Selling the Splat Pack: The DVD Revolution and the American Horror Film - Softcover

Bernard, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1474405584 ISBN 13: 9781474405584

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Selling the Splat Pack unravels the history of how the emergence of the DVD market changed cultural and industrial attitudes about horror movies and film ratings. These changes made way for increasingly violent horror films, like those produced by the 'Splat Pack' - a group of filmmakers who were heralded in the press as subversive outsiders.

Were brutal American horror movies like the Saw and Hostel films a reaction to the trauma of 9/11? Were they a reflection of 'War on Terror'-era America? Or was something else responsible for the rise of these violent and gory films during the first decade of the 21st century?

Taking a different tack, Mark Bernard proposes that the films of the Splat Pack were products of, rather than reactions against, film-industry policy. This book includes an overview of the history of the American horror film from an industry-studies perspective, an analysis of how the DVD market influenced the production of American horror films, and an examination of films from Splat Pack members such as Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, James Wan and Alexandre Aja.

By re-examining the history of the American horror film from a business perspective and exploring how DVD influenced the production of American horror films in the early 21st century, this thought-provoking book provides students and scholars in Film Studies with an alternative perspective on the Splat Pack.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Bernard is an Instructor of American Studies and Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is co-author (with Cynthia Baron and Diane Carson) of Appetites and Anxieties: Food, Film, and the Politics of Representation. He is currently working on a book about horror film acting and stardom (with Kate Egan) and a book about the representation of food in the horror film.

Review

"Thorough and engaging 'Selling the Splat Pack' is an industrial and economic analysis of a cycle of brutal but popular works of the mid-2000s like the Saw series, Hostel and Haute Tension (Switchblade Romance)." -- Glenn Ward, The Gothic Imagination

"Roth is one of the primary filmmakers at the (stabbed and bleeding) heart of Mark Bernard's 'Selling the Splat Pack: The DVD Revolution and the American Horror Film'. In the Edinburgh University Press release, the author examines the business behind pushing the likes of Rob Zombie and the Saw franchise onto audiences of the multiplex and then, more tellingly, to home-video consumers who salivate over discs branded with lurid promises of "UNRATED" cuts and extra content... 'Selling the Splat Pack' emerges as a smart study in the economics of horror - not to be confused with the horror of economics." -- Flick Attack and Bookgasm

"Bernard's criticism of the 'Splat Pack' (and their imported peers, French director Alexandre Aja and Scottish director Neil Marshall) is incisive and delightful, thoroughly researched and written with a scholar's skepticism and a fan's enthusiasm ... Bernard gives horror obsessives (or film studies majors) deep and insightful new angles from which to assess their favorite fright flicks. It won't help justify a taste for gore in the minds of those who can't stand it, but for those of us whose celluloid bloodlust is insatiable, 'Selling The Splat Pack' yields an abundance of ideas to ponder during repeat viewings." -- Bryan Reed, Charlotte Viewpoint

Edition details

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1474405584
• ISBN 13: 9781474405584
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224