Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novelThe Castle of Otranto. The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole.
Gothic literature is intimately associated with the GothicRevival architecture of the same era. In a way similar to the Gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere.
The ruins of Gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations—thus the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals. In literature such Anti-Catholicism had a European dimension featuring Roman Catholic excesses such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain).
Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, Transgression, Excess, secrets, and hereditary curses.
The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales,monks, nuns, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, dragons, angels, fallen angels, revenants, ghosts,perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.
Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic
The ruins of Gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations—thus the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals. In literature such Anti-Catholicism had a European dimension featuring Roman Catholic excesses such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain).
Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, Transgression, Excess, secrets, and hereditary curses.
The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales,monks, nuns, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, dragons, angels, fallen angels, revenants, ghosts,perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.
2000s-
the start of the 2000s saw a quiet period for the genre. The re-release of a restored version of The Exorcistin September 2000 was successful despite the film having been available on home video for years. Franchise films such as Freddy vs. Jason also made a stand in theaters. Final Destination (2000) marked a successful revival of teen-centered horror and spawned four sequels. The Jeepers Creepers series was also successful. Films like Wrong Turn, Cabin Fever, House of 1000 Corpses, and the previous mentions helped bring the genre back to Restricted ratings in theaters.
Some notable trends have marked horror films in the 2000s. A French horror film Brotherhood of the Wolfbecame the second-highest-grossing French-language film in the United States in the last two decades. The Others (2001) was a successful horror film of that year. That film was the first horror in the decade to rely on psychology to scare audiences, rather than gore. A minimalist approach which was equal parts Val Lewton's theory of "less is more" (usually employing low-budget techniques seen on 1999's The Blair Witch Project) has been evident, particularly in the emergence of Asian horror movies which have been remade into successful Americanized versions, such as The Ring (2002), and The Grudge (2004). In March 2008, China banned the movies from its Market.
There has been a major return to the zombie genre in horror movies made after 2000. The Resident Evil video game franchise was adapted into a film released in March 2002. Three sequels have followed. The British film 28 Days Later (2002) featured an update on the genre with The Return of the Living Dead (1985) style of aggressive zombie. The film later spawned a sequel: 28 Weeks Later. An updated remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004) soon appeared as well as the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004). This resurgence lead George A. Romero to return to his Living Dead series with Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) andSurvival of the Dead 2010.
A larger trend is a return to the extreme, graphic violence that characterized much of the type of low-budget, exploitation horror from the Seventies and the post-Vietnam years. Films like Audition (1999), Wrong Turn (2003), and the Australian film Wolf Creek (2005), took their cues from The Last House on the Left (1972),[citation needed] The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). An extension of this trend was the emergence of a type of horror with emphasis on depictions of torture, suffering and violent deaths, (variously referred to as "horror porn", "torture porn", Splatterporn, and even "gore-nography") with films like The Collector, The Tortured, Saw, and Hostel, and their respective sequels, frequently singled out as examples of emergence of this sub-genre. Finally with the arrival of Paranormal Activity (2009), which had very good reviews and an excellent reception at the box office, minimal thought started byThe Blair Witch Project was reaffirmed and is expected to be continued successfully in other low-budget productions.
Remakes-
Remakes of earlier horror movies became routine in the 2000s. In addition to 2004's remake of Dawn of the Dead, as well as 2003's remake of both Herschell Gordon Lewis' cult classic 2001 Maniacs and the remake of Tobe Hooper's classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, there was also the 2007 Rob Zombie written and directed remake of John Carpenter's Halloween. The film focused more on Michael's backstory than the original did, devoting the first half of the film to Michael's childhood. It was critically panned by most, but was a success in its theatrical run, spurring its own sequel. This success lead to the remakes, or "reimaginings" of other popular horror franchises with films such as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Hellraiser and Children of the Corn. Other remakes include The Amityville Horror (2005), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Black Christmas (2006), Prom Night (2008), The Wicker Man (2006) My Bloody Valentine (2009), and The Wolfman. There have been rumors surfacing about remaking movies such as, Child's Play, IT, Children of the Corn, and Hellraiser.
