Course Archives

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  ADAPTING LOVECRAFT FOR THE SCREEN: A MASTER CLASS WITH STUART GORDON AND DENNIS PAOLI
  Sun. Jul. 18, 2010 - 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli ( Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dagon) will be the inaugural instructors at Miskatonic’s new home, and will be delivering a two-hour masterclass on adapting Lovecraft to the screen – the challenges, the techniques and some insight as to why their films stand out amidst a sea of historically troubled counterparts.
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  INTRODUCTION TO HORROR FILM CRITICISM FOR TEENS
  Tue. Oct. 5, 2010 - Tue. Oct. 12, 2010 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  Miskatonic director and longtime horror writer/film programmer Kier-La Janisse kicks off the Miskatonic season with this 2-evening course on horror film criticism for teens aged 14+. The course will focus on developing an aptitude for critical interpretation, using Jack Smight’s 1973 Frankenstein: The True Story as a focal point. Examples of various historical schools of writing and interpretation will accompany open discussion in class, as well as individual review assignments.
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  REALITY HORROR
  Tue. Oct. 19, 2010 - Tue. Nov. 2, 2010 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  This course looks at a popular sub-genre of horror films that blend a documentary aesthetic with traditional horror conventions to produce a hybrid form of horror cinema. Characterized by such films as The Blair Witch Project (1999), George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead (2007), Cloverfield (2008) and Paranormal Activity (2009), 'reality horror' films seem particularly suited to expressing millennial and/or post-9/11 anxieties regarding not only individual and social security, but also ambivalent attitudes towards technology, new media and online databases such as YouTube and Google Video.
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  THE MONSTERS OF HAMMER HORROR
  Tue. Nov. 9, 2010 - Tue. Nov. 23, 2010 - 12:00 am
  Blue Sunshine
  This course will examine Hammer horror films through their most distinctive feature: the centrality of the monster. From the Italian monstrare (to show), the monster exists to be read: it warns and reveals. This course will read Hammer films through a look at its monsters - such as the Frankenstein monster, vampires, werewolves, zombies, mummies, devil worshippers, and of course, the Baron and Count – as an essential ingredient in the studio’s massive success in the 1950s through to its ultimate decline in the 1970s.
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  THE FILMS OF MARIO BAVA
  Tue. Nov. 30, 2010 - Tue. Dec. 14, 2010 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  Over the past 30 years Italian director Mario Bava has gone from relative obscurity to being acknowledged as perhaps the most significant and influential Post World War 2 European horror director. This course will examine Bava’s enduring legacy by first situating him within the Post WW2 Italian film industry, where the dominant genre changed according to popular trend (peplum, giallo, spaghetti western, gothic horror, crime film, etc.), and then with close analysis of some of his key films to arrive at an understanding of his unique stylistic and thematic contributions to the horror genre.
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  MISOGYNY IN HORROR
  Tue. Jan. 4, 2011 - Tue. Jan. 18, 2011 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  Beginning with the assumption that representations of “the feminine” and the female body illuminate broader, historical fascinations with and anxieties over gender, sexuality and the body, this course sets its sights (and sites) on misogyny, sexism, patriarchy and power as naturalized tropes in horror worthy of investigation. Women’s bodies––as slashed, maimed, mutilated and murdered, as sexually deviant and devious, as monstrous and horrifying, and even as the victim-hero––scream for interrogation, particularly by those who consume her time and time again.
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  THE HAUNTED HOUSE
  Tue. Jan. 25, 2011 - Tue. Feb. 8, 2011 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  This course explores the characteristic styles, themes and conventions of the 'haunted house' film, from early cinema to recent films and television. Films featuring haunted structures express the need for anxieties around the past and future to be given embodiment in objects and structures. These films typically play upon fears of the unknown in nature and the psyche, and evidence a mistrust in the objectivity of modern perceptions of reality. We discuss conceptualizations of haunting as a righting of past wrongs, as a means of ritualizing national and cultural guilt, and as a way to explore anxieties around family and the American Dream.
