Description
Book SynopsisBattlefields have traditionally been considered places where the spirits of the dead linger, and popular culture brings those thoughts to life. Supernatural tales of war told in print, on screen, and in other media depict angels, demons, and legions of the undead fighting againstor alongsidehuman soldiers. Ghostly war ships and phantom aircraft carry on their never-to-be-completed missions, and the spiritssometimes corpsesof dead soldiers return to confront the enemies who killed them, comrades who betrayed them, or leaders who sacrificed them.In Horrors of War: The Undead on the Battlefield, Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper have assembled essays that explore the meaning and significance of these tales. Among the questions that the volume seeks to answer are: How do supernatural stories engage with cultural attitudes toward war? In what ways do these stories reflect or challenge the popular memories of particular wars? How do they ask us to think again about battlefield heroi
Trade ReviewOutside the study of visual culture and exploitation genres more generally, Cynthia Miller and her frequent comrade-in-arms, A. Bowdoin Van Riper, have carved a niche for themselves in Horror Studies, most recently with Horrors of War: The Undead on the Battlefield. Their names are held highly among film circles in the U.S., and they belong to small but ever widening cadre of popular culturalists who are bringing prestige to the often overlooked among the arts. Horror Studies needs scholars like Miller and Van Riper. -- John Edgar Browning, editor of Graphic Horror: Movie Monster Memories
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I: Monstrous Enemies 1. “Blood-Thirsty Graybacks”: The Monstrous Othering of the Confederacy in Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter Robert A. Saunders 2. Cry “Havoc!” and Let Slip the Vampires of War Cynthia J. Miller 3. Vampire Pilots and Industrialized War in The Bloody Red Baron A. Bowdoin Van Riper 4. Nazis on the Moon! Nazis under the Polar Ice Cap! And Other Recent Episodes in the Strange Cinematic Afterlife of the Third Reich James J. Ward Part II: The Dead Don’t Rest 5. The Wages of War: Spectral Children in The Devil’s Backbone Michael C. Reiff 6. Traversing the Afterlife Fantasy: The Haunted Soldier in Jacob’s Ladder Thomas Robert Argiro 7. The Haunted Tank Paul O’Connor 8. (Re)Remembering the Great War in Deathwatch Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż 9. The U.N.dead: Cold War Ghosts in Carol for Another Christmas Christina M. Knopf Part III: Making Monsters 10. Pall in the Family: Deathdream, House, and the Vietnam War Christopher D. Stone 11. Strategic Military Reconfiguration in Horror Fiction: The Case of F. Paul Wilson’s The Keep and Graham Masterton’s The Devils of D-Day Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns 12. Horror under the Radar: Memory, Revelation, and the Ghosts of Below Christina V. Cedillo 13. The Supernatural, Nazi Zombies, and the Play Instinct: The Gamification of War and the Reality of the Military Industrial Complex Steve Webley Part IV: Legacies and Memories 14. “Strange Things Happen in a War-Torn Land”: Cat Demons, Samurai, Victims’ Vengeance, and the Social Costs of War in Kaneto Shindo’s Kuroneko (1968) Thomas Prasch 15. Public Memory and Supernatural Presence: The Mystery and Madness of Weird War Tales Terence Check 16. War in The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Haunted Visions of World War II Vincent Casaregola 17. Specters of Media: Jacques Tardi’s Graphic Reanimation of the War of the Trenches Katherine Kelp-Stebbins 18. R-Point as Postcolonial Palimpsest: Generic Complexity and the Ghost in the War/Horror Film Amanda Landa Index About the Editors and Contributors
