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So You Want To Write A Novel?

Monday, September 3rd, 2012

Here’s an absolutely hilarious instant cartoon about an “aspiring” novelist.

I usually don’t post on these things, but this one really nails it; the complete absence of any thought or preparation on the part of the would-be novelist in this short cartoon is truly staggering. It’s also somewhat shocking that this kind of “I can do anything I set my mind to” approach to writing a book or a novel is so prevalent; sadly, the cartoon’s depiction of this sort of unjustified blind optimism isn’t all that far off the mark. Kudos to the creator of this sharp and pointed video, which has much more truth to it than one might immediately think.

Click here, or on the image above, to see this short, clever video.

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Posted in Animated Cartoons, Digital Culture, Pop Culture, Publishing, Satire | Comments Off

Vertigo Takes Top Spot in Sight and Sound Greatest Films Poll

Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

Click here, or on the image above, for a brief video from CNN in which Sight and Sound editor Nick James discusses the poll results.

Alfred Hitchcock’s classic and deeply personal film Vertigo (1958) has taken the top spot in the prestigious Sight and Sound “greatest films of all time” poll.

It used to be Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) in the top spot, but Kane dropped to number two in the latest rankings. Actually, this doesn’t really surprise me; I have never been a Kane enthusiast; as remarkable as the film is, it still strikes more as an inspired pastiche of every possible style and technique jammed into one narrative, pegged on what Welles himself described as “a gimmick, really, and rather dollar-book Freud.”

I’ve always agreed with this admittedly rather harsh self-assessment, although I run the film every year in my Intro to Film History class nonetheless so students can see the film for themselves, and make up their own minds on the subject; certainly, everyone should see it.

Nevertheless, this poll seems like a very welcome breath of fresh air on a long rather static subject, and the choices overall seem both judicious and absolutely reasoned. And actually, there are two lists; one for critics, and one for directors. Critics get a shot at ranking the best of the cinema history, and then directors get a similar opportunity to pick their own favorites.

Here’s the top ten films of all time in the poll, as picked by the critics;

1. Vertigo

2. Citizen Kane

3. Tokyo Story

4. La Regle du Jeu

5. Sunrise: A Song for Two Humans

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey

7. The Searchers

8. Man with a Movie Camera

9. The Passion of Joan of Arc

10. 8 1/2

and then the top ten of all time as picked by directors;

1. Tokyo Story

2. Tie: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Citizen Kane

4. 8 1/2

5. Taxi Driver

6. Apocalypse Now

7. Tie: The Godfather and Vertigo

9. Mirror

10. Bicycle Thieves

As Nick James, editor of Sight and Sound noted in an editorial announcing the new rankings, “to many of you it’s probably a familiar story. Every ten years, from 1952 onwards, Sight & Sound has conducted a worldwide poll of critics in order to decide which films are currently regarded as the greatest ever made. (Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist parable Bicycle Thieves won the first iteration only four years after it was shot. Famously, Citizen Kane has won ever since.) We’re proud that the longevity of this poll means that it’s widely regarded as the most trusted guide there is to the canon of cinema greats. So for us this year is a very big moment.

About a year ago, the Sight & Sound team met to consider how we could best approach the poll this time. Given the dominance of electronic media, what became immediately apparent was that we would have to abandon the somewhat elitist exclusivity with which contributors to the poll had been chosen in the past and reach out to a much wider international group of commentators than before. We were also keen to include among them many critics who had established their careers online rather than purely in print.

To that end we approached more than 1,000 critics, programmers, academics, distributors, writers and other cinephiles, and received (in time for the deadline) precisely 846 top-ten lists that between them mention a total of 2,045 different films. As a qualification of what ‘greatest’ means, our invitation letter stated, ‘We leave that open to your interpretation. You might choose the ten films you feel are most important to film history, or the ten that represent the aesthetic pinnacles of achievement, or indeed the ten films that have had the biggest impact on your own view of cinema.’”

You can read all about it by clicking here. I’m proud to say that I was one of those consulted for the poll; it was a distinct honor.

