The Blaxploitation Horror Film: Adaptation, Appropriation and the Gothic

This book is a pioneering study of Blaxploitation horror films, connecting them with both mainstream horror movies and classic Gothic texts. The author argues that conventional horror films adapt, while Blaxploitation horror films appropriate, the archetypes of Gothic fiction – and rather than exploit, it is argued that they function to satisfy Black audiences. Of the few scholars who have given consideration to Blaxploitation horror films, only occasional chapters have been devoted by them in monographs focused on either Blaxploitation films or horror films. In marked contrast, the present study gives a book-length consideration to Blaxploitation horror films per se, demonstrating how they engage both Gothic fiction and film, and issues of vital significance to American society and culture in the 1970s. In this important and innovative study, chapters explore the sociocultural significance of the vampire, Frankenstein’s monster, Jekyll/Hyde and the werewolf, the zombie and the demon.