A review by devinsf
The Horror Reader by Ken Gelder

4.0

This book is a bizarre gem: a collection of lengthy academic essays centered around Horror movies and "Horror" in general. It's organized into a-dozen-or-so broader topics, on which there will be 2 or 3 essays. The individual essays cover quite a bit of ground within this broad heading; from a single film, to larger bodies of work (eg Italian horror, or 1980s Chinese demon movies), or other structural (one is a history of the zine culture which developed around under-the-radar and B movies), or use one or two movies to discuss broader cultural interfaces with a specific idea.

Be warned that most of the writing here is straight-up academic... so be prepared for lots of 10ยข words and references to texts you might not be familiar with. However, I can safely say the content was absolutely interesting enough to wade through this style of writing (which is not normally my cup of tea).