Plot-
An 18-year-old girl named Drew Decker (Carmen Electra) receives a threatening phone call while home alone one night. In an opening which closely mirrors Scream, Drew is chased outside by her killer, who then rips off her sweater and skirt, leaving her clothed in her white bra and thong, Drew runs through her garden sprinklers but she is then stabbed in the breast by the killer (revealing she has fake boobs), hit by a car driven by her father and then killed by the killer.
The next day, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), meets up with her boyfriend Bobby Prinze (Jon Abrahams) and her friends, Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), Ray Wilkins (Shawn Wayans), Greg Phillipe (Lochlyn Munro), and Buffy Gilmore (Shannon Elizabeth). Various news teams - including hack reporter Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri) - converge on the school in the wake of Drew's brutal death. Gail hooks up with Buffy's mentally disabled brother Doofy (Dave Sheridan), hoping to milk the facts out of him. Cindy realizes that Drew's murder occurred exactly one year after she and her friends accidentally killed a man during a wild car ride. Unwilling to face incarceration, the group dumped the body off a nearby pier - but not without robbing him blind first.
A series of increasingly bizarre events take place. Various members of the group receive threatening notes from Ghostface and are rapidly dispatched, but most remain steadfastly oblivious to the rising body count. Greg is killed in plain view, but the event is mistaken for part of a theatre performance by Buffy. Buffy, drunk on the success brought by the murder, becomes the killer's next victim during what she insists is an act. The killer then attempts to dispose of Brenda during a showing of Shakespeare in Love, but fellow patrons (including priests of all major religions) beat him to it, upset about her rude behavior.
Cindy throws a house party, hoping for safety in numbers. During the party, Bobby relieves Cindy of her virginity. The killer unexpectedly appears and stabs Bobby, before disappearing just as quickly. While Cindy tends to Bobby's wounds, they are joined by Shorty (Marlon Wayans), Brenda'sstoner brother. Shorty panickedly informs them that the killer has murdered everybody in the house. To Cindy's horror, Bobby pulls out a gun and shoots Shorty, revealing that his wound was an elaborate ruse. Ray then arrives on the scene - whereupon the pair reveal to Cindy that they are in fact homosexual lovers, who are merely copycatting the actual killer to protect the secret of their relationship. Bobby gleefully points out that their plan's lack of sense doesn't matter, since horror movies are not noted for their logic. Ray then stabs Bobby numerous times to make themselves look like victims.
However, the real Ghostface abruptly turns up and stabs Ray, who collapses on top of Bobby in an incidental sexual position. The killer then attacks Cindy, but she successfully subdues him by employing moves copied from The Matrix. Nonetheless, Ghostface again vanishes before the police arrive.
At the police station, Cindy and the local sheriff (Kurt Fuller) realise that Doofy - the only one who knew about the car accident - was actually faking his disability and is the true killer. Unfortunately, Doofy has already escaped with Gail Hailstorm. Upon finding his discarded disguise in the street, Cindy begins screaming to the heavens - and gets run over by a car.
As the credits roll, Shorty - parodying the rules of survival in Scream - explains via videocassette that he didn't get through, but provides rules for surviving such a situation... which turn out to be instructions for surviving a snatch-and-run.
Parodies-
Much of the humor of Scary Movie relies upon specific references to other contemporary films. Roger Ebert remarked in his review that "to get your money's worth, you need to be familiar with the various teenage horror franchises." Much of the film's plot is modeled after I Know What You Did Last Summer including the teens' accidental murder of an innocent man on a car ride and Barry's murder onstage. Several elements are borrowed from the Scream franchise including the character Ghostface, the attack in the movie theatre as modeled afterScream 2, and the "rules of a trilogy" video from Scream 3. Whilesmoking marijuana , Shorty quips "I see dead people," the line famously spoken by Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. In a chase scene, the film shifts its point of view to that of a hand-held camera with the characters speaking directly to the audience as in The Blair Witch Project.
Many scenes and jokes parody or reference other films outside the horror film genre. The fight between Cindy and the killer heavily mimics The Matrix, particularly its use of bullet time. The final scene, in which Doofy stops feigning his disability and drives away with Gail, is a takeoff of the final scene of The Usual Suspects. When asked about her favorite horror movie, Drew answers "Kazaam" due to Shaquille O'Neal's acting. Cindy becomes aggressive and roars "Say my name!" during sex with Bobby, similar to the sex scene between Michelle and Jim in American Pie. A trailer for a fictitious sequel to Amistad titled Amistad II appears in the movie theater scene.
