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South African Horror Cinema
From Apartheid to District 9 and Beyond
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Book Presentation:
This is the first study to explore South Africa both in horror cinema and as a formidable producer of celluloid scares.
From framing the notorious apartheid system as a mental asylum in the ground-breaking and criminally underseen Jannie Totsiens (Jans Rautenbach, 1970) to such seventies exploitation shockers as The Demon (Percival Rubens, 1979) through to the blockbuster hit District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009) and beyond, this book suggests that South Africa should finally obtain its rightful place in the canon of wider genre studies and horror cinema fandom.
Taking in the 80s nightmares of Darrell Roodt and concluding with an analysis of the recent boom-period in South African fright-films, including discussion of such contemporary efforts as The Tokoloshe (Jerome Pikwane, 2018) and the Troma-esque leanings of Fried Barry (Ryan Kruger, 2020), South African Horror Cinema focuses on ever-changing identities and perspectives, and embraces the frequently carnivalesque and grotesque elements of a most unique lineage in macabre motion pictures.
About the Author:
Calum Waddell is a lecturer in film at the University of Lincoln and the author of books focused on marginal genre cinema, such as The Style of Sleaze: The American Exploitation Film 1959-1977 (2018), which addresses some of the key blaxploitation cinema of the 1970s. His recent writing, including 'Cinethetic Racism and Orientalism in Early Italian Exploitation Films' (in Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration, 2020) and 'Savage Man, Savage Cinema - the Strange Undocumented Lineage of Arthur Davis' (In Film International, 2019), have continued his exploration of race representation in popular exploitation genre cycles. He has also written about film for such major newsstand magazines as Dazed, Infinity, SFX, Total Film and many more. Waddell's documentary work includes Me Me Lai Bites Back (2016), an acclaimed look at the life of one of Britain's formative Southeast Asian film stars, A Very English Exploitation: Inseminoid and the Shock Cinema of Norman J. Warren (2020) and The Last Word on the Last House on the Left: The Legacy of Horror's Most Controversial Classic (2021). In 2018 he directed and produced the documentary feature Images of Apartheid: Filmmaking on the Fringe in the Old South Africa, which won the Best Film Award at the annual Derby Film Festival.
Press Reviews:
"Waddel locates the study of South African horror film within the international canon. His analytical terrain questions exceptionalism and identifies socially indicative meta intertexts. The nuanced study embraces the local in terms of the apartheid and Cold War eras when monsters and demons lurked everywhere. Via an internationalization of South African film studies, Waddel excavates films, directors and narratives often underplayed by contemporary scholars. This work is a game changer – it is a 'post horror' examination that draws South African film into the global mainstream." ―Keyan G Tomaselli, Distinguished Professor, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and recipient of the Simon "Mchunu" Sabela Heroes and Legends Award
See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Academic
> From the same author:
Images of Apartheid (2021)
Filmmaking on the Fringe in the Old South Africa
The Style of Sleaze (2018)
The American Exploitation Film, 1959 - 1977
Subject: Countries > United States
> On a related topic:
The Cinema of Apartheid (2016)
Race and Class in South African Film
The Devil You Dance With (2009)
Film Culture in the New South Africa
To Change Reels (2003)
Film and Film Culture in South Africa
Dir. Isabel Balseiro and Ntongela Masilela
Richard Green in South African Film (2023)
Forging Creative New Directions
by Keyan A. Tomaselli and Richard Green
Subject: Director > Richard Green
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