Trashfiend

A loving look at “disposable” horror culture from the 1960s and 1970s. Over two glorious decades the horror film waged war on good taste, exploiting every taboo and bursting every envelope along the way. TRASHFIEND is the definitive guide to the chaotic, creative and endlessly entertaining golden age of horror cinema. Scott Stine (author of The Gorehound’s Guide to Splatter Films series) shines a fond but satiric light on everything from low budget horror films to grisly comic art, lurid movie magazines to late-night creature features, campy monster toys to exploitive poster art. Packed with reviews, trivia, interviews, anecdotes and rare illustrations, and written with witty and insightful flair, TRASHFIEND will fascinate aficianados, nostalgists and cinema lovers of every stripe for a fun, energetic and critical look at this beloved genre.

From low-budget horror films to grisly comic art, from lurid movie magazines to late-night creature features, from campy monster toys to exploitive poster art, Trashfiend takes a loving look at disposable horror culture from the 1960s and 1970s. Packed with reviews, trivia, rare illustrations, exhaustive technical information, and written with a humorous, insightful flair sure to engage both hardcore fans and the curious alike, this is a fun, albeit critical, look at an often overlooked genre. With over a hundred reproductions of rare ad art, as well as vintage books, toys and magazines from the era, with eight pages of glorious, garish color.

A scene that influenced generations of writers, filmmakers and fans, XEROX FEROX is the first book to cover the horror film fanzine and the culture it spawned. From Famous Monsters of Filmland to Fangoria and everything in between, XEROX FEROX is much more than a book about monster magazines. It examines the home-grown DIY fanzines that dared to dig deeper than the slick and shiny newsstand mags ever would... or indeed even could. The titles are as lurid as the films that they covered. Gore Gazette. Deep Red. Sleazoid Express. Before message boards, before blogs, before the Internet itself, the fanzine reigned as the chief source of news and information for horror fans worldwide. Often printed on the cheap and sold for the price of postage, madcap and irreverent mags like Slimetime, Subhuman and Shock Xpress travelled the globe, creating a thriving network of fans and professionals alike. XEROX FEROX traces the rise of the horror film fanzine, from the Famous Monster-starved kids of the 1960s to the splatter-crazed gorehounds that followed. Featuring in-depth interviews with fifty writers, editors, and industry pros, XEROX FEROX is the final word on an era that changed the world of fandom forever.

In an age of digital technology and renewed anxiety about media piracy, Inherent Vice revisits the recent analog past with an eye-opening exploration of the aesthetic and legal innovations of home video. Analog videotape was introduced to consumers as a blank format, essentially as a bootleg technology, for recording television without permission. The studios initially resisted VCRs and began legal action to oppose their marketing. In turn, U.S. courts controversially reinterpreted copyright law to protect users’ right to record, while content owners eventually developed ways to exploit the video market. Lucas Hilderbrand shows how videotape and fair use offer essential lessons relevant to contemporary progressive media policy. Videotape not only radically changed how audiences accessed the content they wanted and loved but also altered how they watched it. Hilderbrand develops an aesthetic theory of analog video, an “aesthetics of access” most boldly embodied by bootleg videos. He contends that the medium specificity of videotape becomes most apparent through repeated duplication, wear, and technical failure; video’s visible and audible degeneration signals its uses for legal transgressions and illicit pleasures. Bringing formal and cultural analysis into dialogue with industrial history and case law, Hilderbrand examines four decades of often overlooked histories of video recording, including the first network news archive, the underground circulation of Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, a feminist tape-sharing network, and the phenomenally popular website YouTube. This book reveals the creative uses of videotape that have made essential content more accessible and expanded our understanding of copyright law. It is a politically provocative, unabashedly nostalgic ode to analog.

The sexualized serial murder of women by men is the subject of this provocative book. Jane Caputi argues that the sensationalized murders by men such as Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam, Hillside Strangler, and the Yorkshire Ripper represent a contemporary genre of sexually political crimes. The awful deeds function as a form of patriarchal terrorism, "disappearing" women at a rate of some four thousand annually in the United States alone. Caputi asks us not only to name the phenomenon of sexually political murder, but to recognize sex crime in all of its various interconnecting manifestations.

Reviews of The Gorehound’s Guide to Splatter Films of the 1960s and 1970s: “recommended”—Booklist; “exhaustive...useful”—ARBA; “a solid reference work”—Video Watchdog; “bursting with information, opinion and trivia...impeccably researched”—Film Review; “interesting and informative”—Rue Morgue; “detailed credits...entertaining”—Classic Images. Author Scott Aaron Stine is back again, this time with an exhaustive study of splatter films of the 1980s. Following a brief overview of the genre, the main part of the book is a filmography. Each entry includes extensive technical information; cast and production credits; release date; running time; alternate and foreign release titles; comments on the availability of the film on videocassette and DVD; a plot synopsis; commentary from the author; and reviews. Extensive cross-referencing is also included. Heavily illustrated.

A biographical and bibliographical guide to current writers in all fields including poetry, fiction and nonfiction, journalism, drama, television and movies. Information is provided by the authors themselves or drawn from published interviews, feature stories, book reviews and other materials provided by the authors/publishers.