Review by Choice Review
Primarily a quick tour of the development and evolution of horror in both literature and film, from the gothic novel to recent body-horror movies, this book offers succinct summaries of what some important critics in the field have already said. This should prove extremely useful to general and undergraduate-level readers unfamiliar with the vast amount of critical work about the genre produced over the last two decades. But within this constrained format the author, wanting also to offer something new, tiresomely insists on finding problems with almost every critic he mentions. Although the connection Jancovich makes between bourgeois social organization and horror offers a unique slant, and although his attacks on some critical shibboleths are welcome, he occasionally distorts the contributions of others or omits mentioning them entirely. Nor is his own work without its problems, as in his seemingly contradictory assessment of the function of popular culture in Richard Matheson and Stephen King. Although occasionally useful, the book would have been better if Jancovich (American studies, Univ. of Manchester, UK) had expanded upon some of his brief readings of specific texts. General; undergraduate; graduate. B. Grant; Brock University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
