January 14, 2023
Nothing To Fear: Alfred Hitchcock And The Wrong Men by Jason Abramowitz
Summary: In 1956, Alfred Hitchcock focused his lens on an issue that cuts to the heart of our criminal justice system: the risk of wrongful conviction. The result was The Wrong Man, a wrenching and largely overlooked drama based on the real-life arrest of Queens musician Christopher “Manny” Balestrero for two robberies he did not commit.
With documentary-like authenticity, Hitchcock, and his team meticulously re-created Manny’s journey through the corridors of justice and the devastating effect of the arrest on his wife, Rose. In so doing, the director cast a damning light on New York’s history of mistaken identity cases. The Balestreros fell victim to the same rush to judgment and suggestive eyewitness identification procedures that had doomed innocent defendants in earlier cases. Their ordeal is part of a larger story of the state’s failure to reckon with its role in other wrongful prosecutions in the first half of the twentieth century.
Attorney Jason Isralowitz tells this story in a revelatory book that situates both the Balestrero case and its cinematic counterpart in their historical context. Drawing from archival records, Isralowitz delivers a gripping account of Manny’s trial and new insights into an errant prosecution. He then examines how Hitchcock fused striking visual motifs with social realism to create a timeless work of art, with memorable performances by Henry Fonda and Vera Miles. The film bears witness to issues that animate the contemporary innocence movement, including the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, the need for police lineup reforms, and the dangers of investigative “tunnel vision.”
A genre-bending work of true crime and film history, Nothing to Fear: Alfred Hitchcock and the Wrong Men is a must-read not only for fans of Hitchcock, but also for anyone interested in the history and causes of wrongful convictions.
Paperback: $24.99
Publisher: Fayetteville Mafia Press (January 14, 2023)
Language: English
Paperback: 250 pages
ISBN-10: 1949024423
ISBN-13: 978-1949024425
Kindle ASIN: B09QS7KKZ2
Kindle Pages: 474-pages
https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Fear-Alfred-Hitchcock-Wrong/dp/1949024423/
***** ***** *****
January 26, 2023
The Twilight Zone (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Anne Washburn (Adapter), Rod Serling (Author), Charles Beaumont (Author), Richard Matheson (Author)
$14.95
Between light and shadow, science and superstition, fear and knowledge is a dimension of imagination. An area we call the Twilight Zone.
Adapted by Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns) and directed by Olivier Award-winner Richard Jones, this world premiere production of the acclaimed CBS Television Series The Twilight Zone lands on stage for the first time in its history. Or its present. Or its future.
Stage magic and fantasy unite as the ordinary becomes extraordinary.
About the Author:
Rod Serling (1924-1975) was born in Syracuse, N.Y. and grew up in Binghamton. While a student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Serling sold his first three national radio scripts – and even his first television script. From 1951-1955, more than 70 of his television scripts were produced, garnering both critical and public acclaim. Full-scale success came on Wednesday, January 12th, 1955 with the live airing of his first Kraft Television Theatre script Patterns. Deemed a “creative triumph” by critics, and the
winner of the first of Serling’s six Emmy awards, the acclaimed production was actually remounted live to air a second time on February 9th, 1955 – an unprecedented event. Serling went on to work for CBS’ illustrious Playhouse 90, for which he crafted 90-minute dramas including the multiple-Emmy Award-winning Requiem For A Heavyweight. Serling shocked many of his fans in 1957 when he left Playhouse 90 to create a science-fiction series he called The Twilight Zone. The show debuted in 1959 and CBS
would air 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone, an astonishing 92 of which were written by Serling over its five-year run.
Charles Beaumont (1929-1967) was a prolific American author of speculative fiction, including short stories in the horror and science fiction subgenres. He is perhaps best remembered as the writer of many classic Twilight Zone episodes (many of them based upon his own short stories), and also penned feature film screenplays, among them 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Intruder (based on his own novel) and The Masque of the Red Death. As best-selling novelist Dean R. Koontz has said, “[Charles Beaumont was] one of the seminal influences on writers of the fantastic and macabre.”
Richard Matheson (1926-2013) is the author of many classic novels and short stories. He wrote in a variety of genres including terror, fantasy, horror, paranormal, suspense, science fiction and western. In addition to books, he wrote prolifically for television (including The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Star Trek) and numerous feature films. Many of Matheson’s novels and stories have been made into movies including I Am Legend, Somewhere in Time, and Shrinking Man. His many awards include the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards for Lifetime Achievement, the Hugo Award, Edgar Award, Spur Award for Best Western Novel, Writer’s Guild awards, and in 2010 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
Anne Washburn‘s plays include 10 out of 12, Antlia Pneumatica, Apparition, The Communist Dracula Pageant, A Devil At Noon, I Have Loved Strangers, The Internationalist, The Ladies, Little Bunny Foo Foo, Mr. Burns, Shipwreck, The Small, an adaption of The Twilight Zone, and trans adaptations of Euripides’ Orestes & Iphigenia in Aulis. Her work has been produced nationally, and internationally. Awards include a Whiting, a Guggenheim, an Alpert Award, a PEN/Laura Pels award, a NYFA Fellowship, a Time Warner Fellowship, Susan Smith Blackburn finalist twice, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo.
Publisher: Methuen Drama (January 26, 2023)
Language: English
Paperback: 128 pages
ISBN-10: 135037430X
ISBN-13: 978-1350374300
https://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Zone-Oberon-Modern-Plays/dp/135037430X/
***** ***** *****
February 10, 2023
A History of Horror, 2nd Edition by Wheeler Winston Dixon
$24.95
Summary: 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 fully revised and updated A History of Horror is still 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. In covering the last decade, this new edition includes coverage of the resurgence of the genre, covering the swath of new groundbreaking horror films directed by women, Black and queer horror films, and a new international wave in body horror films.
