Book Description
Freakshows - human anomalies presented for spectacle - have flourished throughout recorded history. The birth of the movies provided a further outlet for these displays, which in turn led to a peculiar strain of bizarre cinema: Freak Film. Inside Terradome is a comprehensive, fully illustrated guide to the roots and development of this fascinating, often disturbing cinematic genre.
With over 350 photographs, Inside Terradome reveals a twisted thread of voyeuristic sickness running both through cinema and the society it mirrors.
Synopsis
From the Roman games to American travelling carnivals, freakshows - human anomalies presented for spectacle - have flourished throughout recorded history. The birth of the movies provided a further outlet for these displays, which in turn led to a peculiar strain of bizarre cinema: Freak Film. Inside Teradome is a comprehensive, fully illustrated guide to the roots and developments of this fascinating, often disturbing cinematic genre. Including: A brief history of teratology; freaks in myth and medicine The history of freakshows, origins of cinema Influence of sideshows on cinema Use of human anomalies in cinema Freaks and geeks Bizarre cinema: mutilation and other fetishes Illustrated filmography; index From the pioneering illusions of Georges Meli?s and the Expressionist distortions of Dr Caligari, the surgical horrors of Mad Love and real-life grotesqueries of Tod Browning's Freaks, to the modern nightmare visions of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Eraserhead, and Santa Sangre, Inside Teradome reveals a twisted thread of voyeuristic sickness running not only through cinema, but through the society of which it has always been the most telling barometer.
