Description

I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies – by Heidi Honeycutt

Paperback – Headpress – October 2024 – 464 pages

Slumber Party Massacre. Pet Sematary. Near Dark. American Psycho — These horror movies have heavily contributed to pop culture and are loved by horror fans everywhere. But so many others have been forgotten by history. From the first silent reels to modern independent films, in this book you’ll discover the creepy, horrible, grotesque, beautiful, wrong, good, and fantastic — and the one thing they share in common.

This is the true history of women directing horror movies.

Having conducted hundreds of interviews and watched thousands of horror films, Heidi Honeycutt defines the political and cultural forces that shape the way modern horror movies are made by women. The women’s rights and civil rights movements, new distribution technology, digital cameras, the destruction of the classic studio system, and the abandonment of the Hays code have significantly impacted women directors and their movies. So, too, social media, modern ideas of gender and racial equality, LGBTQ acceptance, and a new generation of provocative, daring films that take shocking risks in the genre.

Includes short films, anthologies, documentaries, animated horror, horror pornography, pink films, and experimental horror.

I Spit on Your Celluloid is a first-of-its-kind celebration, study, and “a book that needed to be written” (says cult filmmaker Stephanie Rothman). You will never look at horror movies the same way again!