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Frankenstein (or the Monster that often goes under his name) and Dracula are without doubt the two ‘stars’ of the horror genre as well as being the most influential and widely known products of literary gothic. This fact raises the question of how Hammer’s Frankenstein and Dracula cycles relate to the earlier novels and films which originated and developed these figures. To put it another way, how can one conceive of Frankenstein’s and Dracula’s historical passage from their nineteenth
twentieth-century take on Frankenstein. Cronos is, therefore, just as much an atypical Frankenstein film as it is an atypical vampire film. Del Toro has combined the myths of Dracula and Frankenstein in order to form his own creation myth. According to David Skal, who refers to Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster as ‘the dark twins’, both characters are such familiar cultural icons that ‘each conjures
This book is about the British film director Terence Fisher. It begins by setting the context by detailing Fisher's directorial debut to Hammer's horror production and the importance of the Hammer horror to Fisher's career. Hammer's horror production represents one of the striking developments in post-war British cinema. The book explains some professional and industrial contexts in which Fisher operated and shows how these relate both to the films he made and the way in which these films have been judged and valued. It presents a detailed account of The Astonished Heart, Fisher's sixth film as director, highlighting the benefits and some of the problems involved in thinking about Fisher's career generally in its pre-horror phase. The successful Hammer film, The Curse of Frankenstein, both inaugurated the British horror boom and established Fisher as a film-maker whose name was known to critics as someone who specialised in the despised horror genre. After The Curse of Frankenstein, Fisher became primarily a horror director. The book presents an account of the highs and lows Fisher faced in his directorial career, highlighting his significant achievements and his box-office failures. It also shows Fisher as a director dependent on and at ease with the industrial and collaborative nature of film-making. In a fundamental sense, what value there is in Terence Fisher's work exists because of the British film industry and the opportunities it afforded Fisher, not despite the industry.
Since 2012 there has been a noticeable trend in nineteenth-century-set gothic mysteries that take inspiration from history, myth, and fiction. These include Ripper Street (2012–2017), Dracula (2013–2014), Penny Dreadful (2014–2016), The Frankenstein Chronicles (2015–2017), and The Alienist (2018–). Often bringing together international casts, locations, and production companies, the shows
From its earliest days, horror film has turned to examples of the horror genre in fiction, such as the Victorian Gothic, for source material. The horror film has continually responded to cultural pressures and ideological processes that resulted in new, mutated forms of the genre. Adaptation in horror cinema is a useful point of departure for articulating numerous socio-cultural trends. Adaptation for the purposes of survival proves the impetus for many horror movie monsters. This book engages generic and thematic adaptations in horror cinema from a wide range of aesthetic, cultural, political and theoretical perspectives. These diverse approaches further evidence the horror genre's obsession with corporeal transformation and narratological re-articulation. Many horror films such as Thomas Edison's Frankenstein, John S. Robertson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, David Cronenberg'sVideodrome, Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers, and Terence Fisher's The Gorgon are discussed in the book. The book sheds welcome light upon some of the more neglected horror films of cinema's first century, and interrogates the myriad alterations and re-envisionings filmmakers must negotiate as they transport tales of terror between very different modes of artistic expression. It extends the volume's examination of adaptation as both an aesthetic process and a thematic preoccupation by revealing the practice of self-reflexivity and addresses the remake as adaptation. The book analyses the visual anarchy of avant-garde works, deploys the psychoanalytic film theory to interpret how science and technology impact societal secularisation, and explores the experimental extremes of adaptation in horror film.
Two great works of fiction at opposite ends of the nineteenth century continue to be paradigms of horror with the concept of ‘adaptation’ at their heart: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus ( 1818 ) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Both present mad scientists who experiment with adaptation in the sense of
this perception of him inasmuch as they were all horror-related in some form or other. This was most obviously the case for the six remaining films at Hammer, all of which were gothics – The Gorgon (1964), Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1966), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), The Devil Rides Out (1968), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974); and, as we will see
The introductory chapter is written to help position the reader regarding the academic climate that saw the first edition of Hammer and Beyond materialise, to consider some of the book’s omissions, and to assess the state of British horror in the years immediately leading up to, and following, its publication.
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
I like period, legend, and allegory because they take you out of your personal present-day experience. After all, let’s face the fact: this is entertainment. And entertainment is escapism … Period vampire stories – even Frankenstein – are fairy tales. It is fantasy – grim fantasy, and grim fairy tale. That is a