Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
Horror House Film
Possession, Obsession, Domination, Masculinity
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
Houses have a long history in horror. They often figure as the locus of hauntings, or play significant allegorical roles as embodiments of their proprietors’ minds. Such houses belong to the spectral Gothic. Horror House Film takes a different approach and analyses a collection of horror films – in different subgenres – in which the house is a solid, massive and often overbearing presence in the lives of the protagonists. These films are about the potentially pernicious effects of houses as material objects of ownership, possession and exploitation. The analyses reveal a strong link between a drive for home-ownership and a drive to possess and exploit other people. They locate this drive within a hegemonic masculinist culture that is closely related to what Erich Fromm has termed the being-is-having mode of human identity formation in contemporary materialistic Western societies, in which a people’s possessions define their selves. The grim and tragic stories told in these horror house films often revolve around the need to possess property as a means of shoring up ontological security, whilst the house owned proves to be no haven but a drain on both socioeconomic and psychological wellbeing.
About the Author:
Evert Jan van Leeuwen is a lecturer in English-language culture at Leiden University. He researches the history and development of English- and Dutch-language Gothic, horror, science fiction and noir fiction.
See the publisher website: Liverpool University Press
> From the same author:
Haunted Europe (2021)
Continental Connections in English-Language Gothic Writing, Film and New Media
Dir. Evert Jan Van Leeuwen and Michael Newton
> On a related topic:
The Politics of Monstrous Figures in Contemporary Cinema (2025)
Witches, Zombies, and Cyborgs Re-enchanting the Ends of the World
Sixties Shockers (2025)
A Critical Filmography of Horror Cinema, 1960-1969
by Mark Clark and Bryan Senn
The Post-Zombie (2025)
Essays on the Evolving Undead
Dir. C. Wylie Lenz, Angela Tenga and Kyle William Bishop
Back