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Posted in Criticism, Film Criticism, Film History, Film Theory, Publishing | Comments Off

Frame by Frame: Hollywood Movie Moguls

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

Click here, or on the image above, to see a brief video on the Hollywood moguls.

I have a new Frame by Frame video out today, directed and edited by Curt Bright, on Hollywood’s movie moguls of the 1930s through the 1960s, and how their era came to an end; it’s part of the work of my book, Death of the Moguls: The End of Classical Hollywood, forthcoming from Rutgers University Press for Fall, 2012.

Death of the Moguls is a detailed assessment of the last days of the “rulers of film,” which examines the careers of such moguls as  Harry Cohn at Columbia, Louis B. Mayer at MGM, Jack L. Warner at Warner Brothers, Adolph Zukor at Paramount, and Herbert J. Yates at Republic in the dying days of their once-mighty empires. The sheer force of personality and business acumen displayed by these moguls made the studios successful; their deaths or departures hastened the studios’ collapse. Almost none had a plan for leadership succession; they simply couldn’t imagine a world in which they didn’t reign supreme.

Covering 20th Century-Fox, Selznick International Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, Paramount Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, Republic Pictures, Monogram Pictures and Columbia Pictures, Death of the Moguls: The End of Classical Hollywood briefly introduces the studios and their respective bosses in the late 1940s, just before the collapse, then chronicles the last productions from the studios and their eventual demise in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

I discuss here, and in the book in much more detail, of course, such game-changing factors as the de Havilland decision, which made actors free agents; the Consent Decree, which forced the studios to get rid of their theaters; how the moguls dealt with their collapsing empires in the television era; and the end of the conventional studio assembly line, where producers had rosters of directors, writers, and actors under their command.

Barry Keith Grant read several drafts of the book during its production, and wrote that “in this accessible and engaging history of the moguls who made the studios successful [. . .] Dixon does a terrific job of getting inside the heads of the bosses who built their studios into major entertainment factories.”

The book should be out in September, so you can read it for yourself then.

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Posted in Books, Film Business, Film History, Film Industry, History, Humanities, Inside Stuff, Publishing | Comments Off

Media History Digital Library

Friday, April 27th, 2012

Click here, or on the image above, to access the Media History Digital Library.

I have blogged on this site before, but it just keeps growing and getting better. The archive features extensive runs of several important trade papers and fan magazines, including Business Screen (1938-1973); The Film Daily (1918-1936); International Photographer (1929-1941); Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (1930-1949); Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (1950-1954); The Educational Screen (1922-1962); Moving Picture World (1912-1918); Photoplay (1917-1940); Radio Age: Research, Manufacturing, Communications, Broadcasting, Television (1942-1957); Radio Broadcast (1922-1930) and other publications.

As the site notes, “the periodicals in this collection chart the studio system during its rise, the transition to sound, and Great Depression years. The periodicals present a variety of points of view within the industry, from the production-oriented Hollywood Reporter to the exhibitor-oriented publication Harrison’s Reports, a ‘reviewing service free from the influence of film advertising.’ The cornerstone of this collection is a two decade run of The Film Daily, a leading motion picture trade paper published out of New York that reached participants involved in all aspects of the movie business. The Film Daily includes innumerable reviews of features and shorts, news reports from throughout the industry, occasional features stories, and hundreds of full-page ads.”

Worth checking out as an extremely valuable research source.

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Posted in Film Business, Film Criticism, Film History, Film Industry, History, Humanities, Inside Stuff, Life, Publishing, Reviews, Television | Comments Off

Film Noir: The Directors

Saturday, April 21st, 2012

I have a new essay on the noir films of director Robert Wise, just out in this excellent new collection edited by noir specialists Alain Silver and James Ursini, Film Noir: The Directors, published by Limelight Editions.

