In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII released the papal bull Summis Desiderantes in response to the German inquisitor, Heinrick Kramer’s request to prosecute witchcraft in Germany.
Culture
The Scottish Crown, the Protestant Church, and Witch Trials
The purpose of this article is to acquaint the reader with the period of the witch trials. The newly formed church did not originally intend to pursue witchcraft so vigorously, but did so by default due to the influence of Mary, Queen of Scots, who rejected laws and clauses which contained anti-Catholic rhetoric.
The Enduring Sexual Appeal of Vampires
No creature of the night seems to excite the western imagination quite like the vampire. While others like Frankenstein and the Mummy have lost their lustre over the years, vampires abound in books and films. In the local video store, the horror shelves are stocked with films like ‘The Lost Boys’, and posters proclaim the release of ‘Fright Night II’.
Bram Stoker and the Creation of the ‘Dracula’ Novel (1897)
There are various noticeable connotations which come to people’s minds after hearing the word Gothic. Some associate the term with today’s pulp literature for youngsters, whereas others often think of old, black and white movies about all those ridiculously looking monsters who constantly attack poor and frightened damsels-in-distress.
Six Suggestions for Finding the Perfect Filming Location
Whether you are an aspiring or seasonal videographer, you want to ensure the perfect shot every time, and that is why the filming location is an important consideration
Witchcraft and Powerful Women Throughout the Middle Ages
“All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable,” caution Kramer and Sprenger, fifteenth-century Dominican inquisitors and authors of the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’, or ‘Hammer of Witches’, the definitive text on witchcraft to emerge from the late medieval period.
The Japanese Peculiar Subculture of Lolita with a Goth-Loli Focus
Japan, nowadays, does not seem as distant from our culture as it was two or three decades ago. In recent times there has been a real invasion of Japanese popular culture, an invasion that makes me think that it is not possible to reduce the world simply to an American “global village”.
The Monstrous Other and Virtual Vampires Transgressions
The image of the vampire is such a pervasive one in twenty-first-century visual and literary culture that it is difficult to imagine a point of tabula rasa, where a potential cultural consumer does not already hold some preconception of pale skin and pointy teeth in reference to the vampiric.
The Supernatural Trials Concerning the Witchcraft Act, 1735
In the year 1944, a trial took place which has rightly been described as one of the most curious interludes in the long annals of the Old Bailey.
The Folklore Vampire: The Monstrous Other
According to J. Gordon Melton, “The vampire figure in folklore emerged as an answer to otherwise unsolvable problems within culture. It was seen as the cause of certain unexplainable evils, accounted for the appearance of some extraordinary occurrences within the society, and was often cited as the end product of immoral behaviour” (445).
Vampirism as a Malevolent or Medical Source?
That the vampire epidemics caused great concern within European society in the Early Modern period, there is no doubt. As Rousseau (Masson, 1914) noted “for some time now the public news has been concerned with nothing but vampires… yet show me a single man of sense in Europe who believes [in them]”.
From the Entertainment Springs of Cinematic Horror Thrills
In his discussion of genre, Altman observes: “we cannot help but notice that generic terminology sometimes involves nouns, sometimes adjectives… Indeed, the very same word sometimes appears as both part of speech: musical comedies or just plain musicals, Western romances or simply Westerns, documentary films or film documentaries.” (Altman 1999, 50)
A Life of Crime and the Thriller as Horror Film
In his early writing on the genre, Neale suggests genres “differ from one another… in the precise weight given to the discourses they share in common” so that while narrative disequilibrium “is inaugurated by violence” in the western, the gangster film, the detective film and the horror film, the “specificity” of the horror film is not defined by “violence as such” but by its special emphasis on “discourses carrying the human/nature opposition in its discursive regime”, an emphasis that can even end up “relativising or even displacing entirely the Law/disorder dichotomy in term of which violence operates in the western, the detective and gangster films.” (Neale 1980, 21)
Vampires in the Early Christian Era
It is accurate to describe the clergy as disseminators of morality. After all, one of the primary functions of any religion is to legislate morality to both the elites and the commoners. However, the Catholic Church was not fortunate enough to be working with a tabula rasa.
Psychological Horror, and Body Horror
Perhaps the most frightening of all horror films are those where there are no monsters and no demons other than the psychological states of the characters.
