...This chapter considers Roman Polanski's approach to the genre and horror output before the film Macbeth. It discusses Polanski's 1965 work Repulsion, that centres around Carol Ledoux and her disintegrating sanity, which is expressed from her subjective viewpoint...

... is inevitable to all people since everyone is trapped in a great machine, the engine of history. It also analyses Roman Polanski's Macbeth as a product of a disillusion with the 1960s countercultural idealism and the expression of a youthful anger at the collective lack of will for social...

... In as a non-traditional vampire film. It also discusses one of the first false endings in Let the Right One In, which has no dialogue, just the poignant music accompanying a montage, scored and edited in such a way that it seems final. The chapter covers the endings of Roman Polanski's films...

...Born into the real-life horrors of World War II, besieged from a young age by looming Nazism, an oppressive ghetto, and the threat of potential concentration camp incarceration, Polanski endured an extended period of panicked solitude and a first-hand encounter with the true terrors of mankind...

...This chapter draws attention to Władysław Szpilman, who was the focus of Roman Polanski's critically acclaimed and commercially successful 2002 film adaptation of the bestselling memoir Smierc miasta. It looks into Szpilman's harrowing portrayal of the cruelty of the Holocaust...

... obvious links to Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Cronenberg’s The Brood and other umbilical connections such as Demon Seed, The Exorcist, The Baby, Aliens and Village of the Damned, while also discussing...

...This chapter analyses how William Shakespeare's Macbeth offered Roman Polanski scope for a realisation of the evil inherent in the human conditioning its setting of eleventh-century Scotland and the story of feuding, warlike tribes. It explores Polanski's idea of the underlying...

...This chapter mentions Roman Polanski's film Rosemary's Baby, in which he managed to take the conventions of the Gothic world of demons and place them in a modern world of coffee machines and Christmas shopping. It analyses how Polanski overlaid William Shakespeare's Macbeth...

...Why write about Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971) as part of a series of books dedicated to the classics of the horror movie genre? Because, this book argues, just as Banquo in Polanski's film holds up a series of mirrors that reflect images of his successors that trace back to his...

... in terms of market forces and changing demographics. The chapter looks at how the major studios reacted to this, assimilating new approaches to film-making while retaining much of their influence and power, albeit under new ownership. It also considers Roman Polanski's film adaptation of Levin's novel...

...This chapter focuses on how Roman Polanski exploited violence that can engender a physical response in the audience. It analyses how the feel of violence and emotional response it provokes provide one of the key ingredients that make Polanki's Macbeth a horror film. It also shows...

...This chapter establishes that Roman Polanski's Macbeth used the conventions of the horror genre to represent William Shakespeare's play on screen. It considers how Macbeth is placed in the wider historical context of the horror genre itself. It also examines how...

... mines homegrown subjects for inspiration. It discusses the works of Roman Polanski, describing him as a major figure in post-war cinema. It discusses how he has made a series of highly personal, innovative genre films, that managed to achieve enormous critical and commercial success. The chapter next...

...Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), starring Catherine Deneuve as a repressed and tormented manicurist, is a gripping, visually inventive descent into paranoia and self-destructive alienation. Emblematic of recurrent Polanski motifs, evinced in his student short films, in his...