In the mid-1950s, to combat declining theater attendance, film distributors began releasing pre-packaged genre double-bills--including many horror and science fiction double features. Though many of these films were low-budget and low-end, others, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Horror of Dracula and The Fly, became bona fide classics. Beginning with Universal-International's 1955 pairing of Revenge of the Creature and Cult of the Cobra, 147 officially sanctioned horror and sci-fi double-bills were released over a 20-year period. This book presents these double features year-by-year, and includes production details, historical notes, and critical commentary for each film.

The crack of thunder, a blood-curdling scream, creaking doors, or maybe complete silence. Sounds such as these have helped frighten and startle horror movie audiences for close to a century. Listen to a Universal classic like Dracula or Frankenstein and you will hear a very different soundtrack from contemporary horror films. So how did we get from there to here? What scared audiences then compared to now? This examination of the horror film's soundtrack builds on film sound and genre scholarship to demonstrate how horror, perhaps more than any other genre, utilizes sound to manipulate audience response. Beginning with the Universal pictures of the early 1930s and moving through the next nine decades, it explores connections and contrasts throughout the genre's technical and creative evolution. New enthusiasts or veteran fans of such varied films as The Mummy, Cat People, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Psycho, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, The Conjuring, Paranormal Activity, and A Quiet Place will find plenty to explore, and perhaps a new sonic appreciation, within these pages.

From their first pairing in Hamlet (1948) to House of the Long Shadows (1983), British film stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing forged perhaps the most successful collaboration in horror film history. In its revised and expanded second edition, this volume examines their 22 movie team-ups, with critical commentary, complete cast and credits, production information, details on cinematography and make-up, exhibition history and box-office figures. A wealth of background about Hammer, Amicus and other production companies is provided, along with more than 100 illustrations. Lee and Cushing describe particulars of their partnership in original interviews. Exclusive interviews with Robert Bloch, Hazel Court and nearly fifty other actors, directors and others who worked on the Lee-Cushing films are included.

Skiing in movies, like the sport itself, grew more prevalent beginning in the 1930s, when it was a pastime of the elite, with depictions reflecting changes in technique, fashion and social climate. World War II saw skiing featured in a dozen films dealing with that conflict. Fueled by postwar prosperity, the sport exploded in the 1950s--filmmakers followed suit, using scenes on snow-covered slopes for panoramic beauty and the thrill of the chase. Through the free-spirited 1960s and 1970s, the downhill lifestyle shussed into everything from spy thrillers to beach party romps. The extreme sports era of the 1980s and 1990s brought snowboarding to the big screen. This first ever critical history of skiing in film chronicles a century of alpine cinema, with production information and stories and quotes from directors, actors and stuntmen.

In 1932, The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff, introduced another icon to the classic monster pantheon, beginning a journey down the cinematic Nile that has yet to reach its end. Over the past century, movie mummies have met everyone from Abbott and Costello to Tom Cruise, not to mention a myriad of fellow monsters. Horrifying and mysterious, the mummy comes from a different time with uncommon knowledge and unique motivation, offering the lure of the exotic as well as the terrors of the dark. From obscure no-budgeters to Hollywood blockbusters, the mummy has featured in films from all over the globe, including Brazil, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, and even its fictional home country of Egypt--with each film bringing its own cultural sensibilities. Movie mummies have taken the form of teenagers, superheroes, dwarves, kung fu fighters, Satanists, cannibals and even mummies from outer space. Some can fly, some are sexy, some are scary and some are hilarious, and mummies quickly moved beyond horror cinema and into science fiction, comedy, romance, sexploitation and cartoons. From the Universal classics to the Aztec Mummy series, from Hammer's versions to Mexico's Guanajuato variations, this first-ever comprehensive guide to mummy movies offers in-depth production histories and critical analyses for every feature-length iteration of bandaged horror.

A LOUDER THAN WAR BOOK OF THE YEAR A riveting journey into the psyche of Britain through its golden age of television and film; a cross-genre feast of moving pictures, from classics to occult hidden gems, The Magic Box is the nation's visual self-portrait in technicolour detail. 'The definition of gripping. Truly, a trove of wyrd treasures.' BENJAMIN MYERS 'A lovingly researched history of British TV [that] recalls the brilliant, the bizarre and the unworldly.' GUARDIAN 'A reclamation, not just of a visual 'golden age', but of Britain as a darkly magical place.' THE SPECTATOR 'A feat of argument, description and affection.' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Young unearths the ghosts of TV past - and Britain's dark psyche.' HERALD 'Highly entertaining . . . [A] fabulous treasure trove.' SCOTSMAN 'Young is a phenomonal scholar.' OBSERVER 'Impassioned.' THE CRITIC Growing up in the 1970s, Rob Young's main storyteller was the wooden box with the glass window in the corner of the family living room, otherwise known as the TV set. Before the age of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, YouTube and commercial streaming services, watching television was a vastly different experience. You switched on, you sat back and you watched. There was no pause or fast-forward button. The cross-genre feast of moving pictures produced in Britain between the late 1950s and late 1980s - from Quatermass and Tom Jones to The Wicker Man and Brideshead Revisited, from A Canterbury Tale and The Go-Between to Bagpuss and Children of the Stones, and from John Betjeman's travelogues to ghost stories at Christmas - contributed to a national conversation and collective memory. British-made sci-fi, folk horror, period drama and televisual grand tours played out tensions between the past and the present, dramatised the fractures and injustices in society and acted as a portal for magical and ghostly visions. In The Magic Box, Rob Young takes us on a fascinating journey into this influential golden age of screen and discovers what it reveals about the nature and character of Britain, its uncategorisable people and buried histories - and how its presence can still be felt on screen in the twenty-first century. '[A] forensic dissection . . . this tightly packed treatise takes pains to illustrate how what we view affects how we view ourselves.' TOTAL FILM

Famous for being deathly serious, the vampire genre has a consistent yet often critically overlooked subgenre--the comedic spoof and satire. This is the first book dedicated entirely to documenting and analyzing the vampire comedy on film and television. Various types of comedy are discussed, outlining the important differences between spoofing, serious-spoofing, parody and satire. Seminal films such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Love at First Bite, Vampire in Brooklyn, Dracula: Dead and Loving It and What We Do In the Shadows are featured. More importantly, this book demonstrates how comedy is central to both the common perception of the vampire and the genre's ever-evolving character, making it an essential read for those interested in the laughing undead and creatures that guffaw in the night.