Halloween Courses

Defining cinema in the 1940s, the film noir style is usually associated with the crime and detective thriller, but the style can also be found in many horror films of the period. Explore horror-noir classics such as The Wolf Man (1941), Cat People (1942), I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and many others, and the ways in which they reveal an intersection of these generic and stylistic traditions.

The noir style had dominated the American crime thriller during the 1940s, but by the late 1950s it was clear that the industry was no longer interested in producing such films. Explore how, after 1960, the dark thriller reconfigured its look and themes in films such as Cape Fear (1962), Point Blank (1967) and Chinatown (1974) in response to both evolving production strategies and audiences.

Explore the horror film through a range of key films, concepts and critical accounts of the genre. We will consider its history and development, from its beginnings to the present day, the ways in which different production contexts, such as American, European and East Asian horror cinemas, have given rise to variations in the genre, and the approach to theme and style in the films themselves.

Explore one of cinema's most imaginative and influential movements through films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis, M and many others. We will consider the production context of German cinema in the period 1919 to 1933 and expressionism as its defining style, key filmmakers associated with the movement and critical accounts of both the films and the movement as a whole.

On this course we will read some classic ghost stories from M.R. James, Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton and others. Ghost stories achieve some of their effects through the presence of the strange within the familiar, or the eruption of the past in the present (the return of the repressed), which Sigmund Freud termed the uncanny. We will explore Freud’s essay ‘The Uncanny’ and use this psychoanalytic concept to shed light on the ghost stories we read.

This course focuses on innovative short fiction from around the globe which reworks folkloric traditions to grapple with conditions of twenty-first century life. As well as engaging with the unique folkloric influences each text draws on, we’ll consider the complexities of the present that they are addressed to – and how the rising popularity of ghost stories, fairy tales, dark fables and surreal myths suggests a renewed fascination with the intrigues of the mysterious, monstrous and inexplicable.