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  ALL THE COLOURS OF THE DARK: THE ITALIAN GIALLO FILM
  Tue. Feb. 15, 2011 - Tue. Mar. 1, 2011 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  This course looks at the peak period of the Italian giallo film (1963 - 1982) and discusses the historical development of the genre as well as its predominant themes and motifs, placing it contextually within the changing landscape of Italian and European popular cinema. Issues covered include misogyny, paranoia, xenophobia, the sexual revolution, alcoholism and self-medication, and the giallo’s fantasy microcosm of leisure and independent wealth. Key giallo figures whose work will be discussed include Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Sergio Martino, Luciano Ercoli, Umberto Lenzi, Lucio Fulci, Massimo Dallamano, Ernesto Gastaldi and others. The course will also look at the giallo’s influence on contemporary cinema, pop culture, and the curious legacy of J&B Whiskey.
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  REGARD SUR LA NANAROPHILIE
  Wed. Mar. 9, 2011 - Wed. Mar. 23, 2011 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  La nanarophilie consiste à regarder un film au deuxième degré dans le but d’en rire. Au lieu de se laisser porter par l’œuvre, le spectateur adopte une position particulière dans laquelle il tire son plaisir des erreurs de production et des intentions manquées du réalisateur. Cette pratique connaît aujourd’hui une certaine popularité auprès d’un public grandissant. Plusieurs amateurs se rassemblent régulièrement dans des bars pour visionner un nanar, un nombre important de sites Web sont consacrés à ce que le cinéma a de pire à offrir et il est désormais courant de trouver au sein de la programmation d’un festival généraliste une projection dite psychotronique. Comme son titre l’indique, le présent séminaire se penchera sur ce phénomène d’un point de vue historique et théorique.
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  DEAD CELLULOID: A Brief History of Zombies in Cinema
  Sat. Mar. 12, 2011 - Sun. Mar. 13, 2011 - 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  The dead are among us, and always have been, since the dawn of cinema. From the parasitic, hollow eyed drones of the expressionist era to the monsters of Monogram studios, up through the atomic 1950's and fully kicking into gear with the the cannibal corpses of George A. Romero; international pop culture's fascination with zombies has resulted in some of the most relevant and defining works that horror genre has to offer. RUE MORGUE RADIO head honcho Stuart 'Feedback' Andrews will take you on a two day journey into the black, putrifying heart of darkness with this exciting, lively and shuddery history of the living dead on-screen.
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  REVISIONIST MONSTERS
  Tue. Apr. 19, 2011 - Tue. May. 3, 2011 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  From monsters under the bed to Monsters Inc., generations of our collective imagination have been preoccupied with boogie men and their various incarnations. Classic monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein or the Werewolf unite our fears as well as cultural reference points; meaning, today, ‘traditional’ monster narratives are so universal that old and young alike can easily identify historical, aesthetic and plot clichés inherent to each classic baddie. Under the shadow of Twilight’s seemingly superficial re-imagining of the Dracula tale, this is an excellent time to re-examine more complex and interesting forays into revisionist monster movies.
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  THE JAPANESE HORROR FILM
  Mon. May. 16, 2011 - Mon. May. 30, 2011 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  The Japanese horror film burst onto the International scene in the late 1990s with a series of suspenseful, nerve-wracking chillers that brought mood, subtlety and terror back into a genre that was growing weary and stale. To the jaded horror fan J-horror felt alive and fresh, but its seminal figures were clearly drawing from a rich historical tradition of supernatural and ghost stories that go back to pre-Modern Japanese literature, theatre, and painting. The course will trace the importance of the pre-modern tradition (pre-1900), as seen in Japanese Kabuki and Noh theatre, literature and painting, on the first flowering of great Japanese horror in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and then examine how the current new wave of J-horror drew from this older tradition of ghost/supernatural film and art and added a modern, technologically concerned sensibility.
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  GETTING EVEN: A HISTORY OF THE RAPE REVENGE FILM
  Mon. Jun. 6, 2011 - Mon. Jun. 13, 2011 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  No genre gets a worse rap that the rape-revenge film. Cited as unrelentingly misogynistic, and viewed as perpetuating real-life violence against women, rape-revenge films are considered the bottom-of-the-barrel even among exploitation fans. Alternately (and often facetiously) referred to as the “women’s revenge picture”, I maintain that rape-revenge is just that: a cathartic and empowering vehicle for female cinematic rage.
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  UNIVERSAL HORRORS
  Wed. Oct. 5, 2011 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  This course will examine the main themes and stylistic characteristics of the horror films produced by Universal Studios during the 1930s. In order to offer an efficient analysis of the themes and stylistics of Universal horrors, each of the four classes will be specifically devoted to the study of one film from the first horror cycle.
