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    Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror
    Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror
    Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror
    Audiobook8 hours

    Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror

    Written by Jason Zinoman

    Narrated by Pete Larkin

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but while Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Copola were making their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film-aggressive, raw, and utterly original. Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, New York Times critic Jason Zinoman's Shock Value delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age.

    By the late 1960s, horror was stuck in the past, confined mostly to drive-in theaters and exploitation houses and shunned by critics. Shock Value tells the unlikely story of how the much-disparaged horror film became an ambitious art form while also conquering the multiplex. Directors such as Wes Craven, Roman Polanski, John Carpenter, and Brian De Palma-counterculture types operating largely outside Hollywood-revolutionized the genre, exploding taboos and bringing a gritty aesthetic, confrontational style, and political edge to horror. Zinoman recounts how these directors produced such classics as Rosemary's Baby, Carrie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween, creating a template for horror that has been imitated relentlessly but whose originality has rarely been matched.

    This new kind of film dispensed with the old vampires and werewolves and instead assaulted audiences with portraits of serial killers, the dark side of suburbia, and a brand of nihilistic violence that had never been seen before. Shock Value tells the improbable stories behind the making of these movies, which were often directed by obsessive and insecure young men working on shoestring budgets, were funded by sketchy investors, and featured porn stars. But once The Exorcist became the highest grossing film in America, Hollywood took notice.

    The classic horror films of the 1970s have now spawned a billion-dollar industry, but they have also penetrated deep into the American consciousness. Quite literally, Zinoman reveals, these movies have taught us what to be afraid of. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of the most important artists in horror, Shock Value is an enthralling and personality-driven account of an overlooked but hugely influential golden age in American film.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 1, 2011
    ISBN9781452672694
    Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror
    Author

    Jason Zinoman

    Jason Zinoman writes the On Comedy column for the New York Times. He has also contributed to Vanity Fair, the Guardian, and Slate, and is the author of Shock Value and Searching for Dave Chappelle. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for Shock Value

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    • 3/5
      Disappointing. Zinoman collected some interesting anecdotes, but the book is not well organized, and he doesn't do a compelling job of stating his arguments. If you're moderately well-versed in '70s horror, there's not much here that will be a revelation.

      The most interesting part of the book, actually, is the end, when he talks about how films like Last House on the Left and Alien influenced the horror films that came later -- but that's all stuck into the last 40 pages or so.

      Zinoman's related series on Slate ("How to fix horror," as I recall) is a faster, more interesting read.
    • 5/5
      The problem with sequels is that they are re-treads of the original. Nine out of 10 times They are never as good, nor are they as satisfying. But dammit I sure wish Jason Zinoman would write a follow up to this interesting, fun, and intellectually satisfying book. If you are interested in books about movies than this one is certainly up there with the best.
    • 5/5
      I'm a huge fan of horror movies and I love seeing behind the scenes of how movies are made, so it's no surprise that I would totally dig Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, by Jason Zinoman. The book presents a history of how filmmakers, such as Wes Craven, Roman Polanski, George Romero and others, took the old schlocky stories (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.) to the next level, with stories that push the boundaries of politics and social commentary, as well as gore.Zinoman didn't go into deep analysis of the film (I'm sure there are plenty of other books that do), but explored the lives of the directors and writers that became known as auteurs in the industry (whether or not it was truth), revealing how they came to develop the movie that are now classics of horror. Keeping in mind that I did not live in the era and have not seen several of these movies (though I have heard and know about all of them), I can't judge whether the author's point of view accurately reflects the movies or the time in which they were made, but I can say that it worked for me. I was thoroughly fascinated and entertained, so much so that I plowed through the book in under two days. It was a great, fun read, and I now need to do a marathon and see all the movies that I have not seen.The one flaw, for me at least as I have a deep love (read: obsession) of lists, is that the author did note compile of filmography of movies mentioned in the book. How else am I supposed to easily quantify which movies I have and have not seen?So lacking a proper filmography, I skimmed through the book and made my own list of all the movies discussed or mentioned, and posted it on my blog.
    • 4/5
      Overall an excellent look into the development of modern horror, what influenced it and how it's influenced current entertainment. Some of the stories I've heard before but most were, if not fully new, had enough new details to them that I felt I learned something new about these movies and their creators.I mostly read this book hoping to gain some insight into the popularity of movies such as Last House On The Left or Texas Chainsaw Massacre and while that didn't happen I do have a better appreciation for what went into making them and the impact they have had. I think I will just have to accept that fact that hyper violent movies will never make sense to me.