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Abstract

This chapter explores the role of hyper-prolific American independent filmmaker Roger Corman in shaping the modern Gothic. It emphasises his eight lavish, colourful films Poe adaptations beginning with House of Usher (1960); these played an important role the revival of gothic cinema, which had largely been dormant since the 1930s. This revival was relatively short lived, however, and the chapter shows how Corman-protégé Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968) comments on the gothic mode’s obsolescence. The chapter finally discusses Frankenstein Unbound (1990), Corman’s belated return to the Gothic and its own commentary on the gothic’s history and future.

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Leeder, M. (2020). Roger Corman. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33136-8_45

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