"Play it again, Sam" is the motto of cult film enthusiasts, who will watch their favorite movie over and over, "beyond all reason." What is the appeal of cult movies? Why do fans turn up in droves at midnight movies or sit through the same three-hanky classics from Hollywood's golden era? These are some of the questions J. P. Telotte and twelve other noted film scholars consider in this groundbreaking study of the cult film.The book identifies two basic types of cult films—older Ho...

**Finalist, 2021 Bram Stoker Awards (**Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction)The first collection of essays to address Satan’s ubiquitous and popular appearances in filmLucifer and cinema have been intertwined since the origins of the medium. As humankind’s greatest antagonist and the incarnation of pure evil, the cinematic devil embodies our own culturally specific anxieties and desires, reflecting moviegoers’ collective conceptions of good ...

Long before flying saucers, robot monsters, and alien menaces invaded our movie screens in the 1950s, there was already a significant but overlooked body of cinematic science fiction. Through analyses of early twentieth-century animations, comic strips, and advertising, Animating the Science Fiction Imagination unearths a significant body of cartoon science fiction from the pre-World War II era that appeared at approximately the same time the genre was itself struggling to find a...

A historical account of the context, impact, and legacy of one of the most successful series in American television history.This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company's network television series Disneyland/The Wonderful World of Color. The series, part of Walt Disney's quest to re-create American entertainment, premiered October 27, 1954 on ABC and was the longest-lived program in television history. Over the years, Walt Disney's visions have e...

Embark on an odyssey through the series that galvanized the television sci-fi anthology genre.In the wake of the juvenile space operas of the early 1950s, a groundbreaking series debuted and paved the way for one of viewers' favorite genres today: adult-oriented science fiction. Science Fiction Theatre aired with a fresh anthology-style narrative from the vision of veteran producer Ivan Tors and with compelling narration by Truman Bradley. Created by indus...

How science fiction films in the 1950s were marketed and helped create the broader genre itself.For Hollywood, the golden age of science fiction was also an age of anxiety. Amid rising competition, fluid audience habits, and increasing government regulation, studios of the 1950s struggled to make and sell the kinds of films that once were surefire winners. These conditions, the leading media scholar J. P. Telotte argues, catalyzed the incredible rise of science fic...

What impact did the new art of film have on the development of another new art, the emerging science fiction genre, during the pre- and early post-World War II era? Focusing on such popular pulp magazines as Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, and Wonder Stories, this book traces this early relationship between film and literature through four common features: stories that involve film or the film industry; film-related advertising; editorial matters and readers' letters...

The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas provides novel insight into the rapidly developing genre of science fiction. In contemporary film, science fiction is a key locus both for displaying and for imaginatively addressing social and cultural issues. Today, popular modes of this cinema have transformed the nature of the genre, directly incorporating pressing concerns about racial tensions, the environment, and gender inequality, among other cultural and social issues. T...

Robert McKee's screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress and putting major screenwriting careers back on track. Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience.In Story, McKee expands...

There are so many fantastic authors and great books out there that sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin. Start Here solves that problem; it tells you how to read your way into 25 amazing authors from a wide range of genres--from classics to contemporary fiction to comics. Each chapter presents an author, explains why you might want to try them, and lays out a 3- or 4-book reading sequence designed to help you experience fully what they have to offer. It’s a fun, accessible, and infor...

Suddenly, comics are everywhere: a newly matured art form, filling bookshelves with brilliant, innovative work and shaping the ideas and images of the rest of contemporary culture. In Reading Comics, critic Douglas Wolk shows us why this is and how it came to be. Wolk illuminates the most dazzling creators of modern comics-from Alan Moore to Alison Bechdel to Dave Sim to Chris Ware -- and introduces a critical theory that explains where each fits into the pantheon of art. Read...

Hollywood moviemaking is one of the constants of American life, but how much has it changed since the glory days of the big studios? David Bordwell argues that the principles of visual storytelling created in the studio era are alive and well, even in today’s bloated blockbusters. American filmmakers have created a durable tradition—one that we should not be ashamed to call artistic, and one that survives in both mainstream entertainment and niche-marketed indie cinema. Bordwell traces the...