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oppression of the air-tight room overcomes them, which death only can relieve. (Anon., 1909 : 23) In J. Searle Dawley’s production of Frankenstein (1910), Shelley’s grotesque creature becomes the first authentically frightening monster of film. In the second scene, set in a dilapidated student’s garret, we see
films, The Curse of Frankenstein (Hammer’s first colour horror, produced in 1956 and released in 1957) and The Gorgon (1964): these were, respectively, the first and last of the five Hammer films on which horror stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and principal Hammer director Terence Fisher collaborated. 1 This fact alone marks the 1956–64 period as a distinctive stage in Hammer’s development. Importantly, The Gorgon also represents a key point in a wider shifting of terms within the genre
. This chapter examines a range of novels that explore the scientific creation of posthumans, notably Frankenstein (1818) , Brave New World (1932) and Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976), to provide a continuum within which to situate a more focused discussion of Ishiguro's novel, in turn interrogating whether the presence of affective response in the reader is either a sufficient or necessary condition to confer the nebulous status of ‘human’ on to other entities. Indeed N. Katherine Hayles has suggested that ‘the age of the human has given way to the
Chaplin, ‘The Divine Touch’, p. 226. This declaration has echoes of Frankenstein's ambitious quest of ‘pursu[ing] nature to her hiding places’ (Shelley, Frankenstein , p. 82). 12 Stafford, Body Criticism , p. 115. 13 See Porter
lipstick and nail varnish. Her weapon of choice, the pin, and her entrapment of men through dress align her predatory femininity with the spider, an association repeated in La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In, 2011 ). This, together with her black outfit, places her in a tradition that sees female sexuality and reproductive power as threatening. During María’s first killing, her clothes, make-up, and hairstyle are reminiscent of those of Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein (Whale, 1935), echoing Frankenstein’s own fears in Mary Shelley’s original novel that
narrator’s own story. The game reaches a climax with the suicide of the unnamed (male) narrator, where he hopes to be reunited with Esther. Instead, as the walkthrough at the beginning of this chapter shows, he (and the player) is transported back to the stone jetty to begin again. Reaching specific areas in the landscape triggers the recitation of these fragments of the letters (generally one of three or four available, which contain slightly different information). Canonical Gothic narratives such as Dracula and Frankenstein and more recent works such as Max
fittingly describes how Carter’s fictions ‘prowl around on the fringes of the proper English novel like dream-monsters – nasty, erotic, brilliant creations that feed off cultural crisis’ ( 1977 : 51). Vampiric, menacing and sly, they are conspicuously Gothic creations, built, like Frankenstein’s creature, from the dusty vestiges of previous literary and cultural forms. The voluptuous textures of Carter
The marginalisation of both Count Dracula and Baron Frankenstein in British horror cinema of the 1970s was only one part of a much wider rejection and casting out of those male authority figures who had been so important in earlier Hammer horrors. At the same time the question of the woman’s desire – a troubling element in The Sorcerers (Michael Reeves, 1967) and The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher, 1968) – became a more pressing and unavoidable issue in 1970s horror, with this sometimes
why horror film narratives remain a consistently successful source for adaptations, be they generic or thematic, in horror cinema, one need consider horror’s relation to the broad concept of myth . In his seminal study In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing , Chris Baldick makes use of the concept of ‘myth’ à la Claude Lévi
shall see, works of the Gothic such as Frankenstein (1818, revised 1831) evolve through adaptation to be sensationalist but also provide politically resonant ‘warnings’ about technological ambition that continues to mould the most contemporary visions of science fiction. Likewise, in its exquisitely poised ambiguity, the literary achievement that is The Turn of the Screw (1898) reverberates through contemporary horror film, raising questions about the ideology of the domestic context and adult–child relationships