Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema

The vast majority of [the] essays are as lucid and pleasurable to read as they are thought provoking . . . Kier-La Janisse’s study of the appeal of the horror comedies of the East End Kids for real kids is downright fun. * Psychobabble *
By not limiting the essays to the United States or a specific theoretical approach, the editors cast a tremendously large net to reel in and capture an amorphous moment in this genre’s history. . . .The essays in Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema champion a lost decade of genre filmmaking. * Synoptique *
The essays in this book are uniformly interesting and reasonably free of academic jargon....[This book] should spur useful debate and research. * Journal of American Culture *
Recovering 1940s Horror considerably deepens our understanding of and appreciation for the horror cinema of the 1940s, a largely neglected decade in the many histories of the genre. Well researched and persuasively argued, this remarkable collection of essays certainly delivers what the title promises. Scholars and fans alike will need to revisit such films as The Monster and the Girl, The Creeper, and The Mad Monster after reading this book. -- Barry Keith Grant, Brock University
Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema: Traces of a Lost Decade surveys that touch on horror’s fate during the 1940s, and is a must-read for genre scholars and for anyone who teaches film history. Not only does this collection of essays offer an overwhelming amount of evidence—including accessible, teachable examples—of the genre’s vitality during the period, but it also shows Gothic horror’s presence in film noir’s monstrous gangsters, melodrama’s silenced women, and other cinematic traditions more often discussed as vital to the 1940s. The book’s diverse perspectives offer productive challenges to long-held assumptions about the boundaries and histories of film genres; it’s a great learning opportunity for experienced researchers or for educated readers coming to the subject for its inherently dark pleasures. -- L. Andrew Cooper, University of Louisville
Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema sheds new light on the shadowy and unfairly devalued terrain of this decade’s horror. Its editors have put together a provocative series of essays, challenging the clichés that often circulate around 1940s horror. Moving beyond the major Hollywood studios, and assessing historical contexts as well as hybrid figures and films, this collection does more than merely recover a ‘lost’ decade: it rethinks it in intriguing and important ways. -- Matt Hills, University of Huddersfield