ABSTRACT
In recent years, it could be argued, the horror film has taken over from the western as the genre that is most written about by genre critics. In many of these accounts, the horror genre is claimed to be interesting because of its supposedly marginal, and hence subversive, status as a disreputable form of popular culture. While this current academic interest suggests that the genre no longer has such a marginal status, if indeed it ever had one, the importance of horror goes far beyond this current intellectual fad. Like pornography, not only is the horror genre the object of considerable aesthetic criticism, but it is frequently the target of moral panics and calls for censorship. In other words, the horror film raises questions of cultural analysis as well as cultural policy.
