The Death and Ressurection Show: Horror Franchise Cinema and the Romanticization of Cult

Although film franchises have been part of the horror genre since Universal’s various monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s, there has been less sustained academic interest in the phenomenon, with much of the existing scholarship prioritising the figure of the ‘cult’ director or by targeting individual films as ‘reflections’ of socio-political forces and factors. The absence of work in this area can be attributed to an understanding of the franchise as a cynical, commercial exercise without merit, lacking cultish associations, and therefore unworthy of study.

Comprising eleven chapters written by established and emerging scholars, Horror Franchise Cinema, seeks to redress this critical neglect with contributions that explore different franchise properties from a wide-range of approaches and perspectives. Featuring the Universal Monsters, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Alien, The Purge, Blumhouse, I Spit on Your Grave, Italian Zombie films, Let the Right One In, Blumhouse Studios, Anthology Films, and Virtual Reality, Horror Franchise Cinema is a significant contribution to studies of the horror genre and film/media franchising from the 1930s to present day.