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Love horror stories? Big sale on books about horror movies, TV, and games—including how to make your own!

Chris Well

Find out more about the thinking behind horror storytelling—and learn how to write and create your own movies and TV shows!

Fanatical is offering a great sale on books about horror movies—including 24 eBooks so you can explore behind-the-scenes of this ever-popular genre, and how directors, writers, and many other of the industry’s pros have approached horror in their own unique way.

The Pop Culture Horror eBook Bundle sale includes the likes of…

  • The Filmmaker’s Book of the Dead: A Mortal’s Guide to Making Horror Movies

  • Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes

  • Music, Sound, and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

  • How To Write A Horror Movie

  • The Psychology of Vampires

  • The World of The Walking Dead

…and a WHOLE BUNCH MORE.

Available for a limited time during Halloween Month, here’s a chance to grab Fanatical’s detailed and fun look at all things “horror” in art, literature and popular culture. Find out the origins of horror fiction, gain tips on writing and music composition and the creation of chilling books, movies, and TV shows with the Pop Culture Horror eBook Bundle-Updated for 2023.

These eBooks are available in three different bundles. See the whole list of included eBooks here.

Find these fantastic reads across three tiers in the Pop Culture Horror eBook Bundle-Updated. All eBooks included in this bundle are available in EPUB and PDF format. Sale ends November 30.

Here are all the eBooks available in one or more of the sale bundles:

  • A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series—Sheds light on older films such as the Universal and the Hammer series films on Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy as well as putting more recent series into perspective, such as The Nightmare on Elm Street films.

  • Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear—The essays in this collection address the presence of music in horror films and their potency within them. Delve into blockbusters like The Exorcist, The Shining, and The Sixth Sense together with lesser known but still important films like Carnival of Souls and The Last House on the Left.

  • Horror, The Film Reader—Tracing the development of horror film from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to The Blair Witch Project, and outlining the main critical debates. Cach section explores a central issue of horror film.

  • The Filmmaker’s Book of the Dead: A Mortal’s Guide to Making Horror Movies—With information on technology, interviews with industry pros, behind-the-scenes video, and more! This complete, full-color guide to filmmaking uncovers all the insider secrets for creating your own spine-tingling horror film from start to finish.

  • Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror—This book offers an analysis of women in horror films through an exploration of ‘gynaehorror’: films concerned with all aspects of female reproductive horror.

  • The Playful Undead and Video Games: Critical Analyses of Zombies and Gameplay—This book explores the central role of the zombie in contemporary popular culture as they appear in video games. Breaking new ground in the study of video games and popular culture, including media and media psychology.

  • How To Write A Horror Movie—A close look at an always-popular (but often disrespected) genre. It focuses on the screenplay and acts as a guide to bringing scary ideas to cinematic life using examples from great (and some not-so-great) horror movies.

  • Horror—Examining the way horror sees—and is seen by—society, Horror explores the way cinematic and stylistic devices create responses of terror and disgust in the viewer. Examines the way these films construct psychological and cognitive responses and how they speak to audiences on an intimate personal level, addressing their innermost fears and desires.

  • The ‘Evil Child’ in Literature, Film and Popular Culture—This collection of essays examines a fascinating array of evil children and the cultural work that they perform. Also analyzes various themes and issues within film, literature and popular culture including ethics, representations of evil and critiques of society.

  • British Horror Cinema—Investigates a wealth of horror filmmaking in Britain, from early chillers like The Ghoul and Dark Eyes of London to acknowledged classics such as Peeping Tom and The Wicker Man. Considers the Britishness of “British horror” and examine sub-genres such as the psycho-thriller and witchcraft movies, and more.

  • The Spectacle of Isolation in Horror Films: Dark Parades—Go behind the scenes with an insightful look at horror films—and the directors who create them. This unique book also includes an extensive A-to-Z filmography and a bibliography of writings on, and about, horror cinema from filmmakers, film critics, and film historians.

  • The World of The Walking Dead—An accessible introduction to characterize the world of The Walking Dead —from comics and television and more—and how its audiences make use of it. An engaging exploration of stories, their platforms, and their reception, ideal for students and scholars of world-building, film and TV studies, new media, and everything in-between.

  • Gothic Cinema—Arguing for the need to understand Gothic cinema as an aesthetic mode, this book explores its long history, from its transitional origins in phantasmagoria shows and the first ‘trick’ films to its postmodern fragmentation in the Gothic pastiches of Tim Burton. The first thorough chronological, transhistorical and transnational study of Gothic cinema.

  • Halloween: Youth Cinema and the Horrors of Growing Up—This book argues that John Carpenter’s 1978 horror hit Halloween need not be the first nor the most influential youth slasher film for it to hold a special place in the history of youth cinema. This book explores Halloween, including the franchise it spawned.

  • The Psychology of Vampires—A captivating look at the origins of vampires in myth and history, and the psychological theories which try to explain why they fascinate us. Traces the development of vampires from the first vampire tale to their modern cultural legacy. Explores the absorbing connections between vampirism and psychology, theology, medicine and culture.

  • Zombies—Explores the recent transformation of zombie from cult genre to a figure that pervades western culture. Rutherford examines the zombie as a powerful metaphor for a constellation of social forces that define contemporary reality. This is an ideal introduction to all that is social about zombies, for students and general readers alike.

  • Dystopia and Economics: A Guide to Surviving Everything from the Apocalypse to Zombies—The authors draw from popular culture to show economic principles at work in the dystopian societies depicted in The Walking Dead, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Hunger Games, Divergent, A Clockwork Orange, and Last Man on Earth.

  • Sonatas, Screams, and Silence: Music and Sound in the Films of Ingmar Bergman—The first musical examination of Bergman’s style as an auteur filmmaker. It provides a comprehensive examination of all three aspects (music, sound effects, and voice) of Bergman’s signature soundtrack-style.

  • Music, Sound, and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer—The intense and continuing popularity of the long-running television show has long been matched by the range and depth of the academic critical response. This volume is the first devoted to the show’s imaginative and widely varied use of music, sound, and silence.

  • Transnational Horror Across Visual Media: Fragmented Bodies—Investigating the horror genre across national boundaries (including Africa, Turkey, and post-Soviet Russia) and different media forms, illustrating the ways that horror can be theorized through the circulation, reception, and production of transnational media texts.

  • Game Design Deep Dive: Horror—The Game Design Dive series examines a specific game system or mechanic over the course of the history of the industry. This text will examine the history and design of the horror genre and elements in video games.

  • The Naked And The Undead: Evil And The Appeal Of Horror—Seeks to counter both aesthetic disdain and moral condemnation by focusing on a select body of important and revealing films, demonstrating how the genre is capable of deep philosophical reflection about the existence and nature of evil—both human and cosmic.

  • Monsters, Demons and Psychopaths: Psychiatry and Horror Film—Descriptions of monsters, vampires, demonic possessions, and psychopaths in horror films have been inspired by psychiatric knowledge about mental illness, leading to several stereotyped models. This book explores the idea of relating horror films to psychiatric ideas and engaging people in learning.

  • Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes—Comparing contemporary Japanese horror films with their American adaptations. Examines Japanese horror films and their American remakes through a lens that highlights cross-cultural exchange and bilateral influence.

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