The film also makes other pop culture references beyond the scope of film, including a brief send-up of Dawson's Creek and a parody of the Whassup? ad campaign by Budweiser.
Reception-
Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 53% based on 109 reviews.
Joe Leydon of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, remarking that the film was "unbounded by taste, inhibition or political correctness" and that "the outer limits of R-rated respectability are stretched, if not shredded" by the movie. By contrast, Roger Ebert did not find the film as innovative, saying that the film lacked "the shocking impact of Airplane!, which had the advantage of breaking new ground." However, Ebert did give the film 3 stars out of 4, saying it "delivers the goods" calling the film a "raucous, satirical attack on slasher movies."
Bob Longino of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, felt that the film's crude humor detracted from the film, saying that Scary Movie "dives so deep into tasteless humor that it's a wonder it landed an R rating instead of an NC-17."Other reviewers, such as A.O. Scott of the New York Times, argued that the jokes were "annoying less for their vulgarity than for their tiredness. Scott remarked in his review, "Couch-bound pot smokers, prison sex, mannish female gym teachers, those Whassssup Budweiser commercials -- hasn't it all been done to death?"
Some notable trends have marked horror films in the 2000s. A French horror film Brotherhood of the Wolfbecame the second-highest-grossing French-language film in the United States in the last two decades. The Others (2001) was a successful horror film of that year. That film was the first horror in the decade to rely on psychology to scare audiences, rather than gore. A minimalist approach which was equal parts Val Lewton's theory of "less is more" (usually employing low-budget techniques seen on 1999's The Blair Witch Project) has been evident, particularly in the emergence of Asian horror movies which have been remade into successful Americanized versions, such as The Ring (2002), and The Grudge (2004). In March 2008, China banned the movies from its Market.
There has been a major return to the zombie genre in horror movies made after 2000. The Resident Evil video game franchise was adapted into a film released in March 2002. Three sequels have followed. The British film 28 Days Later (2002) featured an update on the genre with The Return of the Living Dead (1985) style of aggressive zombie. The film later spawned a sequel: 28 Weeks Later. An updated remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004) soon appeared as well as the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004). This resurgence lead George A. Romero to return to his Living Dead series with Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) andSurvival of the Dead 2010.
A larger trend is a return to the extreme, graphic violence that characterized much of the type of low-budget, exploitation horror from the Seventies and the post-Vietnam years. Films like Audition (1999), Wrong Turn (2003), and the Australian film Wolf Creek (2005), took their cues from The Last House on the Left (1972),[citation needed] The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). An extension of this trend was the emergence of a type of horror with emphasis on depictions of torture, suffering and violent deaths, (variously referred to as "horror porn", "torture porn", Splatterporn, and even "gore-nography") with films like The Collector, The Tortured, Saw, and Hostel, and their respective sequels, frequently singled out as examples of emergence of this sub-genre. Finally with the arrival of Paranormal Activity (2009), which had very good reviews and an excellent reception at the box office, minimal thought started byThe Blair Witch Project was reaffirmed and is expected to be continued successfully in other low-budget productions.
Remakes-
Remakes of earlier horror movies became routine in the 2000s. In addition to 2004's remake of Dawn of the Dead, as well as 2003's remake of both Herschell Gordon Lewis' cult classic 2001 Maniacs and the remake of Tobe Hooper's classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, there was also the 2007 Rob Zombie written and directed remake of John Carpenter's Halloween. The film focused more on Michael's backstory than the original did, devoting the first half of the film to Michael's childhood. It was critically panned by most, but was a success in its theatrical run, spurring its own sequel. This success lead to the remakes, or "reimaginings" of other popular horror franchises with films such as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Hellraiser and Children of the Corn. Other remakes include The Amityville Horror (2005), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Black Christmas (2006), Prom Night (2008), The Wicker Man (2006) My Bloody Valentine (2009), and The Wolfman. There have been rumors surfacing about remaking movies such as, Child's Play, IT, Children of the Corn, and Hellraiser.
