Description: Considers how dangerous beasts in horror films illuminate the human-animal relationship.
Brief description: Dominic Lennard is Associate Lecturer at the University of Tasmania and the author of Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Film, also published by SUNY Press.
Review Quotes:
"...a wonderful book. Lennard's compositional flair, in combination with his keen interpretive vision and his command of the relevant science, makes this book a real gem--eminently readable, full of insight, and suffused with good sense." -- Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture
"The brilliance of Dominic Lennard's Brute Force is not only that it is long overdue, but one didn't realize it was due in the first place! Yet upon reflection and, of course, through Lennard's engaging book, one realizes not only the ubiquity of animals in horror, but their utter centrality to so many classic horror films. In reading this, we can hear the distant rumble of footsteps of a genetically reborn Tyrannosaurus or the hurried pounding of our beloved Rover who has decided that he wants more than kibbles and bits for dinner--and we look mighty appetizing. 'Groundbreaking' is often overused, but in this case it truly fits." -- David Desser, coeditor of Tough Ain't Enough: New Perspectives on the Films of Clint Eastwood