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“The Psycho Records” Pre-Halloween Reading | City Lights

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Sunday, October 30, 2016 - 5:00 pm | Cost: FREE
City Lights Books | 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA

Event Details

The Psycho Records follows the influence of the primal shower scene within subsequent slasher and splatter films. American soldiers returning from World War II were called “psychos” if they exhibited mental illness. Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock turned the term into a catch-all phrase for a range of psychotic and psychopathic symptoms or dispositions. They transferred a war disorder to the American heartland.

Drawing on his experience with German film, Hitchcock packed inside his shower stall the essence of schauer, the German cognate meaning “horror.” Later serial horror film production has post-traumatically flashed back to Hitchcock’s shower scene. In the end, though, this book argues the effect is therapeutically finite.

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Cost: FREE
Categories: Literature
Address: 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA