It Came From the 1950s! - Popular Culture, Popular Anxieties (Electronic book text)

It Came From the 1950s is an eclectic, witty and insightful collection of essays predicated on the hypothesis that popular cultural documents provide unique insights into the concerns, anxieties and desires of their times. The essays explore the emergence of 'Hammer Horror' and the company's groundbreaking 1958 adaptation of Dracula; the work of popular authors such as Shirley Jackson and Robert Bloch, and the effect that 50s food advertisements had upon the poetry of Sylvia Plath; the place of special effects in the decade's science fiction films; and 1950s Anglo-American relations as refracted through the prism of the 1957 film Night of the Demon. There are also essays on radioactive mutants, zombie-human love triangles, far-out girl gangs and mad science at its most nefarious. The collection features contributions from leading scholars and critics such as Christopher Frayling, Mark Jancovich, Kim Newman and David J. Skal.