Merchants of Menace

Even though horror has been a key component of media output for almost a century, the genre’s industrial character remains under explored and poorly understood. Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema responds to a major void in film history by shedding much-needed new light on the economic dimensions of one of the world’s most enduring audiovisual forms. Given horror cuts across budgetary categories, industry sectors, national film cultures, and media, Merchants of Menace also promises to expand understandings of the economics of cinema generally. Covering 1930-present, this groundbreaking collection boasts fourteen original chapters from world-leading experts taking as their focus such diverse topics as early zombie pictures, post-WWII chillers, Civil Rights-Era marketing, Hollywood literary adaptations, Australian exploitation, ＂torture-porn＂ Auteurs, and twenty-first-century remakes.

Richard Nowell teaches American Cinema at the American Studies Department of Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He is the author of Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle (2011), he has served as a guest editor of the journal Iluminace, and he has published articles in several journals including the New Review of Film & Television Studies, Post Script, the Journal of Film and Video, InMedia, and Cinema Journal.