The Devil's Backbone (2001) is a Gothic film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, 2006). The story centers on a ghost that haunts an isolated orphanage during the Spanish Civil War. Studying The Devil's Backbone explores the narrative of the film in relation to central concerns, such as genre, theme, iconography, representation, and film language. Through these elements, the volume reads the film's unique blend of literary Gothic, western, and war film and the use of bombs, ghosts, and color as visual signifiers. It critiques the central characters...

No-one who has ever seen the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is ever likely to forget the experience. An intense fever dream (or nightmare), it is remarkable for its sense of sustained threat and depiction of an insane but nonetheless (dys)functional family on the furthest reaches of society who have regressed to cannibalism in the face of economic hardship. As well as providing a summary of the making of the film, James Rose discusses the extraordinary censorship history of the film in the UK (essentially banned for two decades) and provides a detailed textual analysis of...