- Orlando, Florida
Gary D . Rhodes
Oklahoma Baptist University, Journalism and Mass Media, Faculty Member
- University of Central Florida, Film and Mass Media, Faculty MemberQueen's University, Belfast, Film Studies and Production, Faculty Memberadd
- Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D. is a film historian and filmmaker. He is the author of numerous books on the cinema, and the wr... moreGary D. Rhodes, Ph.D. is a film historian and filmmaker. He is the author of numerous books on the cinema, and the writer-director of numerous films. He is also a published novelist and poet.edit
Largely forgotten in the history of cinema is Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's feature film The Terror (1928). To the extent it is remembered, it is because the film qualifies as the second "all-talkie" feature, Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's Lights of... more
Largely forgotten in the history of cinema is Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's feature film The Terror (1928). To the extent it is remembered, it is because the film qualifies as the second "all-talkie" feature, Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's Lights of New York (Bryan Foy, 1928) being the first. The Terror has also rightly been identified as the first talkie to feature a scream, which would become such an important sound in future horror movies. However, the key reason The Terror deserves recognition and further study is because it crucially requires a major revision in our understanding of film history. Beyond any doubt, The Terror was Hollywood's first talkie to use a background score ("nondiegetic" music), with the term "background" being critical in this context, meaning music heard along with (in back of) audible dialogue.
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These 18 essays examine the relationships between narrative fiction films and documentary filmmaking, focusing on how each influenced the other and how the two were merged in diverse films and shows. Topics include the docudrama in early... more
These 18 essays examine the relationships between narrative fiction films and documentary filmmaking, focusing on how each influenced the other and how the two were merged in diverse films and shows. Topics include the docudrama in early cinema, the industrial film as faux documentary, the fear evoked in 1950s science fiction films, the selling of "reality" in mockumentaries, and reality TV and documentary forms.
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Book review of Charles Musser, Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1890s (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2016).
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Universal's Dracula varied noticeably from Stoker's description, with the film version taking precedent over the literary in American popular culture. While Universal's creation remains a cinematic icon, this chapter examines how much the... more
Universal's Dracula varied noticeably from Stoker's description, with the film version taking precedent over the literary in American popular culture. While Universal's creation remains a cinematic icon, this chapter examines how much the screen Dracula changed over the span of those six films, becoming as plural as he was singular.
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From episode one to the final credits, whether the audience saw threatened heroes and heroines, or impossible villains, serials of the 1910s were episodic cinematic entertainment known as ‘cliffhangers.’ Born of sensational melodrama and... more
From episode one to the final credits, whether the audience saw threatened heroes and heroines, or impossible villains, serials of the 1910s were episodic cinematic entertainment known as ‘cliffhangers.’ Born of sensational melodrama and dime novels, the film serial and the ‘thrills’ it attempted to inspire was a complicated genre, a convergence of narrative forms. Such serials include The Exploits of Elaine (1914), Lucille Love, the Girl of Mystery (1914), The Perils of Pauline (1914), Zudora (1914), The Black Box (1915), The Crimson Stain Mystery (1916), The Iron Claw (1916), The Mysteries of Myra (1916), The House of Hate (1918), and The Trail of the Octopus (1919), among many others. Drawing upon trade publications and industry discourse, this essay explores the extensive influence of these serials on the horror film genre of the 1930s and beyond, examining codes and conventions that range from the supernatural to mad science/scientist, uncanny paintings to secret panels, poisonous concoctions to torture devices.
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Though it was based on the infamous death sentence of 1587, the Edison Manufacturing Company’s film Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895)—which was also distributed under the less-specific titles Execution and Execution Scene—features... more
Though it was based on the infamous death sentence of 1587, the Edison Manufacturing Company’s film Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895)—which was also distributed under the less-specific titles Execution and Execution Scene—features no historical context, its narrative consisting solely of brutal capitol punishment that lasts fewer than fifteen seconds.12 It remains arresting cinema, and certainly it predated the work of George Méliès. An 1895 newspaper advertisement publicized Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots as being the very first “Chamber of Horrors” moving picture to be “seen on the kinetoscope," adding that it was “blood-curdling in the extreme.”3 Twenty years later, when reviewing Kalem Company’s The Secret Room (1915), the Moving Picture World wrote:
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While many eras and evolutions are crucial in film history, the most important is likely the advent and proliferation of home video. During the first eight decades of the cinema, audiences had extremely limited control over the content... more
While many eras and evolutions are crucial in film history, the most important is likely the advent and proliferation of home video. During the first eight decades of the cinema, audiences had extremely limited control over the content and schedule of film exhibitions. Scholars had to rely on their memories of screenings from days, weeks, or even years past. Home video forever altered and corrected that problem, transferring power into the hands of an audience who could review and re-view selected films at the time and venue of their choosing. This paradigmatic shift transformed the viewer into an exhibitor and projectionist, operating a home theater relying on physical (and, later, virtual) property that had once been illegal to own. The new viewer became a cinematic time traveler, one who bested a time-based art, controlling film by use of the ability to rewind, fast-forward, and pause. --- Note: The published version of this essay is available online at https://www.theprojectorjournal.com/hit-the-pause-button
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This essay covers the history of Károly Lajthay’s Hungarian film Drakula halála (1921), the cinema’s first adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. The essay attempts to construct a production history of the film, as well as to create... more
This essay covers the history of Károly Lajthay’s Hungarian film Drakula halála (1921), the cinema’s first adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. The essay attempts to construct a production history of the film, as well as to create an accurate list of cast members and key filming locations. As Drakula halála is lost, the essay also features the very first English translation of an extremely rare 1924 Hungarian novella based on the film, which offers much insight into its narrative.
