ABSTRACT
David Pirie’s claim in his groundbreaking work, A Heritage of Horror, that British horror was
worthy of critical attention undoubtedly ran counter to the readings of British cinema
dominant in the early 1970s when the book first appeared. However, Pirie himself denied
that his work was a polemic, and indeed a close examination of it reveals that the two main
strategies Pirie adopts to bring horror into the fold of critical respectability are closely
connected to an already established way of understanding and valuing British cinema.
