SN3122 Horror Cinema in the Hispanic World
2017-18: Term 1 only
Convenor: James Kent
Assessment:
One formative piece (0%) [Seminar contribution]
One individual / group presentation (10%)
Essay 1 (2000-2500 words) (30%)
Essay 2 (2500-3000 words) (60%)
Overview:
On this course students students will study the horror genre through Spanish-language filmic texts from Spain and Latin America. The films studied will span fifty years of horror filmmaking in these respective industries, offering students a chance to explore, for instance, the “boom” in Spanish horror that took place in the 1970s and 1980s along with other, more recent, developments in transnational horror cinema. Following an introduction to horror filmmaking, we will explore its various subgenres (gothic, physiological, psychological, science fiction, zombie etc.) and will learn both how to identify these different types of film and to situate them in the history of horror filmmaking as a whole.
Library reading lists
The films to be studied (in chronological order) are as follows*:
La Noche del Terror Ciego (Tombs of the Blind Dead, dir. Amando de Ossorio, 1972)
Angustia (Anguish, dir. Bigas Luna, 1987)
Cronos (dir. Guillermo del Toro, 1993)
[•REC] (dir. Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza, 2007)
La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In, dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2011)
Juan de los Muertos (Juan of the Dead, dir. Alejandro Brugués, 2011)
*possibly subject to change – this will be confirmed before the beginning of the academic year.
Key Bibliography:
Patricia Allmer et al. (eds), European nightmares: horror cinema in Europe since 1945 (London: Wallflower, 2012)
Pam Cook (ed), The Cinema Book, (London: BFI, 2007).
John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Antonio Lázaro-Reboll, Spanish Horror Film (Oxford: OUP, 2012).
Victor Matellano, Spanish Horror (Madrid: T&B, 2009).
Kim Newman, The BFI Companion to Horror (London: Cassell, 1996).
Kim Newman, Nightmare Movies (London, Bloomsbury 2011).
Rob Stone, Spanish Cinema (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2002).