From early twentieth-century stag films to 1960s sexploitation pictures to the boom in 1970s “porno chic,” adult cinema's vintage forms are now being reappraised by a new generation of historians, fans, preservationists, and home video entrepreneurs-all of whom depend on and help shape the archive of film history. But what is the present-day allure of these artifacts that have since become eroticized more for their “pastness” than the explicit acts they show? And what are the political implications of recovering these rare but still-visceral films from a less “enlightened,” pre-feminist past? Drawing on media industry analysis, archival theory, and interviews with adult video personnel, David Church argues that vintage pornography retains its retrospective fascination precisely because these culturally denigrated texts have been so poorly preserved on political and aesthetic grounds. Through these films' ongoing moves from cultural emergence to concealment to rediscovery, the archive itself performs a “striptease,” permitting tangible contact with these corporeally stimulating forms at a moment when the overall physicality of media objects is undergoing rapid transformation. Disposable Passions explores the historiographic lessons that vintage pornography can teach us about which materials our society chooses to keep, and how a long-neglected genre is primed for serious rediscovery as more than mere autoerotic fodder.

This book explores horror film franchising from a broad range of interdisciplinary perspectives and considers the horror film’s role in the history of franchising and serial fiction. Comprising 12 chapters written by established and emerging scholars in the field, Horror Franchise Cinema redresses critical neglect toward horror film franchising by discussing the forces and factors governing its development across historical and contemporary terrain while also examining text and reception practices. Offering an introduction to the history of horror franchising, the chapters also examine key texts including Universal Studio monster films, Blumhouse production films, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Alien, I Spit on Your Grave, Let the Right One In, Italian zombie films, anthology films, and virtual reality. A significant contribution to studies of horror cinema and film/media franchising from the 1930s to the present day, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of film studies, media and cultural studies, franchise studies, political economy, audience/reception studies, horror studies, fan studies, genre studies, production cultures, and film histories.

The definitive look at one of the most important Black art films and original filmmakers of the 1970s. Bill Gunn's Ganja & Hess (1973) has across the decades attained a sizable cult following among African American cinema devotees, art house aficionados, and horror fans, thanks to its formal complexity and rich allegory. Pleading the Blood is the first full-length study of this cult classic. Ganja & Hess was withdrawn almost immediately after its New York premiere by its distributor because Gunn's poetic re-fashioning of the vampire genre allegedly failed to satisfy the firm's desire for a by-the-numbers "blaxploitation" horror flick for quick sell-off in the urban market. Its current status as one of the classic works of African American cinema has recently been confirmed by the Blu-ray release of its restored version, by its continued success in screenings at repertory houses, museums, and universities, and by an official remake, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014), directed by Spike Lee, one of the original picture's longtime champions. Pleading the Blood draws on Gunn's archived papers, screenplay drafts, and storyboards, as well as interviews with the living major creative participants to offer a comprehensive, absorbing account of the influential movie and its highly original filmmaker.

This volume examines fifty of the most important video games that have contributed significantly to the history, development, or culture of the medium, providing an overview of video games from their beginning to the present day. This volume covers a variety of historical periods and platforms, genres, commercial impact, artistic choices, contexts of play, typical and atypical representations, uses of games for specific purposes, uses of materials or techniques, specific subcultures, repurposing, transgressive aesthetics, interfaces, moral or ethical impact, and more. Key video games featured include Animal Crossing, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, PONG, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and World of Warcraft. Each game is closely analyzed in order to properly contextualize it, to emphasize its prominent features, to show how it creates a unique experience of gameplay, and to outline the ways it might speak about society and culture. The book also acts as a highly accessible showcase to a range of disciplinary perspectives that are found and practiced in the field of game studies. With each entry supplemented by references and suggestions for further reading, Fifty Key Video Games is an indispensable reference for anyone interested in video games.

This book presents an innovative comparative view of how the issue of adolescent sexuality and consent is differently treated in various media. Analyzing teenage sexual encounters with adults across a variety of media, including films, television, novels, and podcasts, the volume takes a positive stance on the expression of teenage sexuality, while remaining sensitive to the power of adults to abuse and manipulate. The anthology treats these representations as negotiations between conflicting forces: desire, sexual self-knowledge, unequal power, and the law, the latter both actual legal statutes and internalized law in the philosophical and psychoanalytic sense. Questions of unequal power inherent in such relations are theorized. The authors examine variations of this configuration of sexual relations between teenagers and adults from different perspectives, to consider how various forms of expression rework it formally. These essays are attuned to both nuances of presentation and contexts of reception, and they consider how aesthetics play a role. Contributing to the general debate about the ways that societies construct and regulate adolescent sexuality, this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of media studies, cultural studies, film studies, television studies, sociology, and gender studies

For much of the 20th century, the underground pornography industry - made up of amateurs and hobbyists who created hardcore, explicit "stag films" - went about its business hounded by reformers and law enforcement, from local police departments all the way up to the FBI. Rumors of this illicit activity circulated and became the stuff of urban myth, but this period of pornography history remains murky. Let's Go Stag! reveals the secrets of this underground world. Using the archives of civic groups, law enforcement, bygone government studies and similarly neglected evidence, archivist Dan Erdman reconstructs the means by which stag films were produced, distributed and exhibited, as well as demonstrate the way in which these practices changed with the times, eventually paving the way for the pornographic explosion of the 1970s and beyond. Let's Go Stag! is sure to point the way for countless future researchers and remain the standard work of history for this era of adult film for a long time to come.

How do we approach a figure like Mario Bava, a once obscure figure promoted to cult status? This book takes a new look at Italy's 'maestro of horror' but also uses his films to address a broader set of concerns. What issues do his films raise for film authorship, given that several of them were released in different versions and his contributions to others were not always credited? How might he be understood in relation to genre, one of which he is sometimes credited with having pioneered? This volume addresses these questions through a thorough analysis of Bava's shifting reputation as a stylist and genre pioneer and also discusses the formal and narrative properties of a filmography marked by an emphasis on spectacle and atmosphere over narrative coherence and the ways in which his lauded cinematic style intersects with different production contexts. Featuring new analysis of cult classics like Kill, Baby ... Kill (1966) and Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970), Mario Bava: The Artisan as Italian Horror Auteur sheds light on a body of films that were designed to be ephemeral but continue to fascinate us today.