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This classic study of horror and science fiction movies was first published in 1967, the year before films such as Rosemary's Baby and 2001: A Space Odyssey transformed both genres. Readers interested in the many horror and science fiction films made before the modern era of graphic violence and special-effects extravaganzas will be enthralled by An Illustrated History of Horror and Science Fiction Film. It summarizes the plots and relates the importance of a wide variety of relevant films, from the early work of Georges Méliès and the German expressionists to Universal Pictures horror movies such as the original Dracula and Frankenstein to the suggestively atmospheric work of Val Lewton and the sci-fi classics of the 1950s. Clarens makes fascinating observations about the mythical value of these films and their cathartic effect on viewers. His insights are so powerful and expressive that J. Hoberman, who wrote an introduction to the book's 1997 reissue, found that "this idiosyncratic genre history was really an idiosyncratic history of the commercial cinema as it had developed, in Europe and America, from the 1890s through the mid-1960s." An Illustrated History of Horror and Science Fiction Film contains scores of terrific black-and-white illustrations and a detailed filmography.
