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Shocking Cinema of the 70s
Edited by Julian Petley
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Book Presentation:
This collection focuses on 1970s films from a variety of countries, and from the marginal to the mainstream, which, by tackling various ‘difficult’ subjects, have proved to be controversial in one way or another. It is not an uncritical celebration of the shocking and the subversive but an attempt to understand why this decade produced films which many found shocking, and what it was that made them shocking to certain audiences. To this end it includes not only films that shocked the conventionally minded, such as hard core pornography, but also those that outraged liberal opinion – for example, Death Wish and Dirty Harry. The book does not simply cast a critical light on a series of controversial films which have been variously maligned, misinterpreted or just plain ignored, but also assesses how their production values, narrative features and critical receptions can be linked to the wider historical and social forces that were dominant during this decade. Furthermore, it explores how these films resonate in our own historical moment – replete as it is with shocks of all kinds.
About the Author:
Julian Petley, Professor of Journalism and Screen Media, School of Arts, Brunel University, London, England.Xavier Mendik is Professor of Cult Cinema Studies within Birmingham School of Media at Birmingham City University, UK, from where he runs the Cine-Excess International Film Festival. He is editor of Shocking Cinema of the Seventies (2002) and co-editor of Alternative Europe (2004) and Underground USA (2002).
Press Reviews:
"It's alive … again! Shocking Cinema of the Seventies is back but not as we knew it. More than merely an updating of the previous edition, this volume is a wholly new collection that responds to the profound changes that have taken place in the status of 1970s cinema over the last two decades. An indispensable volume in its own right!" ―Mark Jancovich, University of East Anglia, UK
"Mendik and Petley's new volume unearths little-suspected histories and sub-genre cycles hidden in plain sight and material from darker recesses of criminality and fantasy. Contributors challenge conceptions of cinema and how and why academics study it, disturbing both conservative and radical sensibilities as much as do the films themselves." ―Nigel Morris, University of Lincoln, USA.
"This exciting collection advances significant new research in 70s cult cinema, especially fascinating work in international cinema including Japan. With an introduction rightly interrogating what is meant by 'shocking' and asking us to rethink our commonly held assumptions, this is compulsory reading for all film scholars and those interested in cult cinema and television." ―Jason Lee, De Monfort University, UK
"A collection as electrifying and as essential as the wild, diverse range of films from the 1970s it explores, authored by some of the most vital and exciting voices in cult film studies today." ―Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, author of Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study (2021)
"It's hardly shocking that two of the UK's most distinguished film journalists have produced this impressive new edition of a film book which has long been an essential component of any cinéaste's shelves." ―Crime Time
"Shocking Cinema of the 70s offers a range of opinion and insight on films which caused public outcry, upset the critics, or troubled governments. Whereas some of these films, looked at almost fifty years later, might make that seem like an overreaction, others might still make for uncomfortable viewing today. This collection enables us to understand what a ‘Shocking’ film is, and what there still is to learn from them. Highly recommended." ―Cinema Retro
See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Academic
> From the same author:
Film in Britain in the New Millennium (2012)
Journal of British Cinema and Television Volume 9, Issue 3
Dir. John Hill and Julian Petley
Subject: Countries > Great Britain
Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain (2011)
Subject: Countries > Great Britain
> On a related topic:
The American Film in the Crisis of Confidence (2025)
Hollywood Malaise, 1976-1983
Subject: Countries > United States
No More Heroes? (2015)
Steroids, Cocaine, Finance and Film in the 70s
by Carl Neville
Subject: Sociology
Blood in the Streets (2019)
Histories of Violence in Italian Crime Cinema
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