A History of Horror explores how the horror film fits into the Hollywood studio system, how the distribution and exhibition of horror films have changed in a post-COVID world, 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 banished 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 over sixty 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.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press; New edition, New edition (February 10, 2023)
Language: English
Paperback: 298 pages
ISBN-10: 197883358X
ISBN-13: 978-1978833586
https://www.amazon.com/History-Horror-Wheeler-Winston-Dixon/dp/197883358X/
***** ***** *****
April 11, 2023
The Making of Creepshow 2 by Lee Karr
$26.95
Summary: Released in 1987, Laurel Entertainment’s Creepshow 2 is the comedy horror anthology film written by George A. Romero and directed by Michael Gornick. Based on material from Stephen King, the film tells the stories of a wooden Native American statue come to life, a mysterious lake monster, and a relentless and vengeful hitchhiker.
Beginning with a foreword by the film’s producer David Ball, who praises Lee Karr’s ‘spectacular detail’, this book chronicles every stage of the making of the sequel to George A. Romero’s original Creepshow. Lee Karr first sets the pre-production scene, before providing a detailed diary of production in the third chapter. This takes the reader through the shooting of the film day by day, with the help of production files, scripts, storyboard art and handwritten notes from the director himself. Karr also explores the film’s release and life after Creepshow 2, creating a fuller picture of the film and its legacy.
Lee Karr stays true to his previous book on George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead with his exhaustive research and an involving sense of passion. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished stories and exclusive interviews with actors, costume designers, stunt coordinators and other members of the cast and crew, the reader is given an access-all-areas pass to the making of the film, leaving no stone unturned. Presenting an impressive overview of the film-making process as well as providing astonishing detail, Karr offers the definitive account of the making of Creepshow 2 and brings the film to life in a way that no other book has ever done before. And now, with seasons 2 and 3 of the Creepshow TV series set to air in 2021, an exploration of the cult film that came to inspire the hit series has never felt so relevant.
Publisher: Plexus Publishing (April 11, 2023)
Language: English
Paperback: 320 pages
ISBN-10: 0859655725
ISBN-13: 978-0859655729
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Creepshow-2-Lee-Karr/dp/0859655725/
***** ***** *****
April 17, 2023
Bloodstained Narratives: The Giallo Film in Italy and Abroad (Horror and Monstrosity Studies Series) Paperback
by Matthew Edwards (Editor), Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (Editor)
$30.00
Summary: Contributions by Donald L. Anderson, Brian Brems, Eric Brinkman, Matthew Edwards, Brenda S. Gardenour Walter, Andrew Grossman, Lisa Haegele, Gavin F. Hurley, Mikel J. Koven, Sharon Jane Mee, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Émilie von Garan, Connor John Warden, and Sean Woodard
The giallo (yellow) film cycle, characterized by its bloody murders and blending of high art and cinematic sleaze, rose to prominence in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning with Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) and Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), giallo films influenced the American slasher films of the 1980s and attracted an increasingly large fandom.
In Bloodstained Narratives: The Giallo Film in Italy and Abroad, contributors explore understudied aspects of gialli. The chapters introduce readers to a wide range of films, including masterpieces from Argento and overlooked gems, all of them examined in close detail. Rather than understanding giallo as focalized exclusively in Italy in the 1970s, this collection explores the extension of gialli narratives abroad through different geographies and times. This book examines Italian gialli of the 1970s as well as American neo-gialli, French productions, Canadian horror films of the 1980s, and Asian rewritings of this “yellow” cycle of crime/horror films. Bloodstained Narratives also features interviews with two giallo film directors, including cult favorite Antonio Bido. Rather than fading from the cinematic stage, gialli serves as a precursor and steady accomplice to horror-thriller films through the twenty-first century.
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (April 17, 2023)
Language: English
Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN-10: 1496844467
ISBN-13: 978-1496844460
https://www.amazon.com/Bloodstained-Narratives-Giallo-Monstrosity-Studies/dp/1496844467/
***** ***** *****
April 20, 2023
Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema Paperback
by Catherine Lester (Author)
$39.95
Summary: Children and horror are often thought to be an incompatible meeting of audience and genre, beset by concerns that children will be corrupted or harmed through exposure to horror media. Nowhere is this tension more clear than in horror films for adults, where the demonic child villain is one of the genre’s most enduring tropes. However, horror for children is a unique category of contemporary Hollywood cinema in which children are addressed as an audience with specific needs, fears, and desires, and where child characters are represented as sympathetic protagonists whose encounters with the horrific lead to cathartic, subversive and productive outcomes.
Horror Films for Children examines the history, aesthetics, and generic characteristics of children’s horror films, and identifies the ‘horrific child’ as one of the defining features of the genre, where it is as much a staple as it is in adult horror but with vastly different representational, interpretative, and affective possibilities. Through analysis of case studies including blockbuster hits (Gremlins), cult favorites (The Monster Squad) and indie darlings (Coraline), Catherine Lester asks, what happens to the horror genre, and the horrific children it represents, when children are the target audience?
About the Author
Catherine Lester is Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research centers on the intersections between the horror genre and children’s culture. She is the author of the monograph Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2021), as well as chapters and articles on Disney Princess films, animated horror, and children’s horror television.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic (April 20, 2023)
Language: English
Paperback: 232 pages
ISBN-10: 1350265128
ISBN-13: 978-1350265127
https://www.amazon.com/Horror-Films-Children-Pleasure-American/dp/1350265128/
***** ***** *****