Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
Phantom Ladies
Hollywood Horror and the Home Front
by Tim Snelson
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
Defying industry logic and gender expectations, women started flocking to see horror films in the early 1940s. The departure of the young male audience and the surprise success of the film Cat People convinced studios that there was an untapped female audience for horror movies, and they adjusted their production and marketing strategies accordingly.
Phantom Ladies reveals the untold story of how the Hollywood horror film changed dramatically in the early 1940s, including both female heroines and female monsters while incorporating elements of “women’s genres” like the gothic mystery. Drawing from a wealth of newly unearthed archival material, from production records to audience surveys, Tim Snelson challenges long-held assumptions about gender and horror film viewership. Examining a wide range of classic horror movies, Snelson offers us a new appreciation of how dynamic this genre could be, as it underwent seismic shifts in a matter of months. Phantom Ladies, therefore, not only includes horror films made in the early 1940s, but also those produced immediately after the war ended, films in which the female monster was replaced by neurotic, psychotic, or hysterical women who could be cured and domesticated. Phantom Ladies is a spine-tingling, eye-opening read about gender and horror, and the complex relationship between industry and audiences in the classical Hollywood era.
About the Author:
TIM SNELSON is a lecturer in media history at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.
Press Reviews:
"One of the freshest, most vibrant books examining how feminine audiences and the demands of wartime shaped the horror and fantasy films of World War II. Absolutely compelling reading, this is a page turner in every sense of the word!"
— Wheeler Winston Dixon
"In this lively, original work, Tim Snelson examines the female-monster movie cycle that emerged in Hollywood during World War II. This fresh and compelling look at popular culture during the war years is a win for the reader."
— Stephen Prince
"Snelson’s deft film analysis and evocative historical detail takes us beyond the clichés of male horror/female melodrama: a compelling account of wartime women, both on film and in theatres."
— Yvonne Tasker
"Classic movie buffs and B-movie fans will find Phantom Ladies of considerable interest. Students of Women's Studies can discover an intriguing example of the perenially recurring 'Woman Question' from the novel persepcetive of a cycle of WWII monster movie aimed at American women."
— Cineaste
See the publisher website: Rutgers University Press
> From the same author:
Demons of the Mind (2024)
Psychiatry and Cinema in the Long 1960s
by Tim Snelson, William MacAuley and David Allen Kirby
Subject: History of Cinema
> On a related topic:
House of Psychotic Women (2024)
Expanded Edition: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films
New Blood in Contemporary Cinema (2020)
Women Directors and the Poetics of Horror
Attack of the Leading Ladies (2018)
Gender, Sexuality, and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema
Men, Women, and Chain Saws (2015)
Gender in the Modern Horror Film
Grande Dame Guignol Cinema (2009)
A History of Hag Horror from Baby Jane to Mother
Back
