You enter a large theater, filled with people. You take a seat and a long-haired guy introduces the film. The house lights dim, the room slowly fades into darkness, and you hear . . . meowing. Though this may seem like an odd scenario, those familiar with Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival will recognize the signature meowing that is usually accompanied by the hooting, howling, laughing, and screaming of the audience. The annual festival will present its 26th season in 2021, and has been dubbed one of the 25 coolest film festivals in the world by Moviemaker.com. 1 Fantasia is hosted by Concordia University and every year features a slew of new and independent genre films that range from horror to science fiction, action to anime.

A few years back, The Concordian, a paper affiliated with Concordia University, ran a story titled “Yet another Fantasia ruined by Fans”. 2 The article, by Laura Marchand, chastises the Fantasia audience for its loud, rambunctious behaviour, stating that it is what she “would expect from my six-year-old niece at playtime, not a bunch of adults.” 3 Marchand goes on to suggest that ushers should remove these loud individuals from the theater, strongly criticizing their behaviour and referring to them as children and “teens.” Throughout the article, Marchand returns to the term “appropriate behaviour” and states that this is not how audiences behave at a multiplex. This fascinating, disgusted reaction to the rambunctious audience can’t help but raise the question of the role of sound and audience reaction in cinema spectatorship.

In Cult Cinema, Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton position Fantasia as a cult film festival. 4 They identify cult cinema as emerging from a long tradition of films that have repeat audiences and inspire ritualistic behaviour that can include dressing up and talking back to the screen. 5 They argue that the audience is central to the cult film festival experience, and that they are not merely passive spectators, but participants and “fellow believers.” 6 Drawing from Noel Carroll and David Bordwell, they state that a crucial element of cult cinema is the relationship between audience and text, which is made through allusions and inferences within the film that help cue the audience to specific activities central to the communal experience of the audience within the theater. 7 It is for this reason that an analysis of cinematic texts is essential to exploring the communal experience of watching a cult film.

Cult cinema stems from the tradition of Midnight movies that were a widespread phenomenon in the 1970s. Films such as El Topo (1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975, Jim Sharman), and Night of the Living Dead (1968, George Romero) became major successes due to the Midnight screenings that were often wild and rambunctious and, at least initially, primarily underground events. From a textual standpoint, these films are characteristically littered with gratuitous excess and challenged the era’s cultural norms. Cult cinema is therefore innately associated with counter culture and tends to be in opposition to the mainstream and normativity. Mathijs and Sexton suggest that “this notion is embedded in the very definition of the term cult as a community, a commonality of congregation that sees itself at odds with normalized culture” 8 The way cult cinema elevates the obscene and vulgar has often led to its being overlooked as a legitimate form of cinema. Along with its bedfellows, grindhouse cinema, gross-out films, and taboo cinema, cult cinema has subtly crept into mainstream academia, proclaiming its rightful place as a legitimate and fascinating form of cinema. 9

Who then watches these texts at cult film festivals? Who are the people who shout and scream during cult film screenings? Who are those who, according to Marchand, should be escorted by ushers from the theater? Are they, in fact, “teens” or “children”? At least some are teens. Mikita Brottman argues that male teenagers are frequent attendants of violent horror films largely because these films directly address male anxieties and desires. She suggests that these films act as a rite of passage for teenagers, teaching their young audience life lessons and warning them of the consequences of bad behaviour. 10 Linda Williams writes that excessively violent horror films attract a teen audience because they reflect the budding sexuality of a teen audience. 11 While teens obviously represent a large part of these films audience demographic, it is important not to ignore how taste factors into the equation. Cult films are often associated with excess and “bad taste.” Repetitive viewing of a particular film, a common practice of cult cinema fans, is often considered to be childish and redundant and helps the majority of mainstream critics to justify their writing off the validity of this cinematic form. 12 However, Jeffrey Sconce argues that “bad cinema” is often championed by sophisticated audiences who have tired of Hollywood formulas and favour material regarded as obscene or taboo. Sconce’s definition of the cult cinema community, or “paracinema,” reveals sophisticated viewers who are often bored with regular, mundane, Hollywood, “good taste” films and in search of something unconventional and visceral. 13 William Paul similarly reflects on how this form of cinema emphasises the centrality of “bad cinema” aesthetics to the cinematic experience. It is for this reason that it attracts sophisticated viewers tired of regular cinema and instead attracted to the sheer spectacle of the cult cinematic experience. 14

