The Canadian Horror Film
Terror of the Soul
Edited by Gina Freitag and André Loiselle
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Book Presentation:
From the cheaply made “tax-shelter” films of the 1970s to the latest wave of contemporary “eco-horror,” Canadian horror cinema has rarely received much critical attention. Gina Freitag and André Loiselle rectify that situation in The Canadian Horror Film with a series of thought-provoking reflections on Canada’s “terror of the soul,” a wasteland of docile damnation and prosaic pestilence where savage beasts and mad scientists rub elbows with pasty suburbanites, grumpy seamen, and baby-faced porn stars.
Featuring chapters on Pontypool, Ginger Snaps, 1970s slasher films, Quebec horror, and the work of David Cronenberg, among many others, The Canadian Horror Film unearths the terrors hidden in the recesses of the Canadian psyche. It examines the highlights of more than a century of Canadian horror filmmaking and includes an extensive filmography to guide both scholars and enthusiasts alike through this treacherous terrain.
About the authors:
Gina Freitag is an independent scholar and the founder of the Cellar Door Film Festival in Ottawa.
André Loiselle is a professor in the Film Studies program and assistant vice-president (Academic) at Carleton University.
See the publisher website: University of Toronto Press
> From the same authors:
Theatricality in the Horror Film (2019)
A Brief Study on the Dark Pleasures of Screen Artifice
Stage-Bound (2003)
Feature Film Adaptations of Canadian and Québécois Drama
> On a related topic:
The Post-Zombie (2025)
Essays on the Evolving Undead
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