Here’s the first paragraph of my essay:

“Robert Wise’s case as a noir director is a curious one; Wise seemingly freelanced throughout his career, and never really came down decisively in any one genre, swinging all the way from musicals to horror films, with every possible stop in-between. His youth was marked by constant movie going, and he soon got tired of the limited opportunities offered by his hometown, and trekking to Hollywood, got a job in RKO’s cutting department. At first an apprentice, working on music and dialogue tracks, and then a full-fledged editor, Wise rapidly rose through the ranks of the studio hierarchy, and by 1939 was cutting complete “A” level features, such as William Dieterle’s version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and in 1940, Dorothy Arzner’s feminist tract Dance Girl Dance.

In 1941, however, Wise’s skillful editing came to the attention of Orson Welles, fresh off his 1938 War of the Worlds Mercury Theatre radio broadcast, which memorably caused panic in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut tri-state area, with its vivid depiction of a Martian invasion in Grover’s Mills, New Jersey, presented as a news broadcast in real time, a format that completely fooled a rather unsophisticated radio audience. Welles, who has been working in radio as an actor on series such as The Shadow since the mid 1930s, and before that as a director and impresario for a variety of outré Broadway productions, was rewarded with a three-picture deal at RKO for his audacious success, and sequestered himself in a screening room at the studio, watching everything from newsreels and travelogues to John Ford westerns, often in the company of the gifted Gregg Toland, a brilliant director of cinematography who was part of the RKO studio staff. For Welles, Wise edited Citizen Kane (1941), a film that surely needs no introduction to readers of this volume, and which, along with Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the Third Floor (1940, and also an RKO film), heralded the dawn of the noir era.”

If you want more, you’ll have to buy the book.

As one ecstatic reader of the volume noted of Film Noir: The Directors on the Amazon.com website, “some 20+ directors are profiled & discussed with many examples of their works and overall style. This book is well-produced, slick looking with generous illustrations and lots of informative film analysis. A gold mine for fans of bleak character driven tales of fatalistic heroes hopelessly lost in a dark world of never-ending shadows. Film noir heaven (can one possibly exist?) doesn’t get any better than this. Absolutely essential.”

It’s a real honor to be included here, and Alain Silver and James Ursini are holding a book signing in Los Angeles to mark the publication of Film Noir: The Directors at the famed Larry Edmunds Bookshop, located at 6644 Hollywood Boulevard, on April 28th at 5PM, followed by a screening of Slaughter on Tenth Avenue and Edge of the City, with a special appearance by noir actress Julie Adams at The Egyptian Theater, as part of their noir series for the American Cinematheque.

I’ve seen a number of films at the Egyptian, and the projection — still 35mm, thankfully — is perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. If you live in the Los Angeles area, stop by Larry Edmunds Bookshop, pick up a copy of Film Noir: The Directors, and then walk down a few blocks to the Egyptian theater, located at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard, for a night of pure noir on the street of broken dreams.

Posted in Books, Festivals, Film Noir, Inside Stuff, Pop Culture, Publishing | Comments Off

A Night to Remember (1958)

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

Click here, or on the image above, to see the trailer for A Night to Remember.

With James Cameron’s 3-D reconstruction of his version of the Titanic disaster about to hit theaters, Dave Kehr in the New York Times reminds us of a far superior film, Roy Ward Baker’s A Night to Remember, of which he notes that: “the most sober in tone and historically reliable of the Titanic films remains Roy Ward Baker’s British production of 1958 A Night to Remember. An early release of the Criterion Collection, the film has now been reissued, in Blu-ray and standard definition, from a thoroughly restored print, accompanied by a generous selection of supplementary material.

Working from a screenplay by his frequent collaborator, the suspense novelist Eric Ambler, and a best-selling book by Walter Lord, Baker solidifies the metaphor long attached to the Titanic story, turning the doomed ship into a microcosm, a representation in miniature of a society about to submerge itself into the horrors of World War I.

Previous versions emphasized the gallantry of the upper classes, as gentlemen in impeccable evening clothes stepped aside to allow their magnificently bejeweled wives and towheaded children to climb into the lifeboats. (The German version, inventing a subplot that Mr. Cameron’s film would pick up on, turned the ship into a gigantic engine of runaway capitalism, pushed beyond its capacities by a greedy company chairman.) But Baker, making his film in the first full flowering of the new Great Britain that came into being with the end of the war and the collapse of imperialism, makes his hero, Kenneth More’s Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller, an upright representative of the emerging middle class and managerial caste.