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Relying upon concepts of “soft” evidence as a working methodology, this paper examines a corpus of pre-1920 sheet music in order to reach new conclusions about early American film audiences. The fictional lyrics in these songs, as well as... more
Relying upon concepts of “soft” evidence as a working methodology, this paper examines a corpus of pre-1920 sheet music in order to reach new conclusions about early American film audiences. The fictional lyrics in these songs, as well as the artwork on their covers, reflect perceived patterns of behavior in viewers that defy simple demographical classification. Here is not “hard” data as recorded by theatre managers or as noted in scientific polls, or even present in fan letters published in film magazines, but rather fictional commentary that has the potentiality of giving insight into nonfiction audience members.
While at times exaggerated, these song lyrics nevertheless offer an opportunity to augment our understanding of the many similarities shared by American audiences in the period, ranging from widespread interest in emergent stardom to the use of the darkened auditorium as an appropriate location for romantic interludes. As a result, even while approaching these sources with appropriate caution, this paper stresses the need to rethink early film audiences, particularly in terms of de-fragmenting those viewers and emphasizing the traits they shared.
While at times exaggerated, these song lyrics nevertheless offer an opportunity to augment our understanding of the many similarities shared by American audiences in the period, ranging from widespread interest in emergent stardom to the use of the darkened auditorium as an appropriate location for romantic interludes. As a result, even while approaching these sources with appropriate caution, this paper stresses the need to rethink early film audiences, particularly in terms of de-fragmenting those viewers and emphasizing the traits they shared.
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Horror film scholarship has generally suggested that the supernatural vampire either did not appear onscreen during the early cinema period, or that it appeared only once, in Georges Méliès' Le manoir du diable/The Devil's Castle (1896).... more
Horror film scholarship has generally suggested that the supernatural vampire either did not appear onscreen during the early cinema period, or that it appeared only once, in Georges Méliès' Le manoir du diable/The Devil's Castle (1896). By making rigorous use of archival materials, this essay tests those assumptions and determines them to be incorrect, while at the same time acknowledging the ambiguity of vampires and early cinema, both being prone to misreadings and misunderstandings. Between 1895 and 1915, moving pictures underwent major evolutions that transformed their narrative codes of intelligibility. During the same years, the subject of vampirism also experienced great change, with the supernatural characters of folklore largely dislocated by the non-supernatural " vamps " of popular culture. In an effort to reconcile the onscreen ambiguities, this paper adopts a New Film History methodology to examine four early films distributed in America, showing how characters in two of them—Le manoir du diable and La légende du fantôme/Legend of a Ghost (Pathé Frères, 1908) have in different eras been mistakenly read as supernatural vampires, as well as how a third—The Vampire, a little-known chapter of the serial The Exploits of Elaine (Pathé, 1915)— invoked supernatural vampirism, but only as a metaphor. The paper concludes by analyzing Loïe Fuller (Pathé Frères, 1905), the only film of the era that seems to have depicted a supernatural vampire. Revising the early history of vampires onscreen brings renewed focus to the intrinsic similarities between the supernatural creatures and the cinema.
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The history of film exhibition has been fraught with projection problems. Since the nineteenth century, projectionists have tried to avoid scratching or otherwise damaging film prints, the appearance of which implied lack of care,... more
The history of film exhibition has been fraught with projection problems. Since the nineteenth century, projectionists have tried to avoid scratching or otherwise damaging film prints, the appearance of which implied lack of care, overuse, and/or age. Many restorationists have sought to remove such damage, with the 1990s witnessing a rise in the use of digital software for that purpose. From painstaking work on individual frames to algorithmic corrections applied to given scenes or even entire films, the effort to clean up existing film prints has been widespread. Paradoxically, during the same time period, other software has emerged to allow filmmakers to add intentional scratches and other forms of damage to their films. The reasons range from efforts to make footage look aged or rare to the desire to invoke past exhibition venues like "grindhouse" theaters. Published in the QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO, 2017.
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Published in POST SCRIPT: ESSAYS IN FILM AND THE HUMANITIES, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Summer 2013).
