British Gothic Cinema by Barry Forshaw (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Forshaw provides a definitive, wide-ranging study of the British horror film produced by the Hammer studios and their rivals from the 1940s and 1950s up to the 21st century and the new popularity of the genre. Beginning with a lively discussion of the great literary antecedents, British Gothic Cinema discusses the flowering of the genre in the middle of the last century and the headline-grabbing critical and establishment revulsion over the unprecedented levels of violence and sexuality. It also explores the rude health of the field and its continuing influence throughout the world in film and television. With immense enthusiasm and scholarship, Forshaw celebrates the British cinema’s long love affair with the Gothic and the macabre, both still key characteristics of modern film and television.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Gothic Fiction: English Terror and Carnality
2. Through American Eyes: Stoker and Shelley in US Cinema
3. Undermining British Cinema: Gothic Horror in the 1930 and 1940s, Censorship
4. Bloody Revolution: The Worldwide Impact of Hammer’s Cottage Industry
5. Beyond the Aristocracy
6. The Sexual Impulse
7. The Rivals: On Hammer’s Coat-tails
8. Nights of the Demon: The English Supernatural Story and Film
9. One-shots and Short Runs: The Black Sheep of Gothic Cinema
10. Fresh Blood, Exhaustion: The 1970s to the Turn of the Century
11. The Legacy: Gothic Influence on Television
12. The Modern Age: Horror Redux
Appendix: Interviews