Mark Jancovich suggests that this audience is not limited to traditional ideas of good and bad taste, but can see beyond them to bask in the excess of this form of cinema. Jancovich writes that it demonstrates what Pierre Bourdieu sees as “tastes of luxury”. Those who consume this particular type of cinema are not those who consume it out of necessity, but in fact are those who actively seek it out as an alternative cinematic form. Sexton and Mathijs argue that it is for this reason that cult cinema is most popular in urban settings, college towns, and among the middle class. 12 In many ways, this exploration of the cult cinema audience explains Marchand’s assumption that the entire audience is young or “childish” while, at the same time, revealing a very different audience that is also present, and possibly much more typical.

William Paul writes: “Gross-out speaks in a voice that demands to be heard because it represented a powerful strain in contemporary American culture. And it demands to be listened to closely.” 16 It is this voice, the voice of the cult cinema audience within the theater, which Marchand (and other mainstream critics) totally misses. Through an exploration of the loss of the individual and the centrality of both laughing and screaming in the cinematic space, Paul champions the centrality of audience participation and revels in the pleasure received from this unique communal experience. An especial emphasis on cult horror, one of the most dominant genres in cult cinema, exemplifies the central role of both screaming and laughing to this experience.

The collective experience of cult cinema is that of a theater full of individuals that come together to form a single, distinct voice. This voice has often been described as religious in its rituals and its sense of communion. Being in attendance at a screening of a cult film, one’s individuality must succumb to the collective ritual and its various manifestations. The atmosphere created in many ways resembles a carnival in allowing the possibility of actively participating in the spectacle. That cult cinema is by definition positioned in opposition to the mainstream and in opposition to “good taste” provides a community with the sense of sharing a distinct voice. Michel Maffesoli’s work on “affective communities,” those which have an active influence on the culture that they are a part of, is relevant to the cult cinema phenomenon, as the cult festival circuit relies heavily on audience participation and involvement. 17 The active role of the viewer is essential for festivals such as Fantasia, Fantastic Fest in Austin and Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival. 18 Maffesoli argues that often the power of these communities is not in their numbers, but rather in their unity. They have a prodigious singular voice despite not having any material similarities or tangible connections to one another. The shared experience is at the heart of these communities, and these experiences are infused with a disassociation with purpose and reason resulting from the everyday pleasure of excess. 17

Horrific cult films encourage this kind of communal experience. In her revolutionary book Men, Women and Chain Saws, Carol Clover argues that the slasher sub-genre, for much of the narrative, forces the audience to share the perspective of the killer, even before the killer is identified, before shifting perspective toward the end of the film to encourage identification with the “final girl.” The opening sequence of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) is a perfect example of this audience identification with the unidentified serial killer, and it has become a common trope in horror films. Within these films, “we” are killing these helpless victims without even being aware who “we” actually are. 20 The individual’s identity dissolves into the identity of the group who is killing on screen. The loss of the individual and the communal adoption of the identity and point of view of the cinematic “villain” similarly translates to how the body is framed by the horror genre. Brottman stipulates that gratuitous scenes that show bodily sexuality, defecation, and destruction in fact give us pleasure because “the body loses its individual definition and is collectivized at a transindivdual level” 21 We are no longer a single individual, but rather mere cogs in the cycle of life. We are made to realize that we are made of flesh and will die and return to the earth. 22 The gore-splattered portrayal of life and death are essential to the carnival, and it is a distinct feature of the cult communal experience.