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Published in RECOVERING 1940s HORROR CINEMA, edited by Mario Degiglio-Bellemare, Charlie Ellbé, and Kristopher Woofter (Lexington, MD: Lexington Books, 2015).
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Poem published in THE MAILER REVIEW, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2016).
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Norman Mailer's MAIDSTONE
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The American television commercial exhibits an aesthetic and historical dynamic linking it directly to cinematic and media cultures. Consuming Images: Film Art and the American Television Commercial establishes the complex vitality of the... more
The American television commercial exhibits an aesthetic and historical dynamic linking it directly to cinematic and media cultures. Consuming Images: Film Art and the American Television Commercial establishes the complex vitality of the television commercial both as a short film and as an art form. Through close and comparative readings, the book examines the influence of Hollywood film styles on the television commercial, and the resulting influence of the television commercial on Hollywood, exploring an intertwined aesthetic and technical relationship. Analysing key commercials over the decades that feature new technologies and film aesthetics that were subsequently adopted by feature filmmakers, the book establishes the television commercial as film art.
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Uncorrected proofs. If you need to cite the work etc, please be sure you refer to the published version of this work, as these are uncorrected proofs.
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Co-edited with Gary D. Rhodes, illustrated by Jeremy Ray
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This is a low-resolution, uncorrected proof of my monograph THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN HORROR FILM, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2018. It contains a small number of typos that were corrected for publication. While I am... more
This is a low-resolution, uncorrected proof of my monograph THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN HORROR FILM, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2018. It contains a small number of typos that were corrected for publication.
While I am sharing this online, it is crucial for any readers to understand that this is an uncorrected proof. Anyone wishing to cite this work should refer to a published copy.
While I am sharing this online, it is crucial for any readers to understand that this is an uncorrected proof. Anyone wishing to cite this work should refer to a published copy.
Research Interests: Horror Film, Early Cinema, Film History, Gothic Fiction and the horror film, Spectatorship, and 10 morePre-Cinema, Horror Movies, Film Audiences, Horror Literature, Vampires in Film and Literature, Horror Studies, Supernatural in Literature, Horror Film and Horror Audiences, Pre-Cinema/Early Cinema, and History of the Theater
Book cover only. Includes back cover with blurbs.
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In March 2021, I acted as a Respondent on a panel about "Horror and Indigeneity" at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Conference. This is the text of that paper.
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There is something in the blood, and something in the mind. In 1929, Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Stekel completed his monumental work, Sadism and Masochism: The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty. Published while Dracula was a hit on the... more
There is something in the blood, and something in the mind. In 1929, Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Stekel completed his monumental work, Sadism and Masochism: The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty. Published while Dracula was a hit on the stage and while readers thrilled to the vampire books of Montague Summers, Sadism and Masochism presented case studies of patients who desired blood. Stekel announced, "The saga of the vampire has never disappeared from folk consciousness." While his preface heralds a "great advance of scientific knowledge," Stekel's vampires are not cured of their bloodlust, but instead documented and exhibited for public consumption, not dissimilar to nineteenth-century exhibits of vampire bats.
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In 1985, Forrest J Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, told me about his cameo appearance in Al Adamson's Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). Having watched so many films in which he saw onscreen corpses breathing,... more
In 1985, Forrest J Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, told me about his cameo appearance in Al Adamson's Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). Having watched so many films in which he saw onscreen corpses breathing, thanks to what he perceived to be less-than-dedicated actors, Ackerman took pride in "dying" in Adamson's film, holding his breath tightly so as to appear truly dead. Unfortunately, Adamson neglected to call, "cut," and Ackerman nearly passed out.
Ackerman's anecdote draws attention to a particular type of screen accident, one in which actors whose characters become corpses are clearly still alive, the camera capturing obvious signs of life in the dead. With rare exceptions such as Janet Leigh's dead character Marion Crane in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), the obviously breathing corpse became a relatively common sight in the history of Hollywood cinema.
My paper examines how the living actor and deceased character interact, resulting in an unplanned, but not necessarily unexpected accident. Here is a particular type of double movement, of figuration and disfiguration, one in which the testimony of the actor's body tempers the testimony of the character's corpse. These accients mitigate the reality of the narrative and thus the emotional impact of the character's death, including the monstrous ways in which the character died.
Ackerman's anecdote draws attention to a particular type of screen accident, one in which actors whose characters become corpses are clearly still alive, the camera capturing obvious signs of life in the dead. With rare exceptions such as Janet Leigh's dead character Marion Crane in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), the obviously breathing corpse became a relatively common sight in the history of Hollywood cinema.
My paper examines how the living actor and deceased character interact, resulting in an unplanned, but not necessarily unexpected accident. Here is a particular type of double movement, of figuration and disfiguration, one in which the testimony of the actor's body tempers the testimony of the character's corpse. These accients mitigate the reality of the narrative and thus the emotional impact of the character's death, including the monstrous ways in which the character died.