Acknowledgements Introduction Murray Leeder, University of Calgary, Canada Ghosts of Pre-Cinema and Silent Cinema Chapter 1 Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations: Spirit Photography, Magic Theater, Trick Films and Photography’s Uncanny Tom Gunning, University of Chicago, USA Chapter 2 “Visualizing the Phantoms of the Imagination”: Projecting Haunted Minds Murray Leeder, University of Calgary, Canada Chapter 3 Specters of the Mind: Ghosts, Illusion, and Exposure in Paul Leni’s The Cat and the Canary Simone Natale, Humboldt University, Germany Chapter 4 Supernatural Speech: Silent Cinema's Stake in Visualizing the Impossible Robert Alford, University of California, Berkeley, USA Cinematic Ghosts from the 1940s through the 1980s Chapter 5 Bad Sync: Spectral Sound and Retro-effects in Portrait of Jennie René Thoreau Bruckner, University of Southern California, USA Chapter 6 “Antique Chiller”: Quality, Pretention and History in the Critical Reception of The Innocents and The Haunting Mark Jancovich, University of East Anglia, UK Chapter 7 Shadows of Shadows: The Undead in Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema Maurizio Cinquegrani, University of Kent, UK Chapter 8 Locating the Spectre in Dan Curtis’s Burnt Offerings Dara Downey, University College Dublin, Ireland Chapter 9 The Bawdy Body in Two Comedy Ghost Films: Topper and Beetlejuice Katherine A. Fowkes, High Point University, USA Millennial Ghosts Chapter 10 “I See Dead People”: Visualizing Ghosts in the Horror Film Before the Arrival of CGI Steffen Hantke, Sogang University, Korea Chapter 11 Spectral Remainders and Transcultural Hauntings: (Re)iterations of the Onryo in Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema Jay McRoy, University of Wisconsin – Parkside, USA Chapter 12 Painted Skin: Romance with the Ghostly Femme Fatale in Contemporary Chinese Cinema Li Zeng, Illinois State University, USA Chapter 13 “It’s Not the House that’s Haunted”: Demons, Debt and the Family in Peril in Recent Horror Cinema Bernice M. Murphy, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland Chapter 14 Glitch Gothic Marc Olivier, Brigham Young University, USA Chapter 15 Showing the Unknown: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, Carleton University, Canada Afterword: Haunted Viewers Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern University, USA
A collection of essays that explores the various roles ghosts have played in motion pictures, spanning a range of time periods, genres and nations.
Murray Leeder is Adjunct Assistant Professor in Communication, Media and Film at the University of Calgary, Canada. He is the author The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema (2017) and Halloween (2013), and editor of Cinematic Ghosts (2015) and ReFocus: The Films of William Castle (2018).
There is much to interest readers and the book will (dare I say it)
leave them in good spirits ... A thoughtful and entertaining
addition to any film or religion studies collection, whether for
personal or professional purposes, at undergraduate or postgraduate
level.
*Alphaville*
The stand out feature of this collection is the diagnostic links
between the content of ghost films and the ghostly techniques
through which they are shot, a level of connection that puts
Leeder’s text a step ahead of other purely thematic approaches to
ghosts and haunted cinema. Cinematic Ghosts is just as much about
ghostly cinematics, adding appeal to scholars of film production
and spectral narratives alike.
*Gothic Studies*
Cinema has always been a ghostly medium. Now we finally have a book
that explores film’s relation to ghosts with the breadth and depth
it deserves, moving deftly across historical periods, genre
classifications, and national origins. This is a rich and varied
collection that will haunt – in all the right ways – a broad range
of readers, scholars, and students.
*Adam Lowenstein, Associate Professor of English and Film Studies,
University of Pittsburgh, USA, and author of Dreaming of Cinema:
Spectatorship, Surrealism, and the Age of Digital Media*
Ghosts have haunted film from its earliest years to the present
day, as this volume admirably demonstrates. It is impressive for
its chronological and geographical range, and for the consistent
quality of the contributions. Breaking new ground in exploring the
interlinked theoretical, cultural and national stakes of cinematic
haunting, this invaluable collection is certain to be a standard
reference point for all future work in the field.
*Colin Davis, Research Chair in French, Royal Holloway, University
of London, UK, and author of Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction,
Psychoanalysis and the Return of the Dead*
Murray Leeder’s strongly focused collection adds another
exhilarating twist to the spectral turn by providing a welcome
opportunity to reflect on the enduring notion of cinema as a
haunted/haunting medium. Asking where non-figurative cinematic
ghosts have been and where they might be going, a series of
engaging contributions systematically charts the changing
narrative, visual and sonic modes of haunting from the silent era
to the digital age. Throughout, Cinematic Ghosts shows great
sensitivity to the ghost’s cultural and historical specificity and,
in terms of the films discussed, effectively–and fittingly–combines
the expected with the unexpected.
*Esther Peeren, Associate Professor in Globalisation Studies,
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and co-editor of The
Spectralities Reader*
Whether you've accepted a dare to spend one night in a haunted
house or just have an interest in ghosts on the silver screen,
Murray Leeder's Cinematic Ghosts is essential reading. Ranging from
the origins of cinematic ghosts in nineteenth-century
phantasmagoria to twenty-first century "glitch gothic," and from
classic Western hauntings such as the The Innocents to the Asian
onryo, this broad and engaging collection of essays--the first such
collection specifically on cinematic ghosts--offers a lively,
much-needed analysis of the history and appeal of movie phantoms.
International in scope and historicist in approach, Cinematic
Ghosts brilliantly showcases the depth and richness of supernatural
film and will haunt all subsequent approaches to the topic.
Ghostbusters, step aside. Murray Leeder is now the one to call if
there's something strange in your neighborhood!
*Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Professor of English, Central Michigan
University, USA*
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