Brottman’s exploration of gore and the carnival is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories on the Rabelaisian medieval carnival. The body within this carnival is not anatomical, but is consistently in movement and portrayed as a character itself. Brottman remarks that “the odd-looking carnival body [is] in the act of becoming, which is never finished or completed but continually breaking, building, and changing. Carnival ignores the impenetrable surface that closes the limits of the body as a separate and completed phenomenon.” 23 The point of the carnivalesque experience is to face the harsh cycle of life head on and without fear. Brottman writes that the “medieval carnival was the drama of the bodily life: birth, growth, copulation, eating, drinking and defecation. During the carnival, death is put in its ‘own place’ in the world.” 24 The carnival is created within the cult cinema screening through the portrayal of sexual taboos, gratuitous gore, and seemingly meaningless deaths that give the audience respite from the harsh reality that death is inevitable. 25

Michael Arnzen notes that gore is bound to cult cinema, and that the “spectacle of violence replaces any pretensions to narrative structure, because gore is the only part of the film that is reliably consistent.” 26 Arnzen dismisses the characterization “gore for gore’s sake,” stating that the purpose of gore within these films is essential to their structures. Instead of complex narratives, complex and inventive kills are treasured by cult audiences. The cult audience’s communal experience valorizes gore and the destruction of the body, making it central to the filmic text and thereby creating an atmosphere similar to carnival. Paul builds on this idea of the cult cinema experience as carnival by revealing how the communal experiences of films with gratuitous horror is “festive,” and similar to visiting “fun houses” 27 Like Brottman, Paul alludes to Mardi Gras when describing the cult experience and notes how “participants seek the release of excessive indulgence in a period of licence.” 28 The audience doesn’t physically need to respond to the sense of imminent danger produced by the horrific images because it is in the context of a safe environment. The audience “lets go” by screaming and laughing, which produces special pleasure through release. 28 Reflecting on audience interaction with gross-out horror and comedy, Paul argues that “(i)n no other films are they so prompted by the film itself to make their presence known. There is, then, a kind of loss of individuality . . . a loss that brings with it the gain of communal experience, a festive feeling akin to drunkenness.” 30 The fun house, similar to cult films, takes great joy in revealing distorted images of the body. Alfred Hitchcock famously compared his revolutionary Psycho (1960) to visiting an amusement park’s haunted house. 25 The carnival that is a cult cinema screening champions the safe release of our deepest fears about life and death and entices us to let go of them communally.

The voice of the cult cinema audience is one that screams openly in terror and horror. These films set out to terrorize the viewer and screams are an essential part of the communal experience. While Paul equates the pleasure that we get from being scared to the carnival and the pleasure we get from excess, Noel Carroll argues that the horror audience’s experience is closely synchronized with the characters on the screen. 32 The collective response to horror manifests itself as a stimulus-response model. Carroll writes that he believes “the work of art-horror has built into it, so to speak, a set of instructions about the appropriate way the audience is to respond to it . . . Unearthing those cues or instructions is an empirical matter, not an exercise in subjective projection.” 33 These cues not only stimulate an emotional response in the audience, but also spark abrupt shock. Carroll notes how the cult film shocks audiences through the use of slow, unsettling music and sudden loud noises which then cue audience screams. He argues that “[t]his variety of shock does not seem to me to be an emotion at all, but rather a reflex, though, of course, it is a reflex that is often linked with the provocation of art-horror by the artisans of monster spectacles.” 34 Carroll’s theory on the fear and shock provoked by the cult horror film reveals both the close relationship that the audience has with the film and the reliance these films place on this relationship – the film’s soundscape is not complete if the audience doesn’t scream. This is a relationship that valorises, even necessitates, both participation and the vocalization of fear.

