Dark Places explores the dim, claustrophobic interiors of haunted houses in horror movies, as well as the cinema auditorium itself, and their relation to the ‘dark places’ of the human pysche. Barry Curtis looks at the long, blood-soaked history of horror films: their fascination with re-animating the dead; the special effects, both sophisticated and crude, which have been contrived in order to bring spirits into the realm of the living; the structures, projections and architecture of horror movie sets; and the complex metaphorical life of ‘ghosts’ as harbingers of loss, amnesia, injustice and vengeance. A wide range of films is also discussed in which the ‘haunted house’ is reworked in new scenarios - the road, the apartment, the motel, the spaceship - and visually linked to the troubling archetypes of Gothic fictions.Taking in more than 200 films, including classics such as Nosferatu (1922), Citizen Kane (1941), Psycho (1960), The Exorcist (1973), Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Poltergeist (1980), The Shining (1980) and Alien (1979), alongside less-familiar British movies such as Dead of Night (1945), Latin Quarter (1945), So Long at the Fair (1950), Quatermass and the Pit (1958) and The Innocents (1961), Dark Places also incorporates examples of films from Italy, China, Mexico and Japan in order to illustrate how different cultural traditions of ‘haunting’ have found expression. In particular, the book refers to Japanese ‘ghost’ films that have been remade in Hollywood, such as Ringu (1998)/ The Ring (2002), Juon (2000)/ The Grudge (2005) and Honogauri Mizu no soko kara (2002)/ Dark Water (2005), tracing a tradition in Japanese cinema involving malevolent forces from the past. Dark Places will attract the wide audience interested in the history of horror films, and also anyone with a curiosity about the traditions and implications of horror, death and its transcendence.