Plot-
An 18-year-old girl named Drew Decker (Carmen Electra) receives a threatening phone call while home alone one night. In an opening which closely mirrors Scream, Drew is chased outside by her killer, who then rips off her sweater and skirt, leaving her clothed in her white bra and thong, Drew runs through her garden sprinklers but she is then stabbed in the breast by the killer (revealing she has fake boobs), hit by a car driven by her father and then killed by the killer.
The next day, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), meets up with her boyfriend Bobby Prinze (Jon Abrahams) and her friends, Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), Ray Wilkins (Shawn Wayans), Greg Phillipe (Lochlyn Munro), and Buffy Gilmore (Shannon Elizabeth). Various news teams - including hack reporter Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri) - converge on the school in the wake of Drew's brutal death. Gail hooks up with Buffy's mentally disabled brother Doofy (Dave Sheridan), hoping to milk the facts out of him. Cindy realizes that Drew's murder occurred exactly one year after she and her friends accidentally killed a man during a wild car ride. Unwilling to face incarceration, the group dumped the body off a nearby pier - but not without robbing him blind first.
A series of increasingly bizarre events take place. Various members of the group receive threatening notes from Ghostface and are rapidly dispatched, but most remain steadfastly oblivious to the rising body count. Greg is killed in plain view, but the event is mistaken for part of a theatre performance by Buffy. Buffy, drunk on the success brought by the murder, becomes the killer's next victim during what she insists is an act. The killer then attempts to dispose of Brenda during a showing of Shakespeare in Love, but fellow patrons (including priests of all major religions) beat him to it, upset about her rude behavior.
Cindy throws a house party, hoping for safety in numbers. During the party, Bobby relieves Cindy of her virginity. The killer unexpectedly appears and stabs Bobby, before disappearing just as quickly. While Cindy tends to Bobby's wounds, they are joined by Shorty (Marlon Wayans), Brenda's
However, the real Ghostface abruptly turns up and stabs Ray, who collapses on top of Bobby in an incidental sexual position. The killer then attacks Cindy, but she successfully subdues him by employing moves copied from The Matrix. Nonetheless, Ghostface again vanishes before the police arrive.
At the police station, Cindy and the local sheriff (Kurt Fuller) realise that Doofy - the only one who knew about the car accident - was actually faking his disability and is the true killer. Unfortunately, Doofy has already escaped with Gail Hailstorm. Upon finding his discarded disguise in the street, Cindy begins screaming to the heavens - and gets run over by a car.
As the credits roll, Shorty - parodying the rules of survival in Scream - explains via videocassette that he didn't get through, but provides rules for surviving such a situation... which turn out to be instructions for surviving a snatch-and-run.
Parodies-
Much of the humor of Scary Movie relies upon specific references to other contemporary films. Roger Ebert remarked in his review that "to get your money's worth, you need to be familiar with the various teenage horror franchises." Much of the film's plot is modeled after I Know What You Did Last Summer including the teens' accidental murder of an innocent man on a car ride and Barry's murder onstage. Several elements are borrowed from the Scream franchise including the character Ghostface, the attack in the movie theatre as modeled afterScream 2, and the "rules of a trilogy" video from Scream 3. While
Many scenes and jokes parody or reference other films outside the horror film genre. The fight between Cindy and the killer heavily mimics The Matrix, particularly its use of bullet time. The final scene, in which Doofy stops feigning his disability and drives away with Gail, is a takeoff of the final scene of The Usual Suspects. When asked about her favorite horror movie, Drew answers "Kazaam" due to Shaquille O'Neal's acting. Cindy becomes aggressive and roars "Say my name!" during sex with Bobby, similar to the sex scene between Michelle and Jim in American Pie. A trailer for a fictitious sequel to Amistad titled Amistad II appears in the movie theater scene.
The film also makes other pop culture references beyond the scope of film, including a brief send-up of Dawson's Creek and a parody of the Whassup? ad campaign by Budweiser.
Reception-
Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 53% based on 109 reviews.
Joe Leydon of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, remarking that the film was "unbounded by taste, inhibition or political correctness" and that "the outer limits of R-rated respectability are stretched, if not shredded" by the movie. By contrast, Roger Ebert did not find the film as innovative, saying that the film lacked "the shocking impact of Airplane!, which had the advantage of breaking new ground." However, Ebert did give the film 3 stars out of 4, saying it "delivers the goods" calling the film a "raucous, satirical attack on slasher movies."
