The Canadian Horror Film – Terror of the Soul: Details, Reviews & Links

Edited by André Loiselle and Gina Freitag, The Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul features essays by several genre and media writers. I’m delighted my contribution, an essay on the seminal forest slasher Rituals (1977), is in great company, nestled alongside fellow Rue Morgue scribes like James Burrell, Andrea Subissati, and Paul Corupe – plus sage authors Kier-La Janisse and Caelum Vatnsdal and more.

The book’s contents are divided into six sections:

I – SHAPING THE CANADIAN HORROR LANDSCAPE
1. Monsters Up North: A Taxonomy of Terror – Caelum Vatnsdal
2. Viral Culture: Canadian Cultural Protectionism and Pontypool – Andrea Subissati

II – THE TERRITORIES OF HORROR: TERROR STORIES ON PAGE AND SCREEN
3. Blood in the Bush Garden: Indigenization, Gender and Unsettling Horror – Aalya Ahmad
4. Pure Laine Evil: The Horrifying Normality of Québec’s Ordinary Hell in the Film Adaptations of Patrick Senécal’s ‘Romans d’Épouvante’ – André Loiselle

III – A GOLDEN AGE OF GORE: THE TAX SHELTER SLASHER
5. (Who’s in the) Driver’s Seat: The Canadian Brute Unleashed in Death Weekend – Paul Corupe
6. The Creation and Codification of the Forest Slasher during the Tax Shelter Years 1977–1982 – Mark R. Hasan

IV – THE TRUE NORTH, STRONG AND VIOLENT: ECO-HORROR IN CANADA
7. The [Hostile] Nature of Things: A Cultural Dialogue on Environmental Survival – Gina Freitag
8. Eco-Horror and Boundary Transgressions in Orca: The Killer Whale – Peter Thompson

V – HORROR BY ANY OTHER NAME: ANIMATION AND THE AVANT GARDE
9. A Song From the Heart Beats the Devil Every Time: The Fear of Selling out in Nelvana’s The Devil and Daniel Mouse and Rock and Rule – Kier-La Janisse
10. Where is Fear? Space, Place, and the Sense of Horror in the Canadian Avant-Garde Film – Scott Birdwise

VI – BLOOD, GUTS, AND BEYOND: AN HOMAGE TO CRONENBERG
11. Traces of Horror: the Later Films of David Cronenberg – Bill Beard
12. The Physician as Mad Scientist: A Fear of Deviant Medical Practices in the Films of David Conenberg – James Burrell
13. Contagious Characters: Cronenberg’s Rabid, Demarbre’s Smash Cut and the Reframing of Porn- fame – Sean Moreland

The publication’s official launch occurred October 24, 2015, at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, just prior to the screening of Julian Roffman’s classic 3D film The Mask (1961), newly restored by the 3D Film Archive and TIFF.

Editors Gina Freitag and Andre Loiselle were present for signings, plus a number of contributors met for the first time after the screening. A record of Freitag and Loiselle’s intro that evening is available from KQEK.com’s channels as audio-only podcasts via GooglePlay, iTunes, and Libsyn, and a special trippy visual podcast via YouTube.

Reviews of The Canadian Horror Film include the following:

Jennifer Schell at The Goose [page contains link to review in PDF format]: