Theater of Fear and Horror
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Tragic pleasure consists in the imitation of horrifying and pitiful events which in itself, according to Aristotle, is delightful."—Compendium of Tragicomic Poetry by Giovanni Battista Guarini, 1599, cited in Grand Guignol, epigraph "The most sick, perverted, and pornographic drama on Broadway can never hope to match the thrillers staged at the Grand Guignol." —RAGE (a sensationalist New York magazine) March 1963, epigraph "To Russell Blackwood, the newest “bandit” of the Grand Guignol", epigraph |
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Theater of Fear and Horror: The Grisly Spectacle of the Grand Guignol of Paris, 1897-1962 (1988) is a book by Mel Gordon on the Grand Guignol.
Blurb
"From its beginnings in turn-of-the-century Paris and throughout its sixty-year reign of terror, the Theatre of the Grand Guignol gleefully celebrated horror and fear. Innocent victims, mangled beauty, insanity, mutilation, depravity, and guilt were its primary themes. By dissecting primal taboos in an unprecedentedly graphic manner, it became the progenitor of all the blood-spilling, eye-gouging, and limb-hacking "splatter" movies of today."