Clover builds on Carroll’s insight that the characters within the film instruct the audience on how to react to horrific images on screen. She writes that this is a “function of masochistic fantasy” and that the audience members consistently feel that they are “the next victim.” 35 It is for this reason that the pacing of a horror film and its cues to the audience are so important to the communal experience of the cult cinema. Clover quotes filmmaker William Friedkin, who notes: “Fear is generally something that is behind you, speaking in psychological terms. It’s generally something behind you that you cannot see but that you can feel, like a loud sound or something touching you suddenly.” 36 The cult cinema audience comes to the theater to be scared and it is the role of the film to deliver. Successful horror films are ones that produce scary or gross-out stimuli at the appropriate moment so that the audience will react vocally. Clover writes:

At such moments, the diegesis is all but short circuited, and the horror filmmaker and the competent horror viewer come remarkably close to addressing one another directly — the viewer by shouting out his approval or disapproval not to the onscreen characters but to the people who put them there, and the people who put them there, in their turn by marking the moment with either a tongue-in-cheek gesture . . . or an actual pause to accommodate the reaction. 37

Sound’s role in cueing audience reaction is central to the cult experience. Psycho’s famous shower scene is used by Clover as an example of how sound assaults the audience, and she notes that many moviegoers thought the non-diegetic sound was more traumatizing than the actual death of Marion Crane. 38 Paul’s discussion of the audience’s reaction to silence in The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin) brings him to the conclusion that silence is central to creating tension and then conditions the audience on how to react to the more horrific scenes. 39 The voice of the cult cinema experience is manipulated by both silence and abrupt horrific sounds within the film that cue the audience to react accordingly.

Linda Willams’ work similarly reveals the importance of audience participation and reaction when it comes to the subgenre of “body horror.” Williams suggests that a horror film’s success is often hinged on the physical reaction of the audience to scenes of bodily excess. 40 These films often reveal, for example, the female body in different states of elation or distress and entice a physical reaction from viewer. Williams marks that the word “horror” comes from the Latin word horrere, which means “bristle,” evoking the image of bristles of hairs standing on end as a reaction to fear. 22 Williams further argues that “body horror” films (horror, porn and melodrama) are too often overlooked because they are seen as taboo and crass. Paul agrees, suggesting there is a hierarchy of genres among gross-out films. Genres that are perceived as cerebral are seen as more legitimate and superior to genres who deal with the more physical and visceral elements of the body.

Paul also suggests that Sigmund Freud’s theories on the libido and ego are useful in understanding the relationship between extreme horror cinema and its cult audience. According to Freud, the repression of lower body stratum is essential in order for society to function. The fact that it always needs to be repressed demonstrates the centrality of its presence within us. 38 Paul points to how we gain pleasure from asserting control of our “instinctual impulses.” The more crude and instinctual, the more pleasure we draw from it and the more it tends to “convulse our physical being” 43 The fact that cult cinema revels in that which is lowbrow, visceral, and crude gives the cult spectator that much more pleasure and demands a much more physical response than other, “highbrow,” forms of art.

The cult horror film is one that basks in the obscene and raises up that which is taboo and crass to create a unique cinematic experience that is not only littered with screams, gasps of disgust, and spasms of revulsion, but also laughter. Laughter within the cult cinema experience is aligned with both the cinema as carnival experience and the pleasure of releasing the repressed. Freud’s work on jokes and the unconscious demonstrates that jokes are innately linked to releasing anxiety, unconscious fears, and wish fulfillment. 44 Brottman notes how anxious and nervous laughter manifests itself in horror films most profoundly when horror films display bodies that are losing control or are distorted. These images of distorted bodies are associated with the carnival tradition and tap into our most basic anxieties about the ex-liminal body. 45 Paul explores the overlap between gross-out horror and gross-out comedy and argues that, at cult screenings, laughter usually follows the most terrifying images. He suggests that the laughter is a response to feelings of embarrassment, the recognition of the insubstantial nature of the scare itself, and acknowledgement of the pure pleasure of screaming out loud. He writes that “the response is equally vocal, as the response to a horror film can be as raucous and audible as the response to a comedy” 46 The grotesque seems to be the common denominator between these cult horror and comedy films, and it for this reason that horror can so easily become absurd in its excess of gore and the grotesque and comedy can so easily become nightmarish in its jokes. 47

The cult audience celebrates excess and the grotesque, laughing and screaming; in many ways the cult experience is wrought with play. Vera Dika argues that play is engrained in the cult experience and heighted by the film’s cues to the audience. She writes:

