Men, Women and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clover

'Clover, takes the most extreme genre, horror flicks, seriously. 'In her reading of both particular horror films and of film and gender theory, Clover does what every cultural critic hopes to: she calls into question our habits of seeing.'-Ramona Naddaff, Artforum 'Clover actually bothers (as few have done before) to go into the theaters, to sit with the horror fans, and to watch how they respond to what appears on screen.'-Wendy Lesser, Washington Post 'Clover makes a convincing case for studying the pulp-pop excesses of ‘exploitation' horror as a reflection of our psychic times.'-Misha Berson, San Francisco Chronicle She suggests that the 'low tradition' in horror movies possesses positive subversive potential, a space to explore gender ambiguity and transgress traditional boundaries of masculinity and femininity.'-Andrea Walsh, The Boston Globe 'Carol Clover's compelling challenges simplistic assumptions about the relationship between gender and culture. argues that most horror films are obsessed with feminism, playing out plots which climax with an image of (masculinized) female power and offering visual pleasures which are organized not around a mastering gaze, but around a more radical 'victim-identified' look.'-Linda Ruth Williams, Sight and Sound Bubbling away beneath Clover's multi-faceted readings of slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films is the question of what the viewer gets out of them.

' brilliant analysis of gender and its disturbances in modern horror films.

Men, Women and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clover