Mark Jancovich

CULT FICTIONS: CULT MOVIES, SUBCULTURAL CAPITAL AND THE PRODUCTION OF CULTURAL DISTINCTIONS

Using the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Sara Thornton, the paper investigates the problems of ‘writing as a fan’ through an analysis of cult movie fandom. It starts out from a critique of Jeff Sconces work which claims that he fails to question the subcultural ideology through which fan cultures produce a sense of identity through their supposed difference from the ‘mainstream’. It then moves on to an analysis of fan writing on the ‘cult movie’, which examines not only the complex and contradictory strategies through which these writings produce a sense of subcultural identity, but also the extent to which these writings seek to construct identities through the construction of an inauthentic Other. The next section examines both exhibition practices and intellectual trends to illustrate the ways in which cult movie fandom emerged not as a reaction against the market or the academy,but rather through their historical development. Finally,the paper looks at the role of mass, niche and micro media within the production and maintenance of the scene and at the functions of rarity and exclusivity within it. In the process, the essay explores the contradictory and problematic nature of the concept of ‘mainstream, commercial cinema’, and the ways in which it is produced as the other of supposedly radical and alternative taste cultures, whether subcultural or academic.

‘Thrills and chills’: horror, the woman's film, and the origins of film noir

This paper examines the use of the terms ‘horror film’ and ‘thriller’ in the film reviews of the 1940s and demonstrates that they were not seen as two distinct generic categories but, on the contrary, while these terms were not precisely equivalent, they were often used interchangeably. As a result, many films commonly understood as horror films today were identified as thrillers at the time and many films that are identified as thrillers today were clearly described as horror films. Furthermore, the term ‘thriller’ was not primarily associated with action or suspense, but rather with the shivers and chills often associated with certain forms of horror. The point here is not to claim that particular films or groups of films ‘really’ belong to one category or another but rather to explore the ways in which generic categories operated within the 1940s and, in the process, to demonstrate that in the 1940s the films commonly categorized today as examples of the paranoid womans film and film noir were often seen as part of a larger cycle of horror films within the period.

Block Buster Art House: Meets Superhero Comic, or Meets Graphic Novel?: The Contradictory Relationship between Film and Comic Art

This article explores the often contradictory relationship between films and comic book art. Adaptations of superhero comics have reinforced a commercialistic blockbuster mentality among the Hollywood studios. Adaptations of graphic novels have explored alternate visions of visual style and representation. Complications of these polarized effects and subsequent implications will be discussed.

Film histories : an introduction and reader

Arranged chronologically, Film Histories is a wide-ranging anthology that covers the history of film from 1885 to the present. Each chapter contains an introduction by the editors on key developments within the respective period, followed by a classic piece of historical research about that period. Various approaches to film history are taken by the authors of the articles, exposing readers to different forms of historical research. Topics include: the history of audiences, exhibition, marketing, censorship, aesthetic history, political history, and historical reception studies.Film Histories concentrates on the so-called historical turn in film studies, demonstrating that film history is about more than simply key films, directors, and movements. Also included is a preface explaining the structure and organization of the book. The contents are divided into sections on American and non-American research, thus designed to reach a wide student audience at the undergraduate level. Chapter introductions provide an overview of international developments in film.

Phantom ladies: the war worker, the slacker and the ‘femme fatale’

The paper examines the debates over the femme fatale, and particularly the claim that this figure emerged as part of a reaction against the working women of wartime. On the contrary, the paper demonstrates that there was little sense of a unified, coherent or distinctive figure identified by reviewers at the time and that while there was a cycle of films featuring dangerous women, this cycle was largely associated with the start of the war, rather than its end, and associated these women with the figure of the slacker rather than the working woman. Indeed, many of these dangerous women were often overtly opposed to the figure of the independent woman of wartime, and the films within which they appeared were often identified with female rather than male audiences.

‘Master of Concentrated Suspense’: horror, gender and fantasy in the critical reception of Fritz Lang during the 1940s

Abstract This article is an examination of the critical reception of Langs career during the 1940s. Although many of his 1940s films are now understood as classics of film noir, this article demonstrates that they were often understood as horror films during the period. Not only does this illustrate that both the films and the term ‘horror’ had very different meanings during the 1940s from those that are common today, but also it gives an indication of the ways in which European cinemas and their directors were understood. In other words, although it is often claimed that noir came about due to the ways in which émigré directors imported ‘expressionist’ tendencies into Hollywood cinema, it may be more accurate to suggest that, in the midst of a boom in horror production during the 1940s, Hollywood turned to these directors because of its perception of European cinemas. Furthermore, the analysis presented by this article also suggests that the reason for Langs declining fortunes during the decade was due to his failure to make the shift towards ‘realism’ that was pioneered by directors such as Billy Wilder and Robert Siodmak, a shift that was also strongly associated with horror.

