The horror and psychological denial of our mortality, along with the corruptibility of our flesh, are persistent themes in drama. Body horror films have intensified these themes in increasingly graphic terms. The aesthetic of body horror has its origins in the ideas of the Marquis de Sade and the existential philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, all of whom demonstrated that we have just cause to be anxious about our physical reality and its existence in the world.

"Magick" as defined by Aleister Crowley is "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." This book explores expressions of movie magick in classic occult films like Hammer's adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out and modern occult revival movies. These films are inspired by the aesthetics of fin de siecle decadence, the symbolist writings of Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Wagnerian music drama, the Faust legend, the pseudo-science of theosophy, 1...

Since the early days of silent film accompaniment, the piano has played an integral part in the history of cinema. Film's fascination with the piano, both in soundtracks and onscreen as a status symbol and icon of popular romanticism, offers a revealing opportunity to chart the changing perception of the instrument. From Mozart to Elton John, this book surveys the cultural history of the piano through the instrument's cinematic functions. Composer biopics, such as A Song to Remember

English actor Dirk Bogarde dominated the films in which he starred. Exploring the tension between his matinee idol appeal and his own closeted sexuality, this book focuses on the wide variety of genres in which he worked, and the highly charged interaction between his life and his roles.Beginning with an expose of gay life in post-war Britain and his relationship with partner/manager, Anthony Forwood, each chapter explores Bogarde's performances by genre--his juvenile delinquent mo...

Edward Bulwer-Lytton--who coined the terms "the great unwashed" and "the pen is mightier than the sword"--is best remembered for persuading Dickens to change the ending of Great Expectations; but Lord Lytton was a prolific and influential novelist in his own right, inspiring Edgar Allan Poe, H. Rider Haggard and Madame Blavatsky, among others. His radicalism was applauded by William Godwin, the father of both Mary Shelley and the anarchist movement, and his ideas about power fores...

British literature often refers to pagan and classical themes through richly detailed landscapes that suggest more than a mere backdrop of physical features. The myth-inspired writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Algernon Blackwood, Aleister Crowley, Lord Dunsany and even Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows informed later British films and television dramas such as The Owl Service (1969-70), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), Ex...

Edgar Allan Poe exerted a profound influence on many aspects of 20th century culture, and continues to inspire composers, filmmakers, writers and artists. Popularly thought of as a "horror" writer, Poe was also a philosophical aesthete, a satirist, a hoaxer, a psychologist and a prophet of the anxieties and preoccupations of the modern world. Alphabetically arranged, this book explores Poe's major works both in their own right and in terms of their impact on others, including Baudelaire, w...

Hammer Film's is justly famous for Gothic horror but the company also excelled in the psychological thriller. Influenced by Henri-Georges Clouzot and Alfred Hitchcock, Hammer created its own approach to this genre in some of the company's very best films.This book takes a chronological, film-by-film approach to all of Hammer's thrillers. Well-known classics such as Seth Holt's The Nanny (1965) and Taste of Fear (1961) are discussed, together with less well known b...

Occult traditions have inspired musical ingenuity for centuries. From the Pythagorean concept of a music of the spheres to the occult subculture of 20th-century pop and rock, music has often attempted to express mystical states of mind, cosmic harmony, the demonic and the divine--nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the music for films such as The Mephisto Waltz, The Devil Rides Out, Star Trek, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Omen and The Exorcist.This survey...