Cinema Inferno

Robert G. Weiner; John Cline

doi:10.5771/9780810876576

Summary

Cinema Inferno: Celluloid Explosions from the Cultural Margins addresses significant areas (and eras) of "transgressive" filmmaking, including many subgenres and styles that have not yet received much critical attention. This collection of essays covers both contemporary films and those produced in the last 50 years to provide a theoretical framework for looking at transgressive cinema and what that means.

This volume begins with a number of essays that examine the aesthetic of "realism," tracing it through the late Italian Neo-Realism of Pasolini, the early films of Melvin Van Peebles, and Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. Another section focuses on '70s Italian horror and thrillers, including a substantially different examination of filmmaker Dario Argento, as well as essays on critically underrepresented directors Lucio Fulci and Sergio Martino. A section on New York looks at both radical independents like Troma and Andy Milligan, as well as the social context from which a view of the metropolis-in-decay emerged. Sections also cover the experimental work of the Vienna Action Group and controversial filmmaker Michael Haneke, as well as films and genres too idiosyncratic and disturbing to fit anywhere else, including analyses of Nazi propaganda films, fundamentalist Christian "scare" movies, and postwar Japanese youth films. The final essays try to come to terms with a mainstream flirtation with "transgressive" film and Grindhouse aesthetics.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2010
ISBN-Print: 978-0-8108-7656-9
ISBN-Online: 978-0-8108-7657-6
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 396
Product type: Edited Book

1. Contents No access
2. Foreword No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
4. Introduction No access
1. CHAPTER 1. The Neorealist Transgressions of Pier Paolo Pasolini No access
2. CHAPTER 2. From Chicago to Watts by Way of Paris and Hollywood: Art-Film Influence on Melvin Van Peebles’s Early Features No access
3. CHAPTER 3. At the Heart of The Heart of the World Guy Maddin in the Twenty-First Century No access
1. CHAPTER 4. Menopausal Monsters and Sexual Transgression in Argento’s Art Horror No access
2. CHAPTER 5. The More You Rape Their Senses, the Happier They Are: A History of Cannibal Holocaust No access
3. CHAPTER 6. A Postcard from the Grindhouse: Exotic Landscapes and Italian Holidays in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie and Sergio Martino’s Torso No access
4. CHAPTER 7. Body in a Bed, Body Growing Dead: Uncanny Women in Joe D’Amato’s Italian Exploitation Cinema No access
1. CHAPTER 8. Bernie’s “Deathwish”: History and Transgression in New York City No access
2. CHAPTER 9. Troma Entertainment: The Boobs, Blood, and Brains of Reel Independence No access
3. CHAPTER 10. Exploitation Films and Success: The Half-Told Melodramas of Andy Milligan No access
1. CHAPTER 11. B Is for Bile, Blood, and Bones: On Corporeal Bodies in the Films of Peter Greenaway No access
2. CHAPTER 12. The Films of the Vienna Action Group No access
3. CHAPTER 13. Reveries of Blood and Sand: The Cinema of Jean Rollin No access
4. CHAPTER 14. A Shadow Poet: Michael Haneke No access
1. CHAPTER 15. Through the Looking Glass Darkly: Considering Theories of Nazi Film and Concepts of Transgression No access
2. CHAPTER 16. Christian Scare Films: The Unlikely Pairing of Director Ron Ormond and Preacher Estus Pirkle No access
3. CHAPTER 17. Stray Cat Rock: The Politics of Nikkatsu’s “Bad Youth” Movies of the Early 1970s No access
1. CHAPTER 18. Flirting with Subversion: Mainstream Filmmaking, Transgression, and the Case of Joel Schumacher’s 8MM No access
2. CHAPTER 19. HATED: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies: Scum Rock and the Unlikely Career of Todd Phillips No access
3. CHAPTER 20. Cinema of Regression: Grindhouse and the Limits of the Spectatorial Imaginary No access
Index No access Pages 381 - 388
About the Editors and Contributors No access Pages 389 - 396