The predictability of the film’s elements encourage a play on seeing and not seeing, knowing and not knowing, that raises the level of view inter-action with the films. The resulting voiced participation tends to unify the audience, making the usual solitary or introspective experience of film viewing an active group experience. 48

As a collective voice, the audience screams and laughs, engaging in a game of active play. The film cues the audience to the horrors that are about to occur and the unified audience revels in vocalizing their tension. Paul agrees that laughter and screaming are most pleasurable as a shared experience, and that this is at the heart of the cult cinema experience. 49 It is fun to lose oneself in both indulgence and to a crowd of likeminded individuals, much like a sporting event. 50 Play can be enjoyed to such an extent because it does not have any lasting impact on the audience. Play is experienced immediately, and without lasting consequence. It is for this reason that cult horror films avoid any closure as the film ends, often finishing with the creature or killer resurfacing to attack the audience one last time. Closure is arbitrary when the immediate and visceral is championed to such an extent. 51

Fantasia Film Festival’s raucous and rowdy audience is not unique in its manifestation of the cult cinema experience. The Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFFF) is equally ritualistic and vocal during film screenings. When sex or violence appears on the screen, the audience is quick to yell and scream. Similarly, when a full moon appears on screen, the audience howls like wolves. When guest directors take to the stage for Q and A sessions, the audience often yells for them to sing a song, and frequently these directors will oblige. This kind of behaviour would horrify Laura Marchand, who begs for a more appropriate demeanour. She writes: “And if you won’t do it for me, then do it for the directors. So many of them come to Fantasia to give a talk before or after the screening. They are sitting there, right in the audience. What do you think they feel?” Buddy Giovinazzo a seasoned filmmaker and distinguished guest of Fantasia actually commented on Marchand’s article, stating:

Sure, there are “meows” when the lights go down, but it’s just an absurd audience reaction at a festival that showcases the absurd and the unique. It fuels the excitement before the film begins and is sort of a comical release (although I don’t know what sort of punchline I could supply for it). I never felt it took away from the screening, it never bothered me, to be honest. And it’s become one of those unique things that only happens at Fantasia, just like when Daniel [a long-time stage hand] turns out the lights from the stage and carries the mike away as everyone cheers like maniacs. (2014)

Giovinazzo’s explanation of the audience reaction taps into the essence of the cult cinema experience. The voice of the audience is a communal one that experiences the carnival of the theatre, where one can find pleasure in both laughing and screaming and bask in the film’s excesses. Dirk Van Extergem, former BIFFF programmer, comments on the nature of the cult festival experience, saying:

Every cult constitutes a community, a group that worships similarly and regularly, and finds strengths in that shared experience which relies on a set of practices or conventions shared by the devotees. And the demonstrated knowledge of those things (the participatory action such as the shouting being the most evident example) certifies the initiated, binds them in their privileged knowledge to others. 52

The audience’s privileged knowledge of the cult film cues help define the community and create a unique cinematic experience where participation is expected and valorized.

Christopher Kennally’s documentary Side by Side (2012) surveys the history of celluloid and digital cinema and ponders what will be left of the communal experience of cinema in the wake of the digital revolution. The fact that people can so readily watch films on their phone or in the comfort of their own homes raises the question “why go to the cinema”? How might this impact the cult film experience? In Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens: Video Expeience from VHS to File Sharing, Caetlin Benson-Allott suggests that the demand for the cult experience is one that is evolving with the arrival of the digital age. 53 This evolution is best exemplified by the film Grindhouse (2007, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriquez), a double feature film that attempted to recreate the cult cinema experience within the multiplex. Though the film failed at the box office, like most cult films, it received new vigour upon its DVD release. A fascinating aspect of the film’s release on DVD is that it includes the option of listening to an audience reaction track while watching the film. This feature actually plays the reaction of a live audience in an attempt to recreate the unique experience of attending a cult cinema screening. This demonstrates how pivotal the voice of the cult film audience is to this kind of cinema. I wonder if on this reaction track we can hear a meow or two.

Works Cited

“The 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World, 2014.” Movie Maker. 17 Nov. 2014. Web. 8 Dec. 2014. http://www.moviemaker.com/archives/festivals/25-coolest-film-festivals-world-2014.