The captain of the ship (Laurence Naismith) is a befuddled man of aristocratic mien and regal dimensions whose resemblance to Edward VII does not seem coincidental; the chairman of the White Star Line (Frank Lawton) is a blustery businessman whose pride turns to shame as his enterprise literally begins to sink and he takes downcast refuge among the women and children drifting away in lifeboats. Only Lightoller and his fellow midlevel officers keep their wits about them, calmly directing an evacuation that they know will be too late for many of the passengers and perhaps themselves.

With A Night to Remember the welfare state Britain of 1958 looks back on the decaying imperial kingdom of 1912, and the film is full of pointed observations about class. Baker gives far more emphasis than Cameron to the plight of the lower-class passengers in steerage, trapped below by iron gates preventing their access to the first-class decks and potential rescue.”

There’s also a superb essay on the film by film critic and historian Michael Sragow, “A Night to Remember: Nearer, My Titanic to Thee,” which you can read by clicking here.

I was lucky enough to interview Roy Ward Baker at length in his house in London on this, and the rest of his work as a director, which also included the early Marilyn Monroe vehicle Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), and he described in detail how he shot the film, using a full-scale model of the Titanic mounted on hydraulic lifts, and the copious use of historical material to keep the film as accurate as possible. While everyone else is flocking to the theaters to see Cameron’s version, perhaps others might want to see this splendid, tragic film, which concentrates not so much on spectacle, but rather on the human drama attending this disaster. It’s a much more resonant piece of work.

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When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA

Sunday, March 25th, 2012

Adam Abraham’s book on the rise and fall of UPA, the pioneering “limited animation” studio that dominated more adventurous cartoon production in the 1950s and 60s, is both a cautionary tale, and a celebration of the people who founded UPA, mostly as a response to the rigid cookie-cutter approach espoused by the Disney studios. UPA’s founders, Zachary Schwartz, David Hilberman, and Stephen Bosustow set up shop as an alternative way of making cartoons, and soon had a hit with the nearsighted Mr. Magoo, and Gerald Mc Boing Boing, creating cartoons that pleased both the public and the critics.

As Fred Patten notes in his review of the book in Animation World Network, “Abraham’s history of United Productions of America covers much more than that studio alone.  In his picture of how UPA grew out of the Disney strike of 1941, he describes the Disney studio of 1938-1941 in considerable detail and the 1941 strike in great detail [. . .] Most of the animators (or animation artists of varying technical ranks) who joined the strikers were among Disney’s younger artists, who had a modern art education.  The wrap-up of the strike required Disney to rehire the strikers, but they were made to feel unwelcome or soon re-fired.  By the end of 1941 there were hundreds of young animators looking for new jobs.  Abraham argues persuasively that this was both why the Disney studio lost its willingness to experiment with new art styles after the early 1940s, and why there were so many animators interested in modern art at other studios during the 1940s.”

Abraham is an excellent writer, and he also created the book’s inviting design, which is lavishly illustrated with behind-the-scenes photographs, drawings, and animation cels, and he doesn’t stint on limning the darker side of the UPA story; how many of the animators who worked there came to untimely ends, how Disney’s continued hostility to the studio (particularly when it began picking up Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Subject) also took a toll, and how the changing marketplace forced UPA to cut the running time of their cartoons to the bone, and eventually move exclusively to television.

I’ve never really been a Mr. Magoo fan — it seems like a one joke premise that quickly wears thin — but Abraham’s book is really more about the studio itself, and its artistic and historic impact, than its most famous character. Behind UPA’s creation was the search for personal and creative freedom, and as Disney himself noted of the rise of UPA, “once a man’s tasted freedom, he will never be content to be a slave.” Working for Disney was doing what the boss wanted, and nothing else; at UPA, a whole new style was forged, which would prove, in the long run, to be a harbinger of the future of animation.

Click here, or on the image above, to see a sample of UPA’s work.