Bob Longino of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, felt that the film's crude humor detracted from the film, saying that Scary Movie "dives so deep into tasteless humor that it's a wonder it landed an R rating instead of an NC-17."Other reviewers, such as A.O. Scott of the New York Times, argued that the jokes were "annoying less for their vulgarity than for their tiredness. Scott remarked in his review, "Couch-bound pot smokers, prison sex, mannish female gym teachers, those Whassssup Budweiser commercials -- hasn't it all been done to death?"
Post- Victorian Legacy-
notable English twentieth century writers in the Gothic tradition include Algernon Blackwood,William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Hugh Walpole, and Marjorie Bowen. In America pulp magazines such as Weird Tales reprinted classic Gothic horror tales from the previous century, by such authors as Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton and printed new stories by modern authors featuring both traditional and new horrors (Goulart 1986). The most significant of these was H. P. Lovecraft who also wrote an excellent conspectus of the Gothic and supernatural horror tradition in his Supernatural Horror in Literature (1936) as well as developing a Mythos that would influence Gothic and contemporary horror well into the 21st century. Lovecraft's protégé,Robert Bloch, contributed to Weird Tales and penned Psycho (1959), which drew on the classic interests of the genre. From these, the Gothic genre per se gave way to modern horror fiction, regarded by some literary critics as a branch of the Gothic (Wisker 2005: 232-33) although others use the term to cover the entire genre. Many modern writers of horror (or indeed other types of fiction) exhibit considerable Gothic sensibilities—examples include the works of Anne Rice, as well as some of the sensationalist works of Stephen King (Skarda and Jaffe 1981: 464-5, 478; Davenport-Hines 1998: 357-8). The Romantic strand of Gothic was taken up in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938) which is in many respects a reworking of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Other books by du Maurier, such as Jamaica Inn (1936), also display Gothic tendencies. Du Maurier's work inspired a substantial body of 'Female Gothics,' concerning heroines alternately swooning over or being terrified by scowling Byronic men in possession of acres of prime real estate and the appertaining droit de seigneur .
Gothic Romances of this description became popular during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with authors such as Phyllis A. Whitney, Joan Aiken, Dorothy Eden, Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels,Mary Stewart, and Jill Tattersall. Many featured covers depicting a terror-stricken woman in diaphanous attire in front of a gloomy castle. Many were published under the Paperback Library Gothic imprint and were marketed to a female audience. Though the authors were mostly women, some men wrote Gothic romances under female pseudonyms. For instance the prolific Clarissa Ross and Marilyn Ross were pseudonyms for the male writer Dan Ross and Frank Belknap Long published Gothics under his wife's name, Lyda Belknap Long. Another example is British writer Peter O'Donnell, who wrote under the pseudonym Madeleine Brent. Outside of companies like Lovespell, who carry Colleen Shannon, very few books seem to be published using the term today.
The genre also influenced American writing to create the Southern Gothic genre, which combines some Gothic sensibilities (such as the Grotesque) with the setting and style of the Southern United States . Examples include William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, and Flannery O'Connor (Skarda and Jaffe 1981: 418-56). Contemporary American writers in this tradition includeJoyce Carol Oates, in such novels as Bellefleur and A Bloodsmoor Romance and short story collections such as Night-Side (Skarda 1986b) and Raymond Kennedy in his novel Lulu Incognito. The Southern Ontario Gothic applies a similar sensibility to a Canadian cultural context.Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, Barbara Gowdy, and Margaret Atwood have all produced works that are notable exemplars of this form. Another writer in this tradition was Henry Farrell whose best-known work was the Hollywood horror novel What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1960). Farrel's novels spawned a sub-genre of 'Grande Dame Guignol' in the cinema, dubbed the 'Psycho-biddy' genre.
Other notable contemporary writers in the Gothic tradition are: Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black (1983); Patrick McGrath, author of The Grotesque (1989); Poppy Z. Brite, author of Lost Souls (1992) and Exquisite Corpse (1996); and Caitlin R. Kiernan, author of Silk (1998) (Davenport-Hines 1998: 377-8; Baddeley 2002: 84-7).
