The development and the origins of pulp fiction books are both well-documented and naturally before there was a market for those products, there was a demand for it. Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, however, starts not at the beginning of this genre, but dives deep into the phenomenon of the pulp books that dealt with subcultures […]
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Category: B. R. Film
Giant Creatures in Our World by Camille D. G. Mustachio and Jason Barr (eds.) (2017)
Even as today every few years or so new films with giant monsters hit the cinemas, the „kaiju“ (“strange beast/creature”) genre is mostly belittled or ridiculed in academic discussion and film studies as well. This situation was not quite satisfying for this book’s editors Mustachio and Barr; considering the fact that the kaiju film has […]
Dark City. The Real Los Angeles Noir by Jim Heimann (2018)
With Dark City a very unusual portrait of an American city is now available. It impresses with many pictures of the city of angels that show the really shadowy sides, the ones that inhabitants from the early 1910s until the 1950s experienced, and that provided the soil and inspiration for many novels and movies. As […]
Demographic Angst: Cultural Narratives and American Films of the 1950s by Alan Nadel (2017)
Alan Nadel, probably best known for his expert writings on the Atomic Age and American everyday life in the 1950s, has come up with another study of that period. A time when not just the permanent fears of a hot war or Soviet invasion were present, but also strange (or possibly communist) activities from your […]
Monsters in the Machine: Science Fiction Film and the Militarization of America … by Steffen Hantke
The 1950s and 1960s were the decades when science-fiction movies boomed and during that time not so much technology, but disgust, shock, fear, basically all aspects of horror and horror movies, were used instead to give science fiction movies a certain direction by presenting miniature or giant creatures, mutants and every kind or harrowing creature […]
Quadrophenia and Mod(ern) Culture by Pamela Thurschwell (ed.) (2018)
Now, this is probably the best book on Mod culture so far. If not, it is the one with the best academic approach to it and a real understanding of the subculture that goes beyond pure distanced sociological writing and simplifying banalities (that are used too often in other publications on the topic). The British […]
Invasion USA: Anti-Communist Movies of the 1950s and 1960s by David J. Hogan (2017)
With motion pictures as one of the most powerful instruments to display the enemies’ (i.e. the USSR’s) efforts to destroy the trust of the American people in their country in the mid-1950s, a number of movies by US studios were produced. The plots centered mostly around Soviet spies, communist agents or Americans, who had lost […]
War Noir: Raymond Chandler and the Hard-Boiled Detective as Veteran … by Sarah Trott (2016)
Highly respected and valued by many fans of crime fiction and most likely America’s most distinguished crime writer ever, Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) together with Dashiell Hammett invented a new type of tough detective, independently of each other, they founded a style that later was described as “hard-boiled.” Many of their novels were turned into successful […]
Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films … by Tom Lisanti and Louis Paul (2016)
Intelligence work for centuries has been an important part of a nation’s security. Over the years, the profession of “the spy” was developed and particularly during the Cold War those people – no matter from which side of the Iron Curtain – were interested in securing their respective country an advantage in information or technology. […]