Description
Book SynopsisFrom the cheaply made “tax-shelter” films of the 1970s to the latest wave of contemporary “eco-horror,” Canadian horror cinema has rarely received much critical attention. Gina Freitag and André Loiselle rectify that situation in The Canadian Horror Film with a series of thought-provoking reflections on Canada’s “terror of the soul,” a wasteland of docile damnation and prosaic pestilence where savage beasts and mad scientists rub elbows with pasty suburbanites, grumpy seamen, and baby-faced porn stars.
Featuring chapters on Pontypool, Ginger Snaps, 1970s slasher films, Quebec horror, and the work of David Cronenberg, among many others, The Canadian Horror Film unearths the terrors hidden in the recesses of the Canadian psyche. It examines the highlights of more than a century of Canadian horror filmmaking and includes an extensive filmography to guide both scholars and enthusiasts alike throug
Trade Review
'These excellent essays identify precisely what sets the Canadian horror film apart from its American and British brethren... Highly recommended.' -- G.A. Foster Choice Magazine vol 53:08:2016
Table of Contents
Terror of the Soul: An Introduction - Gina Freitag and Andre Loiselle I - SHAPING THE CANADIAN HORROR LANDSCAPE 1. Monsters Up North: A Taxonomy of Terror - Caelum Vatnsdal 2. Viral Culture: Canadian Cultural Protectionism and Pontypool - Andrea Subissati II - THE TERRITORIES OF HORROR: TERROR STORIES ON PAGE AND SCREEN 3. Blood in the Bush Garden: Indigenization, Gender and Unsettling Horror - Aalya Ahmad 4. Pure Laine Evil: The Horrifying Normality of Quebec's Ordinary Hell in the Film Adaptations of Patrick Senecal's 'Romans d'Epouvante' - Andre Loiselle III - A GOLDEN AGE OF GORE: THE TAX SHELTER SLASHER 5. (Who's in the) Driver's Seat: The Canadian Brute Unleashed in Death Weekend - Paul Corupe 6. The Creation and Codification of the Forest Slasher during the Tax Shelter Years 1977-1982 - Mark R. Hasan IV - THE TRUE NORTH, STRONG AND VIOLENT: ECO-HORROR IN CANADA 7. The [Hostile] Nature of Things: A Cultural Dialogue on Environmental Survival - Gina Freitag 8. Eco-Horror and Boundary Transgressions in Orca: The Killer Whale - Peter Thompson V - HORROR BY ANY OTHER NAME: ANIMATION AND THE AVANT GARDE 9. A Song From the Heart Beats the Devil Every Time: The Fear of Selling out in Nelvana's The Devil and Daniel Mouse and Rock and Rule - Kier-La Janisse 10. Where is Fear? Space, Place, and the Sense of Horror in the Canadian Avant-Garde Film - Scott Birdwise VI - BLOOD, GUTS, AND BEYOND: AN HOMAGE TO CRONENBERG 11. Traces of Horror: the Later Films of David Cronenberg - Bill Beard 12. The Physician as Mad Scientist: A Fear of Deviant Medical Practices in the Films of David Conenberg - James Burrell 13. Contagious Characters: Cronenberg's Rabid, Demarbre's Smash Cut and the Reframing of Porn- fame - Sean Moreland 'Canadian Mental-Case': A Conclusion - Gina Freitag and Andre Loiselle Bibliography Filmography
