In the Fifties and Sixties, "horror" meant the arch Vincent Price/Roger Corman "Poe adaptations" or silly "creature features" that were focused on a guy in an obvious monster suit. But things were about to change in the film industry when a group of talented outsiders took their film-school dreams and made them a bloody, gory reality over the span of the Seventies and early Eighties. The revolution itself petered out sometime around the third "Friday the 13th" slasher flick, but in the interim a creative renaissance of horror and fright changed the movie industry forever.
In "Shock Value," Jason Zinoman (who also penned a great book about David Letterman) looks at the dawn of the the "New Horror" era and its eventual conquering of the cineplex, beginning with some not-obvious choices ("Targets," the first film of Peter Bogdanovich, for instance, gets discussed here because it melds the Old Horror of star Boris Karloff with the motive-less blood lust of the sniper shooting movie patrons through the screen at a drive-in). George Romero got credit as the "auteur" behind "Night of the Living Dead," but the film was more of a collective vision than its narrative would lead you to believe. And a shy English professor named Wes Craven gave the whole world nightmares with disturbing films about typical families beset by very human monsters long before he gave the world Freddy Krueger.
Zinoman captures the excitement of the post-Production Code era in Hollywood, when restrictions on what could be shown were suddenly lifted and modified to reflect the post-French New Wave desire to capture life as it's lived. In the rush to be more realistic, some filmmakers gave free reign to their deepest, darkest fears. Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenter used the influences of "Who Goes There" and H.P. Lovecraft to first work together on a horror/comedy hybrid ("Dark Star") and then to strike out on their own with unique visions of monsters both human ("Halloween") and from beyond our realm ("Alien"). William Freidkin helped bring "The Exorcist" to the screen, the most important horror movie of its time, despite fights with William Peter Blatty (author of the original novel) about the motivation of the demon who possesses a twelve-year-old girl. Roman Polanski helmed "Rosemary's Baby" away from being a mere exploitation film to a masterpiece of the New Hollywood, only to have mindless violence visited upon his pregnant wife in the form of Charles Manson a year later. And Brian De Palma proved that we all can take guilty pleasure in the comeuppance delivered by shy, sweet Carrie White upon her high-school tormentors.
This is a great book that manages to cover a lot of ground in such a short book length-wise. It makes a compelling argument that the Seventies were just as much a revival for horror (long regarded as "kids stuff" by serious cinema lovers and critics) as it was for the rest of Hollywood. The figures discussed here would have ups and downs over the ensuing decades, but their work would be imitated, ripped off, repurposed, and inspirational for years to come. Whatever your own personal feelings for horror flicks (and I, your humble reviewer, do not consider myself much of a fan of the genre), you'll enjoy this great history of how some upstarts who thought outside the mainstream of what "horror" was managed to remake it in their own bloody image.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2011
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Mr. M. G. Blake
Superb
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 5, 2013Verified Purchase
M. Crossman
A great book for any fan of 'modern' horror.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 6, 2012Verified Purchase
Jason J Lindemulder
Enjoyed emensly!
Reviewed in Canada on October 25, 2020Verified Purchase
Jen
Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on April 6, 2017Verified Purchase
Kelly
Great read for any horror movie fan!
Reviewed in Canada on January 27, 2013Verified Purchase
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