The Screen’s Number One and Number Two Bogeymen”: The Critical Reception of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the 1930s and 1940s

The term 'cult film star' has been employed, and used as a common-sense term, in publicity and popular journalistic writing for at least the last twenty-five years. However, what makes cult film stars or actors distinct or different from other film stars has rarely been addressed, with the cult star label often being attributed to particular stars or actors in an imprecise way. This edited collection provides a much-needed overview of the variety of processes through which film stars and actors become associated with the cult label. It brings together chapters from an international group of scholars which focus on a wide range of cult stars and actors, from Montgomery Clift and Bill Murray to Ruth Gordon and Ingrid Pitt. The collection makes important, previously under-explored, connections between two key disciplines within film and media studies: stardom/celebrity studies and cult film studies.