The themes of the literary Gothic have been translated into other media such as the theatre and had a notable revival in twentieth century Gothic horror films such the classic Universal Horror films of the 1930s, Hammer Horror, and Roger Corman's Poe cycle (Davenport-Hines 1998: 355-8). Twentieth century rock and roll music also had its Gothic side. Black Sabbath's 1969 debut album created a dark sound different from other bands at the time and has been called the first ever "Goth-rock" record (Baddeley 2002: 264). Themes from Gothic writers such as H. P. Lovecraft were also used among gothic rock and heavy metal bands, especially in black metal, thrash metal (Metallica's The Call of Ktulu), death metal, and gothic metal. For example, heavy metal musician King Diamond delights in telling stories full of horror, theatricality, satanism and anti-Catholicism in his compositions (Baddeley 2002: 265). In Hindi cinema, the Gothic tradition was combined with aspects of Indian culture, particularly reincarnation, to give rise to an "Indian Gothic" genre, beginning with the films Mahal (1949) and Madhumati (1958).
Gothic Romances of this description became popular during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with authors such as Phyllis A. Whitney, Joan Aiken, Dorothy Eden, Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels,Mary Stewart, and Jill Tattersall. Many featured covers depicting a terror-stricken woman in diaphanous attire in front of a gloomy castle. Many were published under the Paperback Library Gothic imprint and were marketed to a female audience. Though the authors were mostly women, some men wrote Gothic romances under female pseudonyms. For instance the prolific Clarissa Ross and Marilyn Ross were pseudonyms for the male writer Dan Ross and Frank Belknap Long published Gothics under his wife's name, Lyda Belknap Long. Another example is British writer Peter O'Donnell, who wrote under the pseudonym Madeleine Brent. Outside of companies like Lovespell, who carry Colleen Shannon, very few books seem to be published using the term today.
The genre also influenced American writing to create the Southern Gothic genre, which combines some Gothic sensibilities (such as the Grotesque) with the setting and style of the Southern United States . Examples include William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, and Flannery O'Connor (Skarda and Jaffe 1981: 418-56). Contemporary American writers in this tradition includeJoyce Carol Oates, in such novels as Bellefleur and A Bloodsmoor Romance and short story collections such as Night-Side (Skarda 1986b) and Raymond Kennedy in his novel Lulu Incognito. The Southern Ontario Gothic applies a similar sensibility to a Canadian cultural context.Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, Barbara Gowdy, and Margaret Atwood have all produced works that are notable exemplars of this form. Another writer in this tradition was Henry Farrell whose best-known work was the Hollywood horror novel What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1960). Farrel's novels spawned a sub-genre of 'Grande Dame Guignol' in the cinema, dubbed the 'Psycho-biddy' genre.
Other notable contemporary writers in the Gothic tradition are: Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black (1983); Patrick McGrath, author of The Grotesque (1989); Poppy Z. Brite, author of Lost Souls (1992) and Exquisite Corpse (1996); and Caitlin R. Kiernan, author of Silk (1998) (Davenport-Hines 1998: 377-8; Baddeley 2002: 84-7).
The themes of the literary Gothic have been translated into other media such as the theatre and had a notable revival in twentieth century Gothic horror films such the classic Universal Horror films of the 1930s, Hammer Horror, and Roger Corman's Poe cycle (Davenport-Hines 1998: 355-8). Twentieth century rock and roll music also had its Gothic side. Black Sabbath's 1969 debut album created a dark sound different from other bands at the time and has been called the first ever "Goth-rock" record (Baddeley 2002: 264). Themes from Gothic writers such as H. P. Lovecraft were also used among gothic rock and heavy metal bands, especially in black metal, thrash metal (Metallica's The Call of Ktulu), death metal, and gothic metal. For example, heavy metal musician King Diamond delights in telling stories full of horror, theatricality, satanism and anti-Catholicism in his compositions (Baddeley 2002: 265). In Hindi cinema, the Gothic tradition was combined with aspects of Indian culture, particularly reincarnation, to give rise to an "Indian Gothic" genre, beginning with the films Mahal (1949) and Madhumati (1958).
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