Hollywood Gothic, 1930-1960

An account of Hollywood Gothic productions from 1930s to 1960 that challenges the preoccupation with the Universal horror films of the 1930s and the Hammer films of the late 1950s. In the process, it examines both of these phenomena within a broader context of Gothic productions and examines how the Universal films emerged out of a cycle of Gothic productions that went back into the 1920s; the ways in which the 1940s marked a period that was distinct from that of the late 1920s and early 1930s; and the processes through which the sf films of the 1950s emerged and then transformed into the (often psychological) Gothic films of the late 1950s.