Zachary Schwartz, David Hilberman, and Stephen Bosustow, the founders of UPA, at work in the studio.

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Posted in Animated Cartoons, Books, Film Business, Film Criticism, Film History, Film Industry, Pop Culture, Publishing, Reviews | Comments Off

The Black Hole of the Camera by J.J. Murphy

Saturday, March 24th, 2012

You would think that everything possible that could be written about the films of Andy Warhol has been written, but you’d be wrong.

J.J. Murphy’s new book, The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol, is a significant contribution to the literature on the artist’s film work, offering, at least to my mind, the most detailed and accurate readings of his classic films of the 1960s, up to and including such later works as Blue Movie. As the book’s press release notes, “Andy Warhol, one of the twentieth century’s major visual artists, was a prolific filmmaker who made hundreds of films, many of them—Sleep, Empire, Blow Job, The Chelsea Girls, and Blue Movie—seminal but misunderstood contributions to the history of American cinema. In the first comprehensive study of Warhol’s films, J.J. Murphy provides a detailed survey and analysis. He discusses Warhol’s early films, sound portraits, involvement with multimedia (including The Velvet Underground), and sexploitation films, as well as the more commercial works he produced for Paul Morrissey in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Murphy’s close readings of the films illuminate Warhol’s brilliant collaborations with writers, performers, other artists, and filmmakers. The book further demonstrates how Warhol’s use of the camera transformed the events being filmed and how his own unique brand of psychodrama created dramatic tension within the works.”

Critical approval is already coming in: “Those of us who care about independent cinema have always struggled with Andy Warhol’s massive oeuvre. At long last J.J. Murphy, who has spent a lifetime making contributions to independent cinema, has undertaken the Herculean task of helping us understand Warhol’s development as a filmmaker. Murphy’s precision, stamina, and passion are evident in this examination of an immense body of work—as is his ability to report what he has discovered in a readable and informative manner. The Black Hole of the Camera helps us to re-conceptualize Warhol’s films not simply as mythic pranks, but as the diverse creations of a prolific and inventive film artist.”—Scott MacDonald, author of A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

“In his careful firsthand study of Andy Warhol’s films, J. J. Murphy contributes to the ongoing revision of the enduring but misplaced perceptions of Warhol as a passive, remote, and one-dimensional artist. Murphy’s discussions of authorship, the relation of content to form, the role of “dramatic conflict,” and the complexity of Warhol’s camera work show these perceptions to be stubborn myths. The Black Hole of the Camera offers a clear sense of the nuances of Warhol’s fascinating, prolific, and influential activities in filmmaking.”—Reva Wolf, author of Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s.

As someone who was tangentially involved in the Factory scene in the late 1960s, the book brings back the energy and passion of the era with deft and telling detail, and is in every respect a remarkable job of historical recovery and careful analysis, with numerous frame blow-ups throughout, many of which are in color. Murphy’s book brings back to life an era which is almost beyond authentic recall, and demonstrates why Warhol’s films still matter today, and were, and remain, so influential. Essential reading.

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Posted in Career Retrospectives, Criticism, Experimental Cinema, Film Criticism, Film History, Film Theory, History, Inside Stuff, Pop Culture, Publishing, Reviews | Comments Off

New Book — Death of the Moguls

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Here’s the cover of my latest book, Death of the Moguls: The End of Classical Hollywood, from Rutgers University Press, published Fall, 2012.

“In this accessible and engaging history of the moguls who made the studios successful through sheer force of personality, Dixon does a terrific job of getting inside the heads of the bosses who built their studios into major entertainment factories.” —Barry Keith Grant, Brock University

“Death of the Moguls is a detailed assessment of the last days of the “rulers of film.” Wheeler Winston Dixon examines the careers of such moguls as  Harry Cohn at Columbia, Louis B. Mayer at MGM, Jack L. Warner at Warner Brothers, Adolph Zukor at Paramount, and Herbert J. Yates at Republic in the dying days of their once-mighty empires. He asserts that the sheer force of personality and business acumen displayed by these moguls made the studios successful; their deaths or departures hastened the studios’ collapse. Almost none had a plan for leadership succession; they simply couldn’t imagine a world in which they didn’t reign supreme.

