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Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror
Shock Value How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares Conquered Hollywood and Invented Modern Horror
Author: Jason Zinoman
An enormously entertaining account of the gifted and eccentric directors who gave us the golden age of modern horror in the 1970s, bringing a new brand of politics and gritty realism to the genre. — Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but at the same time as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppo...  more »
ISBN-13: 9781594203022
ISBN-10: 1594203024
Publication Date: 7/7/2011
Pages: 272
Rating:
  • Currently 4/5 Stars.
 1

4 stars, based on 1 rating
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback, Audio CD
Members Wishing: 10
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Barbllm avatar reviewed Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror on + 241 more book reviews
Jason Zinoman writes a very vivid account of 70s cinema and how the modern horror film was "invented" by a few geniuses, notably Wes Craven ("The Last House on the Left"), Roman Polanski ("Rosemary's Baby", the thinking person's horror film), Dan O'Bannon (creator of "Alien"), and John Carpenter (onetime USC film student and director of "Halloween"). There is a lot of detail in the book, including anecdotes about Carpenter and O'Bannon's time as film students, and how Tobe Hooper came to direct the now-infamous "Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

I'm not a huge fan of horror, but I found it interesting to see the creative process at work and how these ideas came to fruition. That the early films are far more beloved and better reviewed than their recently rebooted counterparts says volumes about the talent involved: did anyone seriously like the 2003 Chainsaw reboot with Jessica Biel over the 1974 original with Marilyn Burns? Or Rob Zombie's take on the origin of Michael Myers over Carpenter's unsettling 1978 film with Jamie Lee Curtis?


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