Even though horror has been a key component of media output for almost a century, the genre's industrial character remains under explored and poorly understood. Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema responds to a major void in film history by shedding much-needed new light on the economic dimensions of one of the world's most enduring audiovisual forms. Given horror cuts across budgetary categories, industry sectors, national film cultures, and media, Merchants of Menace also promises to expand understandings of the economics of cinema generally. Covering 1930-present, this groundbreaking collection boasts fourteen original chapters from world-leading experts taking as their focus such diverse topics as early zombie pictures, post-WWII chillers, Civil Rights-Era marketing, Hollywood literary adaptations, Australian exploitation, "torture-porn" Auteurs, and twenty-first-century remakes.

List of Illustrations AcknowledgementsContributors Introduction There's Gold in them there ChillsRichard Nowell Section One Production Lines, Trends, and CyclesChapter One 'House of Horrors': Corporate Strategy at Universal Pictures in the 1930s/Kyle Edwards Chapter Two The Undead of Hollywood and Poverty Row: The Influence of Studio-Era Industrial Patterns on Zombie Film Production, 1932-46/Todd K. Platts Chapter ThreeBy the Book: American Horror Cinema and Horror Literature of the late 1960s and 1970s/ Peter Hutchings Chapter Four Risen From the Vaults: Recent Horror Film Remakes and the American Film Industry/Kevin Heffernan Chapter Five Monster Factory: International Dynamics of the Australian Horror Movie Industry /Mark David Ryan Section TwoFilm Content, Style, and ThemesChapter Six 'Bad Medicine': The Psychiatric Profession's Interventions into the Business of Postwar Horror/Tim Snelson Chapter Seven Horror Film Atmosphere as Anti-Narrative (and Vice Versa)/Robert Spadoni Chapter Eight 'A Kind of Bacall Quality': Jamie Lee Curtis, Stardom, and Gentrifying Non-Hollywood Horror/Richard Nowell Chapter Nine 'New Decade, New Rules': Rebooting the Scream Franchise in the Digital Age/Valerie Wee Section ThreeMovie Marketing, Branding, and DistributionChapter Ten 'Hot Profits Out of Cold Shivers!': Horror, the First Run Market, and the Hollywood Studios, 1938-42/Mark Jancovich Chapter Eleven Strange Enjoyments: The Marketing and Reception of Horror in the Civil Rights Era Black Press/Mikal J. Gaines Chapter Twelve Bids for Distinction: The Critical-Industrial Function of the Horror Auteur/Joe Tompkins Chapter ThirteenLow Budgets, No Budgets, and Digital-Video Nasties: Recent British Horror and Informal Distribution/Johnny Walker Chapter Fourteen Hammer 2.0: Legacy, Modernization, and Hammer Horror as a Heritage Brand / Matt Hills Index