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  CREEPY KIDS
  Wed. Oct. 26, 2011 - Wed. Nov. 16, 2011 - 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  This course interrogates the figure of the child that, as Robin Wood reminds us, has “figured prominently in horror film as the monster or its medium.” This figure—embodied as “innocent” baby, child, or teenager somehow gone wrong—operates as much more than simply an inspirer of terror in this context; it exposes collective anxieties about ourselves: our beliefs, our environment, our desires, and our futures. Rather than following a chronological path, the trajectory of “Creepy Kids” follows the stages of age and development of our contemporary understandings of “normal” infancy, childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, and will explore the cultural significance of the child in horror films through readings, lectures, screenings and (most importantly) discussion.
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  THE 'TERROR' FILMS OF VAL LEWTON
  Wed. Nov. 23, 2011 - Wed. Dec. 14, 2011 - 12:00 am
  Blue Sunshine
  With the popularization of “auteur theories” very few producers get to carry the mantle of auteur, which is usually reserved for directors. Val Lewton is an exception. The nine horror films that Val Lewton produced for RKO studios between 1942 and 1946—including Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Seventh Victim (1943), and Isle of the Dead (1945)—are traditionally described as indicative of a decidedly non-sensationalist, even poetic approach to the horror film. It is the visionary quality of the films under Lewton’s collaborative guidance that we will explore in this course. We will also look at Lewton’s output in the context of film noir and the “woman’s film” immensely popular at the time, and influential on Lewton’s brand of 40s horror.
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  THEORIZING HORROR
  Wed. Jan. 18, 2012 - Wed. Feb. 22, 2012 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  This six week course will examine the recent history of horror theorizing starting in the early-1980s through some of the most influential writings on the genre. From Linda Williams’ essay on women and looking, Barbara Creed’s monstrous-feminine, Tania Modleski’s terror of pleasure, Carol Clover’s final girl, Steven Shaviro’s cinematic bodies, through to Cynthia Freeland’s dread-centred experience of horror, this course will discuss these genre theorists in conjunction with the “major” thinkers that influenced them, such as Sigmund Freud, Julia Kristeva, Karl Marx, Laura Mulvey, Gilles Deleuze, and Nöel Carroll. Every session will be taught by a different instructor.
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  SCARING THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF YOU: THE FILMS OF WILLIAM CASTLE
  Wed. Feb. 29, 2012 - Wed. Mar. 14, 2012 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  An icon of B-movies and master of marketing stunts, William Castle has left a lasting impact on the horror film industry. Despite less than stellar reviews, Castle’s films often proved successful commercially, thanks to his many gimmicks which attracted curious movie goers, and his constant quest to scare the daylights out of audiences. This course will examine Castle’s legacy by first situating him within the historical context of the early-40s Hollywood, when he began his career, before focusing on his ‘horror cycle’ which began in the late-50s.
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  TERROR AT THE MARGINS: THE PROSTITUTE AS OTHER
  Wed. Apr. 4, 2012 - Wed. Apr. 25, 2012 - 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  Blue Sunshine
  The figure of the prostitute has long been depicted (and understood) to be unfeminine, irredeemable and polluting – a source of corruption and contagion. Thus, she becomes a monster — both in terms of fears about women’s sexuality and assumptions about ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ gendered behaviour. This course will parallel the extreme treatment of, and presentation of, the Monster in films with the representation of prostitutes and sex workers. This juxtaposition makes the underlying cultural constructions and fears at play in both contexts both more complicated and compelling.
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  WRITTEN IN BLOOD: SCORING HORROR CINEMA
  Sat. Sep. 22, 2012 - 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
  Film BOX (Quartiers POP)
  Since the early days of tent-bound magic lantern shows, music has accompanied the grand illusion of motion pictures. This lecture by Fangoria Magazine's Chris Alexander will not only discuss the history of musical composition in the horror film, it will specifically illustrate some of the finest examples of how music can radically accentuate and dictate an audience’s sensory and emotional connection to imagery. FREE ADMISSION!
