FrightFest Guide to Ghost Movies (The Dark Heart of Cinema, 3) - Softcover

Carolyn, Axelle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903254973 ISBN 13: 9781903254974

Publisher: FAB Press, 2018

Synopsis

Ever since humans started gathering around the campfire to tell tales, ghost stories have haunted our imagination. Accounts abound of shrouded apparitions in rattling chains and vengeful souls wailing in the night, from Roman manuscripts and Egyptian papyri to Indian traditions and Japanese folklore.

Literary staples for centuries, peaking in Europe with the nineteenth century advent of the Gothic novel, spirits have appeared on film worldwide from the earliest days of cinema, coming back regularly over the following decades to in turn amuse, intrigue and terrorize audiences, from the late 1890s all the way to the contemporary boom of on-screen supernatural horrors.

Like many, award-winning filmmaker Axelle Carolyn (Soulmate, Tales of Halloween – both of which feature spectres) has been obsessed with haunted houses and revenants for as long as she can remember. In this volume, she surveys the last 120 years of the genre and reviews the 200 most memorable titles from across the globe. From timeless classics to recent blockbusters, quirky indies to international sensations, hidden gems to oddities, each of these movies has in some way contributed to the development of the ghost movie as we know it, in all its incarnations and cultural variants.

When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and frightening sounds echo through the halls... Welcome, foolish mortals, to The FrightFest Guide to Ghost Movies.

About this title

About the Author

Axelle Carolyn. Director of short films The Halloween Kid, narrated by Derek Jacobi and The Last Post, starring Jean Marsh. Soulmate, Axelle’s first feature, opened FrightFest Halloween 2012, and in 2015 she co-produced and co-directed horror anthology Tales of Halloween, the closing night movie of FrightFest 2015. Axelle’s first book, It Lives Again! Horror Movies in the New Millennium won the Silver Award in the Performing Arts category of ForeWord magazine’s 2009 Book of the Year awards.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Arguably the most frightening sub-genre of horror, ghost stories tap into our most primal fears and challenge our beliefs in life after death. They have captivated and terrified audiences since the dawn of time, and now, it is your turn to witness the horror.

This book relies on the traditional definition of a ghost as the disembodied spirit of a dead person, to decide what movies qualify for inclusion. This excludes, for example, It Follows (2014), because the entity isn’t a dead person, or A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), since Freddy Krueger is a flesh-and-blood murderer in the dream world. It does include poltergeists: situations where souls don’t manifest themselves visibly, but through physical disturbances (biting, hitting, rapping, levitation, etc.), as in The Haunting, The Entity, or, naturally, Poltergeist.

In an effort to present the most complete picture of ghost movies across time, cultures, and sub-genres, however, some adjustments have been made.

China’s jiangshi, an undetermined hybrid between spirit and vampire, is considered a spectre for the purpose of this overview. Also in cases such as Insidious, where hauntings are said to be caused by demons, or, as in The Cat and the Canary, are found out to be bogus, they have been included whenever the movie functioned according to the mechanisms and classic scares of a haunted house picture.

Welcome to our review of the 200 most memorable ghost movies: a collection of the most shocking, harrowing, romantic, puzzling, haunting tales ever committed to celluloid. Some may delight you, some may appall you... Some may even horrify you!

About this edition

• Publisher: FAB Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1903254973
• ISBN 13: 9781903254974
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240