Songs of Love and Death: The Classical American Horror Film of the 1930s

This work examines 11 horror films in depth and their relationships to Romantic Gothic literary conventions - mainly, but not solely, found in works dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. To illustrate the use of these conventions in film, Sevastakis analyses shots from scenes and sequences of the 11 films discussed. Due to the large quantity of horror films produced during this period, the films in this book have been selected on the basis of their supernatural and preternatural content, and on four conventions predicated on fictional literary models dealing with the villain-hero.