Adaptation to Survive: British Horror Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s

Freeman, Sophie (2018) Adaptation to Survive: British Horror Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

The thesis focuses on British horror cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. This was a lively period in British horror history which produced over two hundred films, but it has often been taken for granted in critical work on both British horror and British national cinema, with most of the films concerned left underexplored or ignored entirely. In part, this reflects a widespread critical belief that British horror was safer, less socially questioning and generally less interesting than American horror from the same period. The thesis addresses the question of how British horror developed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. It identifies key cycles and clusters of production and significant innovations within British horror as the genre sought to engage with and remain relevant in relation to changing social attitudes. In particular, it focuses on representations of gender, the family and inter-generational conflict, as well as exploring the post-colonial context of British horror in this period. It also considers the relation between British horror’s development and broader changes in international, and especially American, horror history. British horror emerges as an area of culture that connects with, and in some cases anticipates, key developments in international horror. In this manner, the importance of British horror of the 1960s and 1970s is established. This is achieved through detailed analysis of a wide range of films, coupled with a contextualisation of those films in terms of the industrial, socio-historical and generic circumstances of their production.

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