Description: "A collection of essays that explores the various roles ghosts have played in motion pictures, spanning a range of time periods, genres and nations"--
Brief description: Murray Leeder is Assistant Lecturer in Film & English at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is the author of Horror Film: A Critical Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2018), The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema (2017) and Halloween (Auteur, 2014), and editor of Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from Silent Cinema to the Digital Era (Bloomsbury, 2015) and ReFocus: The Films of William Castle (2018). He has published in such journals as Horror Studies, The Canadian Journal of Film Studies, The Journal of Popular Culture and The Journal of Popular Film and Television.
Review Quotes:
"There is much to interest readers and the book will (dare I say it) leave them in good spirits ... A thoughtful and entertaining addition to any film or religion studies collection, whether for personal or professional purposes, at undergraduate or postgraduate level." --Alphaville
"The stand out feature of this collection is the diagnostic links between the content of ghost films and the ghostly techniques through which they are shot, a level of connection that puts Leeder's text a step ahead of other purely thematic approaches to ghosts and haunted cinema. Cinematic Ghosts is just as much about ghostly cinematics, adding appeal to scholars of film production and spectral narratives alike." --Gothic Studies "Cinema has always been a ghostly medium. Now we finally have a book that explores film's relation to ghosts with the breadth and depth it deserves, moving deftly across historical periods, genre classifications, and national origins. This is a rich and varied collection that will haunt - in all the right ways - a broad range of readers, scholars, and students." --Adam Lowenstein, Associate Professor of English and Film Studies, University of Pittsburgh, USA, and author of Dreaming of Cinema: Spectatorship, Surrealism, and the Age of Digital Media "Ghosts have haunted film from its earliest years to the present day, as this volume admirably demonstrates. It is impressive for its chronological and geographical range, and for the consistent quality of the contributions. Breaking new ground in exploring the interlinked theoretical, cultural and national stakes of cinematic haunting, this invaluable collection is certain to be a standard reference point for all future work in the field." --Colin Davis, Research Chair in French, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, and author of Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and the Return of the Dead "Murray Leeder's strongly focused collection adds another exhilarating twist to the spectral turn by providing a welcome opportunity to reflect on the enduring notion of cinema as a haunted/haunting medium. Asking where non-figurative cinematic ghosts have been and where they might be going, a series of engaging contributions systematically charts the changing narrative, visual and sonic modes of haunting from the silent era to the digital age. Throughout, Cinematic Ghosts shows great sensitivity to the ghost's cultural and historical specificity and, in terms of the films discussed, effectively-and fittingly-combines the expected with the unexpected." --Esther Peeren, Associate Professor in Globalisation Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and co-editor of The Spectralities Reader "Whether you've accepted a dare to spend one night in a haunted house or just have an interest in ghosts on the silver screen, Murray Leeder's Cinematic Ghosts is essential reading. Ranging from the origins of cinematic ghosts in nineteenth-century phantasmagoria to twenty-first century "glitch gothic," and from classic Western hauntings such as the The Innocents to the Asian onryo, this broad and engaging collection of essays--the first such collection specifically on cinematic ghosts--offers a lively, much-needed analysis of the history and appeal of movie phantoms. International in scope and historicist in approach, Cinematic Ghosts brilliantly showcases the depth and richness of supernatural film and will haunt all subsequent approaches to the topic. Ghostbusters, step aside. Murray Leeder is now the one to call if there's something strange in your neighborhood!" --Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Professor of English, Central Michigan University, USA