Covering 20th Century-Fox, Selznick International Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, Paramount Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, Republic Pictures, Monogram Pictures and Columbia Pictures, Dixon briefly introduces the studios and their respective bosses in the late 1940s, just before the collapse, then chronicles the last productions from the studios and their eventual demise in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

He details such game-changing factors as the de Havilland decision, which made actors free agents; the Consent Decree, which forced the studios to get rid of their theaters; how the moguls dealt with their collapsing empires in the television era; and the end of the conventional studio assembly line, where producers had rosters of directors, writers, and actors under their command.

Complemented by rare, behind-the-scenes stills, Death of the Moguls is a compelling narrative on the end of the studio system at each of the Hollywood majors as television, the de Havilland decision, and the Consent Decree forced studios to slash payrolls, make the shift to color, 3D, and CinemaScope in desperate last-ditch efforts to save their kingdoms. The aftermath for some was the final switch to television production and, in some cases, the distribution of independent film.”

WHEELER WINSTON DIXON is the James Ryan Endowed Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. His many books include 21st Century Hollywood: Movies in the Era of Transformation (co-authored by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster), A History of Horror, and Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia (all Rutgers University Press).

Paperback: 978-0-8135-5377-1

Cloth: 978-0-8135-5376-4

E-book: 978-0-8135-5378-8

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“A History of Horror” Named an “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2011 by Choice, The Library Journal

Saturday, January 14th, 2012

Click here, or on the image above, for a brief video on horror films.

My book A History of Horror (Rutgers UP) has just been selected by the prestigious journal Choice as one of the Outstanding Academic Titles of the Year for 2011.

As Choice notes, the list of Outstanding Academic Books “comprise[s] less than 9 percent of the titles reviewed during 2011 and 2.5 percent of those submitted during that same time span, [ensuring that] these exceptional titles are truly the ‘best of the best.’” In addition, A History of Horror will be released as an audiobook by Redwood Audiobooks in 2012, and has just gone into a second printing from Rutgers.

Ever since horror leapt from popular fiction to the silver screen in the late 1890s, viewers have experienced fear and pleasure in exquisite combination. Wheeler Winston Dixon’s A History of Horror is the only book to offer a comprehensive survey of this ever-popular film genre.

Arranged by decades, with outliers and franchise films overlapping some years, this one-stop sourcebook unearths the historical origins of characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman and their various incarnations in film from the silent era to comedic sequels. A History of Horror explores how the horror film fits into the Hollywood studio system and how its enormous success in American and European culture expanded globally over time.

Dixon examines key periods in the horror film—in which the basic precepts of the genre were established, then burnished into conveniently reliable and malleable forms, and then, after collapsing into parody, rose again and again to create new levels of intensity and menace. A History of Horror, supported by rare stills from classic films, brings fifty timeless horror films into frightfully clear focus, zooms in on today’s top horror web sites, and champions the stars, directors, and subgenres that make the horror film so exciting and popular with contemporary audiences. More than 50 rare stills from classic examples of the genre illustrate the text.

“This is an excellent survey of horror movies. The author, a veteran film historian, takes the reader back to the beginning, when, in the first three decades of the twentieth century, such directors as Georges Melies, F. W. Murnau, and Paul Wegener were defining not only the look of a genre but also cinema itself. The period between 1930 and the late 1940s saw the rise of the classic Universal Studios characters —Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy—and the actors who played them: Karloff, Lugosi, Chaney Jr. By the end of the 1940s, horror was dying, “killed by a plethora of poorly made sequels.” But never fear: the period between the late ‘40s and 1970 saw a massive resurgence, due in part to gimmicks (such as 3-D); low-budget quickies from the likes of Roger Corman, the wizard of the B movie; and the stylish resurrection of the classic Universal monsters by Britain’s Hammer Film Productions. This survey, which takes the reader right up to the present, is full of fascinating information and is delivered in an accessible manner. Required reading for horror fans.” — David Pitt, Booklist, August 4, 2010

