Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film

Carol J. Clover

Jun 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Eva Wilhelm

About this audiobook

From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity and influence of horror cinema since the mid-1970s. Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented-notably the slasher movie's "final girls"-as they endure fear and degradation before rising to save themselves. The lesson was not lost on the mainstream industry, which was soon turning out the formula in well-made thrillers. Including a new preface by the author, this Princeton Classics edition is a definitive work that has found an avid fanbase from students of film theory to major Hollywood filmmakers.

About the author

Carol J. Clover is the Class of 1936 Professor Emerita in the departments of rhetoric, film, and Scandinavian at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Medieval Saga and Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.

Eva Wilhelm is a classically trained stage actor, with two decades of theater experience. The narrator of over one hundred audiobooks, she teaches everything from "Acting for Business Professionals" to "Voice for the Microphone" for The Shakespeare Theatre, Howard University, and other educational institutions.