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Håkan. After having thrown acid over himself when being caught at an unsuccessful attempt at acquiring fresh human blood for Eli and subsequently offering up his own blood to his ‘beloved’ while in the hospital, Håkan is transformed into an undead disfigured, brain-dead monster with a constant erection. Escaping from the morgue, what drives this monster is finding Eli, whom he traps in the basement of an apartment building. The vampire child is at first afraid of this grotesque version of his former helper, who ‘emits an overpowering sense of threat’, but then he sees
talent. I suck with such vigour!’ 18 (109) Feeding on her dead sister, keeping her undead, does not give Renate peace of mind. She is tormented by a mad frenzy. This changes only after seeing a Dr Stephen Kaplan from New York, ‘head of the world’s only Vampire Research Centre’ on TV, and addressing him in her mind in a therapeutic monologue. At that point she finally manages
heart of the genre is, indeed, the nature of the human being. Within the terrain of horror, the state of being human is fundamentally uncertain. It is far from clear, far from being strongly and enduringly defined. People in the genre are forever shading over into nonhuman categories. They become animals, things, ghosts and other kinds of undead. Having
decades ago. This altered consciousness of what constitutes Shakespeare therefore needs examination. Before we dismiss contemporary popular culture’s knowledge of Shakespeare as minimal or even non-existent, it may be worthwhile to ponder on the implications of the altered cultural context in which short quotations, randomly poached snatches of text, fake quotations authenticated with an image and a name find a natural place. 17 This fragmented textual presence is one of the common features of the three genres examined in Part II of the volume, the teen film, undead
traumas engendered by the militaristic authoritarianism that had underscored American life from the accession of Kennedy to the resignation of Nixon, the civil rights violations of the latter’s terms of office, the might of the government–business matrix and the plight of the poorest and most marginalised of the nation’s citizens – particularly within the nation’s run-down and dangerous ‘stagflationary’ cities. Chapter 3 will thus 74 The traumatised 1970s explore the films of the independent director who single-handedly transformed the zombie from undead Caribbean
to plunder we can see the fate of the American people writ large. Pillaging an eclectic selection of nonessential items from the stores, goods that echo the watches and rings, fur and leather coats, luxury foodstuffs and branded liquor previously coveted by our heroes, the bikers effectively re-enact the progressive degeneration of the pioneer ideal in time. Hypnotised by the spectacle of so many goods so readily attainable the group thus comes to share the desires of the undead and, in so doing, to invite their own destruction. Only the African-American Peter and
), 1988; Peter Pitt, ‘A reminiscence of Elstree’, Film and Television Technician, February 1989, pp. 8–9; Pitt, ‘The men who called “Action”‘, The Veteran, 75 ( 1995 ), pp. 13–15; Pitt, ‘Elstree’s Poverty Row’, Films and Filming, September 1984, pp. 16–17; Mike Murphy, ‘The undead: the early years of Hammer films’, Dark Terrors, 9 (1994), pp. 45–50; Brian McFarlane
one of the major battlegrounds during the initial years of the independence struggle but is also – as the meaning of its name (‘All Souls’) in Tetum indicates – the spiritual home of the souls of the East Timorese deceased. Over the years I would encounter this belief in the return of Nicolau Lobato and other ‘un-dead’ figures, especially from the early years of the independence struggle time and again.3 Kammen (2009: 400–5) for example notes the adherence of one of the spiritual leaders of Colimau 2000, a ritual/martial arts group, to this Claiming the dead
group, which systematically reflect on their own era of creation. One of these features is a desire to reinterpret the inherited stories through an in-depth psychological identification with characters and conflicts. This is what we can observe in the way Shakespeare is approached by high school students, who tend to apply the plays’ words directly to their own everyday trials and tribulations. This need for identification also explains the rise of the humanised undead, who are no longer the monstrous Others of civilisation, but are represented as victims of an
. American imperial policy also played a role with the shift from formal to informal empire, territorial control to economic and cultural influence with the ever-present threat of military intervention to keep other countries ‘on the right track’.83 The zombie embodied fears around issues of both the exercise of and resistance to control. In ‘Cult of the Undead’ from The Beyond #4 (1951), anxieties around empire were displaced on to ‘Pizarro, the bloody Spanish conquistador’ and his ‘swordpoint empire’ in the Andes.84 Here, the American Gerald Knowlton is lured to Peru in