Studies in Groovy Gothic Cinema - by Antonio Barrenechea (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book explores low-budget horror and exploitation movies produced in filmmaking capitals of the Western Hemisphere.

Book Synopsis

In Studies in Groovy Gothic Cinema, Antonio Barrenechea launches an inquiry into inter-American exploitation cinema-a horror cinema which captured the rise of '60s counterculture and youth-oriented lifestyles-as it harnessed the cultural zeitgeist through gratuitous depictions of sex, blood, and music.

Despite the genre's cultural impact, Barrenechea argues, its association with vulgar taste, shoestring budgets, and cheap thrills makes it often overlooked in existing cinema history and scholarship. This book places film studies and comparative American studies into a new conversation involving exploitation cinema, targeting an American hemispheric tradition and considering how art and trash intersect in undisciplined ways.

Barrenechea examines low-budget cinema produced in filmmaking capitals of the Western Hemisphere, including Mexican monster films, Brazilian psychedelia, Argentine sci-fi, Canadian splatter, and Hollywood grindhouse, ultimately yielding a new cinema history that is both messier and more inclusive.

Review Quotes

Antonio Barrenechea's Studies in Groovy Gothic Cinema examines "groovy gothic" films - defined as "cinema which dramatizes a clash between 1960s countercultures and an eighteenth-century genre [Gothic horror]" - in the context of genre, society, the business of film production and marketing, and auteur theory. Barrenechea's multi-disciplinary methodology provides valuable context for his "hemispheric sixties" analysis, covering films made on the margins of what one might call the "established" film industries in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Canada, during a period when film form and content were undergoing significant changes. Engagingly written and thought-provoking, Studies in Groovy Gothic Cinema is a valuable work of original research and analysis which makes a significant contribution to film studies literature.
David Wilt, Professorial Lecturer in Film Studies, The George Washington University, USA

About the Author

Antonio Barrenechea is Professor of English at University of Mary Washington, USA.