Arnzen, Michael A. “Who’s Laughing Now? The Postmodern Splatter Film.” Journal of Popular Film and Television. Winter, 21 (1994).

Benson-Allott, Caetlin. Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens: Video Spectatorship from VHS to File Sharing. Berkeley: U of California, 2013.

Brottman, Mikita. Offensive Films. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt UP, 2005.

Carroll, Noel. The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge, 1990

Clover, Carol J. Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. S.l: British Film Institute, 1993.56.

Dika, Vera. Games of Terror: Halloween, Friday the 13th, and the films of the Stalker Cycle. Cranbury, NJ: Associated UP, 1990.

Freud, Sigmund, and James Strachey. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. New York: Norton, 1960.

Marchand, Laura. “Yet Another Fantasia Festival Ruined by Fans.” The Concordian. 7 Aug. 2014. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. .

Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Paul, William. Laughing, Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.

Sconce, Jeffrey. Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Financing. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007.

Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Film Quarterly 44.4 (1991).

Notes

1. “The 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World, 2014.” Movie Maker. 17 Nov. 2014. Web. 8 Dec. 2014. . ↩
2. Laura Marchand. “Yet another Fantasia Festival Ruined by Fans.” The Concordian. 7 Aug. 2014. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. . ↩
3. Ibid. ↩
4. Ernest Mathjis and Jamie Sexton. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, 42. ↩
5. Ibid., 3. ↩
6. Ibid, 41. ↩
7. Ibid, 7. ↩
8. Ibid, 19. ↩
9. Ibid, 7. ↩
10. Mikita Brottman. Offensive Films. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt UP, 2005, 7. ↩
11. Linda Williams. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Film Quarterly 44.4 (1991), 8. ↩
12. Mathijs and Sexton, 19. ↩
13. Jeffrey Sconce. Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Financing. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007, reviewed in this issue. ↩
14. William Paul. Laughing, Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy. New York: Columbia UP, 1994, 71. ↩
15. Mathijs and Sexton, 19. ↩
16. Paul, 81. ↩
17. Ibid, 20. ↩
18. Ibid, 42. ↩
19. Ibid, 20. ↩
20. Carol J. Clover. Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. S.l: British Film Institute, 1993, 56. ↩
21. Brottman, 5. ↩
22. Ibid, 5. ↩
23. Ibid, 152. ↩
24. Ibid, 153. ↩
25. Ibid, 421. ↩
26. Michael A. Arnzen. “Who’s Laughing Now? The Postmodern Splatter Film.” Journal of Popular Film and Television. Winter, 21 (1994): 3. ↩
27. Paul, 65. ↩
28. Ibid, 66. ↩
29. Ibid, 66. ↩
30. Ibid, 67. ↩
31. Ibid, 421. ↩
32. Noel Carroll. The Philosophy of Horror, Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge, 1990, 18. ↩
33. Ibid, 31. ↩
34. Ibid, 36. ↩
35. Clover, 221. ↩
36. Ibid, 221-222. ↩
37. Ibid, 202. ↩
38. Paul, 47. ↩
39. Paul, 74. ↩
40. Williams, 4. ↩
41. Ibid, 5. ↩
42. Paul, 47. ↩
43. Ibid, 77. ↩
44. Sigmund Freud and James Strachey. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. New York: Norton, 1960. ↩
45. Brottman, 47. ↩
46. Paul, 67-68. ↩
47. Ibid, 68. ↩
48. Vera Dika. Games of Terror: Halloween, Friday the 13th, and the Films of the Stalker Cycle. Cranbury, NJ: Associated UP, 1990, 128. ↩
49. Paul, 21. ↩
50. Ibid, 422. ↩
51. Ibid, 423. ↩
52. Mathijs and Sexton, 42-44. ↩
53. Caetlin Benson-Allott. Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens: Video Expeience from VHS to File Sharing. Berkeley: U of California, 2013. ↩

Volume 25, Issue 5 / May 2021 Essays   body genres   cult cinema   fantasia international film festival   horror film