Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror. Jason Zinoman

Review 'SHOCK VALUE chronicles a period that feels both close and remote...a brave, uncompromising era in genre filmmaking. Mavericks, madmen, mutants and monsters populate this book. Vivid, fascinating and entirely relevant.' --Guillermo del Toro, Director of Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth 'Where Shock Value excels is in its primary research, the stories of how the seminal shockers of this era came to be, told in large part by the men (and here and there a woman) who made them.' --New York Times 'Zinoman succeeds monstrously well.' Entertainment Weekly. -- 'A valuable addition to the canon of popular film history.' Kirkus Reviews. -- 'Jason Zinoman makes a...compelling case for the effect that Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, William Friedkin and others had on popular culture by reinventing the horror film.' --Evening Standard Product Description Hollywood in the 1970s is usually means directors such as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola. But, this decade was also horror's 'golden age', producing classics like Rosemary's Baby, Carrie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween by directors who would become famous and achieve massive box office success. Ever since, horror has been a crucial and inventive part of cinema. Shock Value describes how horror was re-created, ridding itself of the old supernatural cliches and instead portraying serial killers, extreme and baseless violence, and the fear that can be found in everyday suburbia. Jason Zinoman draws on interviews with hundreds of the most important artists in horror and has created a character-focused account of how an often overlooked, but highly influential, golden age in American film began.