ABSTRACT
Open the pages of any U.S. horror fanzine-Outré, Fangoria, Cinéfantastique-and you will find
listings for mail order video companies which cater to afficionados of what Jeffrey Sconce has
called “paracinema” and trash aesthetics.1 Not only do these mail-order companies represent
one of the fastest-growing segments of the video market,2 their catalogues challenge many
of our continuing assumptions about the binary opposition of prestige cinema (European
art and avant-garde/experimental films) and popular culture.3 Certainly, they highlight an
aspect of art cinema which is generally overlooked or repressed in cultural analysis, namely,
the degree to which high culture trades on the same images, tropes, and themes which
characterize low culture.
