Horror Cinema

by Jonathan Penner and Steven Jay Schneider

Published 25 November 2008
This is the best scary movies of all time.This exciting new visual history examines the genre in thematic, historical, and aesthetic terms.Horror is both the most perennially popular and geographically diverse of all film genres; arguably, every country that makes movies makes horror movies of one kind or another. Depicting deep-rooted, even archetypal fears, while at the same time exploiting socially and culturally specific anxieties, cinematic horror is at once timeless and utterly of its time and place.This exciting new visual history, which includes unique images from the David Del Valle archive, examines the genre in thematic, historical, and aesthetic terms, breaking it down into the following fundamental categories: Slashers & Serial Killers; Cannibals, Freaks & Hillbillys; Revenge of Nature & Environmental Horror; Sci-fi Horror; The Living Dead; Ghosts & Haunted Houses; Possession, Demons & Evil Tricksters; Voodoo, Cults & Satanists; Vampires & Werewolves; and The Monstrous-Feminine. Among the many films featured are classics such as "Psycho", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Alien", "The Exorcist", "Dracula", and "The Wicker Man".