Shock Value

How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror

By: Jason Zinoman

Narrated by: Pete Larkin

Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but while Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola were making their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film - aggressive, raw, and utterly original. Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, New York Times critic Jason Zinoman's Shock Value delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age.

By the late 1960s, horror was stuck in the past, confined mostly to drive-in theaters and exploitation houses and shunned by critics. Shock Value tells the unlikely story of how the much-disparaged horror film became an ambitious art form while also conquering the multiplex. Directors such as Wes Craven, Roman Polanski, John Carpenter, and Brian De Palma - counterculture types operating largely outside Hollywood - revolutionized the genre, exploding taboos and bringing a gritty aesthetic, confrontational style, and political edge to horror.

Zinoman recounts how these directors produced such classics as Rosemary's Baby, Carrie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween, creating a template for horror that has been imitated relentlessly but whose originality has rarely been matched. This new kind of film dispensed with the old vampires and werewolves and instead assaulted audiences with portraits of serial killers, the dark side of suburbia, and a brand of nihilistic violence that had never been seen before.

Shock Value tells the improbable stories behind the making of these movies, which were often directed by obsessive and insecure young men working on shoestring budgets, were funded by sketchy investors, and featured porn stars. But once The Exorcist became the highest grossing film in America, Hollywood took notice, and the classic horror films of the 1970s have now spawned a billion-dollar industry.

©2011 Jason Zinoman (P)2011 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Aficionados should love it, and skeptics may find themselves giving this always disreputable genre the fair shake that, as this smart and savvy book makes clear, it deserves." (Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution)

Excellent analysis of horror

This book is an excellent analysis of horror over the decades. It tells of the directors producers and writers of popular horror. Names like Craven, Carpenter, Hooper, and Romero are given their own chapters and analysis of their life and upbringing as well as the work they directed.

Although the speaker of the book talks slow and dramatically throughout the entirety of the book, if you put it on 1.5x speed the speaker sounds more bearable to listen to.

I enjoyed this book and it’s an excellent source for fans of 70’s horror, and the directors that made the most quintessential horror movies of the twentieth century.

PRAISE TO JASON ZINOMAN.

loved it

too good! loved it! any horror fan needs this in their collection! great narration! great retrospective!

Great for Horror Fans

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I did recommend this to my horror geek friends.

What other book might you compare Shock Value to and why?

None that I have read thus far.

Which scene was your favorite?

The history of Wes Craven's upbringing and eventual move into horror was really mind blowing. I was like "WHAT?"

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I laughed many times and shook my head a lot at the behind the scenes beefing between horror creators, writers and movie companies.

Any additional comments?

A really good book about the change in horror in the 70's.

Great synthesis, original material from interviews

Very worthwhile if you are interested in film from the 70s on. Zinoman makes a great case for the wide influence of 70s horror on the mainstream films that followed and some of its origins in late 60s theater (mostly Harold Pinter) . He interviewed many of the subjects covered in the book, including Wes Craven, Brian DePalma, Tobe Hooper, the late Dan Obannon, William Friedkin and others.

Not only focusing on the overall PPP-cultural effects of these films, but also has some great stories and anecdotes from the making of these films and the personal lives of their makers.

Many spoilers also; make sure you've seen these films prior to listening (if you wish to see), as each is described in detail (ending and plot points):

Rosemary's Baby
Last House on the Left
Dark Star
Halloween
Carrie
Alien
The Exorcist
Psycho
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Night of the Living Dead

Great read for the movie buff

Great stories, cool insight, well read. If you care at all about film history, you'll find this am interesting read.

really enjoyed this!!!!

I really enjoyed this! this was well written and enjoyable!!! I loved getting into the heads of these creators!

Really good !

I really liked it it was really interesting especially if you've ever liked horror movies. And the voice was very appropriate sounded a lot like an old time announcer or radio celebrity from the past:-)

Great Book, Terrible Narrator

I read this book in print form when it first came out and absolutely loved it, when I saw it on sale recently it seemed like the perfect opportunity to pick up the audiobook and give it a quick listen. The book itself is excellent, however the narrator sounds like he's doing an 8 hour movie trailer. Definitely listen to the sample before you buy this book, it took all of thirty seconds before I realized that this guy was going to read the entire book like that, and I had to stop listening. This is one of only two audiobooks I've ever had to stop listening to because of the narrator, and it's a shame because this really is a great read, and is very informative for any horror fans.

A Selective History of the "New Horror"

"Shock Value" is an interesting and educational read. In discussing the careers of a handful of directors, Zinoman attempts to trace the various themes running through the "New Horror" films of the late 1960s through the 1980s. He does a pretty good job of this, tying the films to one another, and even occasionally to their predecessors from the Golden Age of Horror. As much as this is about the directors, it is also about their movies.

The author's access to his subjects and ability to elicit detailed responses (for the most part) keeps the book filled with entertaining anecdotes about the films, the business and the men (and a few women) themselves. This book kept my interest throughout.

The book is limited somewhat in its focus on a handful of directors, and then, only upon a fraction of their output during the period. I would have liked to have a few more directors added to the mix.

The narrator is well-suited to the book.

great

Interesting book for any horror fan who wants to learn about the history of "New Horror". Narrator has a nice, comforting voice.