“Dixon surveys the development of the horror genre from the earliest Frankenstein and Dracula films through the decades of classics by Hammer studios, William Castle, Roger Corman, and Val Lewton. Dixon covers movies seldom found in other histories and more modern, international titles such as Wolf Creek, Black Water, and The Grudge. The endurance of horror, trends like remakes and sequels, and such popular franchises as Child’s Play and Halloween are also discussed. In the final chapter, Dixon analyzes the decline of modern horror owing to desensitized audiences, graphic gore, violence, and lack of solid plot lines or character development. Lists of the best horror websites as well as the 50 movies covered round out this volume [. . .] This concise overview is an informative and entertaining read [. . .] Recommended for all libraries.” —Rosalind Dayen, Library Journal, September 16, 2010.

“In less than 250 pages, author Wheeler Winston Dixon manages to cover the trends and sub-genres of film horror from 1896 to 2009. Bonuses include a list of top horror sites, a list of fifty classic films, and a pretty wonderful bibliography. Dixon offers analysis without lapsing into academic language. He also provides the occasional behind-the-scenes anecdote. The main purpose of A History of Horror, however, seems to be delineating themes and trends as they work their way through each generation of horror filmmaking. At this the author excels, and the result is much more useful to fans than the clumsy attempts at thematic links provided by Amazon and Netflix. I found several titles that were completely unfamiliar to me and added them to my ‘watch instantly’ list [. . . ] Well written and well researched [. . . ] and offering an enjoyable overview of more than one hundred years of cinema, A History of Horror is a quick, delightful read. If you appreciate lucid, informed, but not stuffy analysis, here’s your guide.” — S. P. Miskowski, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, November 5, 2010

“[Dixon's] book is a page-turner!  It is a fabulous piece of work.  A breathtaking panorama, written with wit and candor, showing how the horror film has shaped cinema from its the origins of the genre until now.  I am really thrilled by the way A History of Horror refuses to fetishize the horror film at the same time it brings into view the complexities of history informing the genre.  The very critical assessment of recent films in the final pages is a reminder to readers and filmmakers that, as the author has done himself, they would do well to take keen note of its rich and variegated past in view of its reinvention.” –Tom Conley, Harvard University

“Rich with excellent illustrations and clever anecdotes, this book will appeal to fans of horror as well as film students and scholars interested in a readable overview of the history of the genre.” — Rebecca Bell-Metereau, author of Hollywood Androgyny

“There is a wealth of research material here for anyone willing to follow Dixon’s many threads [. . .] the author offers generous and moving portraits of three American giants of horror: Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney, Jr. [. . .] Dixon’s book is illustrated with a sprinkling of photos from the classic moments of the horror film genre. We see Lugosi as Count Dracula, Karloff as the Frankenstein monster, Linda Blair looking possessed, Sissy Spacek covered with blood in Carrie, an unusually maniacal Jack Nicholson from The Shining, and more gore-bedecked actors than one could shake a skull at.” — Martin A. David, New York Journal of Books

“The metric ton of movies listed in Wheeler Winston Dixon’s A History of Horror could have easily overwhelmed. However, thanks to witty and clever summations, as well as his ability to group films in such a way as to provide an excellent overview, the book is a breeze for this horror fan . . . even a casual reader will find themselves needing to keep a notepad handy, so as to keep track of everything you’ll want to search out.” –Nick Spacek, Rock Star Journalist

“Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.” —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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About the Author

Wheeler Winston Dixon

Wheeler Winston Dixon, Ryan Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is an internationally recognized scholar and writer of film history, theory and criticism. He is the author of numerous books and more than 70 articles on film and appears regularly in national media outlets discussing film and culture trends. Frame by Frame is a collection of his thoughts on a number of those topics. To contact Prof. Dixon for an interview, reach him at 402.472.6064 or wdixon1@unl.edu.

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National media outlets featured and cited Wheeler Winston Dixon on a number of topics in the past month. Find out more on the website http://newsroom.unl.edu/inthenews/

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