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Men, Women, and Chain Saws

Gender in the Modern Horror Film

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1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity and influence of horror cinema since the mid-1970s. Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented—notably the slasher movie's "final girls"—as they endure fear and degradation before rising to save themselves. The lesson was not lost on the mainstream industry, which was soon turning out the formula in well-made thrillers.
Including a new preface by the author, this Princeton Classics edition is a definitive work that has found an avid readership from students of film theory to major Hollywood filmmakers.

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    • Library Journal

      March 15, 1992
      Can Friday the 13th (1980) be analyzed logically? Is a potboiler like Hell Night (1981) worth consideration? This examination of these and better splatter, occult, and rape-revenge films of the past three decades will stir discussion among informed, inveterate filmgoers as well as students of sociology and psychology. Clover (literature, Univ. of California) persuasively argues that identification with the "Final Girl"--she who triumphs over Jason/Michael/Leatherface--transcends any anti-female inclination the mostly young male audience might have during a movie's early stages. She also recognizes that exploitation films usually foreshadow the subject matter of mainstream cinema. This well-researched study is heartily recommended for academic libraries.-- Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, Pa.

      Copyright 1992 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 22, 1993
      Clover contends that contemporary horror films are not simply the misogynist fantasies that critics have made them out to be. Photos.

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