22 The uncanny is also discussed in the context of L’Immortelle in Chapter 4 . On images of the ‘undead’, see Chapter 6 . 23 See Chapter 2 on music in the films, and Chapter 3 on games
in France), it is perhaps no surprise that memory should prove such a potent topic in Spanish filmmaking. In The Spirit of the Beehive, the trauma of the Civil War hovers over the characters as an unarticulated malcontent. The mass unmarked graves of the nation appear to haunt the landscape of Pan’s Labyrinth from which the undead that pursue the child protagonist appear. Paul Julian Smith’s analysis of the latter film