Hollywood horror

"The horror film, which author Mark A. Vieira calls "the escape valve of the American psyche," is forever imprinted on our popular culture. Celebrating an ever-popular and enduring cinematic genre populated with vampires, mummies, zombies, werewolves, sinister scientists, aliens, and psychopaths, Hollywood Horror is an entertaining narrative and pictorial history of the classic American monster movie from the silent era to 1968." "Illustrated with 260 pristine still photographs - many never before published - culied from 160 films, the book captures all the mystery, power, dark humor, and chilling beauty of cinematic horror. Among the featured films are seminal icons such as James Whale's Frankenstein and Tod Browning's Dracula; the steamy pre-Code jungle sorcery of The Island of the Lost Souls; big-budget thrillers like The Uninvited and The Picture of Dorian Gray; the cold-war science fiction of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers; sublimely ridiculous "creature features" such as The Blob, and terrifying thrillers like Hitchcock's Psycho."--Jacket.