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  WATCHERS IN THE WOODS: REFLEXIVITY IN HORROR CINEMA
  Mon. Oct. 8, 2012 - 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
  Peut-être Vintage Microcinema
  The critical frenzy around the recent postmodern horror film, The Cabin in the Woods (2012), as a game-changer or 'reinvention' of the horror genre suggests that journalists (and even fans) have forgotten that horror is always-already a reflexive genre. This introductory class will give students a pathway into the critical study and discussion of horror through healthy debate around the way popular (and sometimes scholarly) discourse problematically frames horror as constantly in crisis and in need of rejuvenation.
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  SCHOOL OF SHOCK: PAIN AND PLEASURE IN THE CLASSROOM SAFETY FILM
  Mon. Oct. 15, 2012 - Mon. Oct. 22, 2012 - 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
  Peut-être Vintage Microcinema
  For many genre fans, a love affair with horror and the grotesque began early on, sometimes fuelled by unlikely sources. One of these was the classroom safety film, which for many kids was their first time seeing other children threatened by true danger, being confronted with a combination of gore effects and actual accident footage, and being offered a pictorial glimpse at things their parents didn’t want to talk about.
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  FRAGMENTS OF THE MONSTER: RECOVERING FORTIES HORROR
  Mon. Oct. 29, 2012 - Mon. Dec. 3, 2012 - 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
  Peut-être Vintage Microcinema
  This six-week course will attempt to revise and reframe persistent claims in scholarly discourse that 1940s horror is somehow inferior to a “classical” or “canonical” mode of horror in the 1930s. Within this framework, the creepers, chillers and thrillers of the 1940s become lost—the result of favoring monolithic binaries, or strict divisions within genre classifications, between high art and low art, auteurs and craftsman, and major studios and poverty row. Expect to see films you may not have ever heard of before in this class!
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  A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS: A BRITISH HOLIDAY HORROR TRADITION
  Mon. Dec. 10, 2012 - 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
  Peut-être Vintage Microcinema
  To kick off the holiday break, we’ll say farewell to the Fall 2012 semester with a one-off class celebrating the British holiday horror tradition of the BBC’s seminal 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' series that ran from 1971 to 1978.
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  SMALL SCREENS, BIG CHILLS: CLASSIC AMERICAN TV HORROR
  Tue. Jan. 22, 2013 - Tue. Feb. 26, 2013 - 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
  Peut-être Vintage Microcinema
  As we reflect upon the recent popularity of horror melodramas such as True Blood, The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, it becomes essential to explore the influence of earlier examples of TV horror. This six-week course looks at shows such as Twilight Zone, Dark Shadows, Outer Limits, Thriller, One Step Beyond and more, plus the golden age of made-for-TV features and the tradition of TV horror hosts.
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  STEPPING THROUGH TIME: THE SCIENCE OF TIME TRAVEL
  Tue. Mar. 19, 2013 - Tue. Mar. 26, 2013 - 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
  Peut-être Vintage Microcinema
  Movies love to play with time, but are they playing fair? This two-week course will explore time in science-fiction and in science-fact.
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  ALIEN AUTOPSY: A SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CINEMATIC VISITORS FROM OUTER SPACE
  Sat. Apr. 6, 2013 - Sun. Apr. 7, 2013 - 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm
  Peut-être Vintage Microcinema
  In just over a century’s worth of genre cinema, filmmakers have conjured countless alien creatures, races and habitats to populate their imaginative stories of close encounters and invasion. Instructor Neil Calderone visits from Chicago to investigate the scientific plausibility of various cinematic alien physiologies, behaviors, motivations and anatomical structures that would seem to push science and logic to the limits of our knowledge (and beyond).
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  DREAMING REVOLT: JEAN ROLLIN, THE FRENCH FANTASTIQUE AND BEYOND
  Tue. Apr. 16, 2013 - Tue. Apr. 30, 2013 - 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
  Peut-être Vintage Microcinema
  A filmmaker ridiculed by film critics and genre fans alike, Jean Rollin (1938-2010) has only recently begun to find acceptance in his native France. Rollin’s films have been described in often paradoxical ways, from poetic and literary, to absurdist and oneiric, to technically inept and narratively impenetrable. Hence, Rollin films occupy a liminal space in film history - where art-house horror mixes with sexual taboo, where the fantastique tradition mixes with the “serial film,” and where lyricism mixes with the macabre - resulting in a disarmingly unique and personal cinematic vision.