Victims and Villains: Psychological Themes, Male Stars and Horror Films in the 1940s

Although Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr are seen as the key horror stars of the 1940s, along with lesser figures such as Lionel Atwill and George Zucco, the period was one in which the horror film was not limited to the low-budget productions of Universal, Columbia and others but, on the contrary, one in which many horror films were “dressed in full Class ‘A’ paraphernalia, including million dollar budgets and big name casts” (Stanley, 1944: X3). Consequently, a number of romantic male leads became closely associated with the genre — stars such as Ray Milland, Joseph Cotton, Cary Grant and George Sanders. If these stars are hardly remembered in this way today, this is largely because many of their key horror films are no longer associated with the genre, although they were understood as horror films at the time of their original release. For example, the figure of the gangster and the spy were no strangers to the horror film during the 1940s, and many films that would commonly be understood as thrillers today were clearly seen as horror films at the time (Jancovich, 2009b).

The Screen’s Number One and Number Two Bogeymen”: The Critical Reception of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the 1930s and 1940s

Elsewhere it has been argued that, although most discussions of cult cinema associate its emergence with either the teenpics of the 1950s, the retrospectives of the 1960s, or the midnight movies of the 1970s, the reading strategies associated with cult cinema were clearly in evidence even in mainstream publications such as the New York Times by the late 1930s (Jancovich, 2010). Furthermore, these reading strategies were most clearly articulated in relation to the horror stars of the period, particularly Boris Karloff. The New York Times not only declared itself to be ‘a great Karloff admirer’ (T.M.P. 1940: 12) but its celebration of Karloff displayed what Greg Taylor has called the ‘high value of connoisseurship’ in which the critic ‘focuses on the identification and isolation of works dismissed or overlooked’ (Taylor 1999: 15–16). Moreover, the paper also used humour in its reviews of horror films in a manner that Taylor refers to as ‘camp’, a strategy in which the critic ‘asserts … dominance over the mass cultural field’ and uses ‘creative, resistant interpretation’ to ‘forcibly remake common culture’ (Taylor 1999: 15–16).

‘It’s About Time British Actors Kicked Against these Roles in “Horror” Films’: Horror stars, psychological films and the tyranny of the Old World in classical horror cinema

This article is an examination of the ways in which Englishness was associated with horror long before the success of Hammer, the British studio that in the late 1950s and 1960s became synonymous with a particularly English version of Gothic cinema. During the 1930s and 1940s, many key horror stars were English or signified Englishness; and the article explores the ways in which this was due to a preoccupation with themes of psychological dominance and dependence during the period. In other words, the threat of psychological dominance and dependence that preoccupied horror films meant that the horror villain was often associated with the spectre of old-world despotism in relation to which the United States defined itself as a rejection. Furthermore, these psychological themes also demonstrate that, during this period, the horror film either included, or was intimately related to, the gangster film and spy thriller so that most horror stars played a range of horror villains, gangsters and spies. However, rather than focusing of figures such as Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Lionel Atwill or George Zucco (the British actors most commonly associated with the horror film during this period), the article will concentrate on a series of actors closely associated with horror in the period, but who are not necessarily remembered in this way today—Claude Rains, Charles Laughton, Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price—stars who demonstrate the ways in which psychological themes not only connected the horror villain, gangster and spy but were also related to the spectre of old-world despotism.

‘With Conrad Veidt and Peter Lorre on their side’: German stars, the psychological film and 1940s horror

ABSTRACT This article is an examination of two ‘German’ stars and the ways in which they were understood in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, after their departure from Nazi Germany. From an analysis of reviews and articles through which these two stars, Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt, were presented to audiences in the United States, the article will not only demonstrate that they were predominantly understood as horror stars in the period but also that this was due to the ways in which the figures of the horror villain, gangster and spy were seen to be linked with one another at the time. If all three figures were usually presented as being motivated by psychological compulsions, particularly a despotic desire to dominate and control others, the violence that they inflicted upon their victims was presented as being predominantly psychological, not physical. These figures sought to psychologically dominate, control and even destroy others. It was for this reason that Siegfried Kracauer claimed that one of the central features of 1940s horror was its ‘theme of psychological destruction’.