Film Studies Resource Guide

According to the film critic William K. Everson, the horror film is the most unique of any film genre because rigid guidelines do not have to be followed as closely by the director or, for that matter, the screenwriter. The horror film's message of terror and death can be subtly communicated to the audience or conveyed in very intense (and ultimately disturbing) visual and auditory cues. While other film genres might use restraint and logical explanation as their overriding criteria, the horror film need not follow this standard formula...

Of all of the movie genres to which the twentieth century gave birth, the western is the most immediately recognizable and the most distinctively American form of cinema we possess today. Generally set in the post-Civil War era, and in territories west of the Mississippi, the western created its own landscape, its own character types, and its own narrative forms as a way of investing this time and place with mythic significance.

Blaxploitation film is a type of film oriented to black audiences. It developed in the late 1960s and flourished up through the late 1970s. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term blaxploitation was first employed in the June 12, 1972, issue of New York magazine to characterize such films, specifically Superfly (1972).

The American movie musical has been called “the most complex art form ever devised,” with the power to transport audiences across time and space. Even when grounded in an historical or contemporary “reality,” film musicals operate in a hyperbolic universe to which the viewer has access only for the duration of the movie experience. Spectators are urged to suspend disbelief, as characters sing and dance in a variety of situations, usually spontaneously and always with perfect pitch and rhythm.