Author Description

This is a critical thematic study of classic horror and science-fiction films and the literature upon which much of it was based, looked at from the angle of cultural mythologies of the late 19th to early 20thcenturies. It is also in part a memoir of growing up as a Monster Kid during the cultural phase that came to be known as the Monster Craze 1958-1968. Special chapters are devoted to Dracula and Vampires, the Mummy-mythology, the Phantom of the Opera, the Wolf Man and Rites of Passage, Frankenstein, Lovecraft, Edgar A. Poe, Zombies, Cults and Covens, Hanns Heinz Ewers, the films of William Castle, Caligarism and the Trapezoidal Cinema, Ed Wood and finally a section devoted to the more specifically science fiction films of the period. Each section requires its own lens of interpretation based on mythological, psychological and esoteric theories and understandings. Each chapter reveals something ordinarily hidden from observations surrounding the history of this material. The text draws on concepts of folklore, mythology, and the history of religions, as well as psychology and personal experience. This is a hybrid work drawing on a spectrum of disciplines-it is all for fun but only in the most horrifying of ways. Aficionados of the occult, the esoteric, the mysteries of cultural history, and the history of uncanny film and literature will all find something to love in this book. Enter freely and of your own will through the Gothick archways to seek the mysteries within...