Description
Book SynopsisIn Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier, Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper have assembled a collection of essays that explore the many tropes and themes through which undead Westerns make the genre's inner plagues and demons visible, and lay siege to a frontier tied to myths of strength, ingenuity, freedom, and independence. The volume is divided into three sections: Reanimating Classic Western Tropes examines traditional Western characters, symbolism, and plot devices and how they are given new life in undead Westerns; The Moral Order Under Siege explores the ways in which the undead confront classic values and morality tales embodied in Western films; and And Hell Followed with Him looks at justice, retribution, and retaliation at the hands of undead angels and avenger. The subjects explored here run the gamut from such B films as Curse of the Undead and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula to A-list features like From Dusk til Dawn and
Trade ReviewNo other such treatment of the topic [undead Western] exists. . . .The contributions provide valuable insights and arguments into the cultural value of this hybrid film genre. . . .The group of essays will interest scholars of horror and Westerns alike. As the strict protocols of genre fiction become less defined and more fluid among juxtaposed subgenres, collections such as this one from Miller and Van Riper will become more valuable to teachers and students of film and cultural studies. This collection is particularly valuable in its redefining of the revisionist Western, its attention to lesser known horror works, and its . . . subtle explorations of adapted narratives and text clusters. * Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper Part I: Reanimating Classic Western Tropes 1. “So This Zombie Walks into a Bar . . .”: The Living, the Undead, and the Western Saloon Cynthia J. Miller 2. “Hey Sammy, We’re Not in Kansas Anymore”: The Frontier Motif in Supernatural Michael J. Klein and Kristi L. Shackelford 3. The Whore with the Vampire Heart: Frontier Romanticism in John Carpenter’s Vampires Lindsay Krishna Coleman 4. Billy the Kid vs. Dracula: The Old World Meets the Old West Rachel E. Page, Robert G. Weiner, and Cynthia J. Miller 5. The West—Reanimated and Regenerated: Hollywood Horror and Western Iconography in Gore Verbinski’s Rango (2011) Sue Matheson 6. Frontier Values Meet Big-City Zombies: The Old West in AMC’s The Walking Dead Shelley S. Rees Part II: The Moral Order under Siege 7. Savage, Scoundrel, Seducer: The Moral Order under Siege in the From Dusk Till Dawn Trilogy A. Bowdoin Van Riper 8. Blood on the Border: The Mexican Frontier in Vampires (1998) and Vampires: Los Muertos (2002) Thomas Prasch 9. Colliding Modalities and Receding Frontier in George Romero’s Land of the Dead Outi J. Hakola 10. Zombie Nationalism: Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror as Immigration Satire Christopher Gonzalez 11. Undead and Un-American: The Zombified Other in Weird Western Films James Hewitson 12. Hungry Lands: Conquest, Cannibalism, and the Wendigo Spirit Robert A. Saunders Part III: And Hell Followed with Him 13. The Ghost from the Past: The Undead Avenger in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West Matthias Stork 14. Moving West and Beyond: Life in the Midst of Death in Purgatory Hugh H. Davis 15. “You Nasty Thing from Beyond the Dead”: Elvis and JFK versus The Mummy in Bubba Ho-Tep Hannah Thompson 16. The Subversive Jonah Hex: Jimmy Hayward’s Revision and Reconfiguration of a Genre Michael C. Reiff 17. Queer Justice: Supernatural Strangers and Different Conceptions of Law and Punishment in Two Horror Westerns Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns A Selected Filmography About the Contributors About the Editors
