Zinoman’s “Shock Value” and the New Horror of the ’70s

book-cover-shock-valueIn his new book, Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, author Jason Zinoman does a stellar job of presenting the story of the ’70s horror directors who took the horror genre from its supernatural underpinings and clean, “good triumphs over evil” endings into the realm of modern-day psychological terror and equivocating conclusions.

Throughout Shock Value, Zinoman continually makes the point that this is the transition from Old Horror to New Horror. The repeated contrasting of the ’70s directors and their earlier counterparts – De Palma and Hitchcock, most notably – allows Zinoman to ably demonstrate just what kind of innovation was at hand. I feel he missed some chances to connect the past when mentioning the marketing of Wes Craven’s Last House On the Left using “It’s only a movie…” with the various tactics utilized by William Castle, whose acquisition of Rosemary’s Baby gets the book rolling.
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