Dundead by the book
A reading list inspired by She's a Maneater!
For this year's Dundead Film Festival, we're very excited about our collaboration with feminist collective Invisible Women: She’s a Maneater! Cannibalism, Consumption and Carnal Appetites.
This collection of six vintage horror films explore the fear of female appetites, taking in a broad spectrum of female-authored and women-centred horror.
Dive into this theme even further with Invisible Women's Dundead reading list. They've picked out a great selection of titles and below they share why they chose each one. Find a collection of these in DCA Shop, plus some of the Shop team's picks.
Published
Unlikeable Female Characters: Flawed Female Characters and the Power They Hold by Anna Bogutskaya
“Unlikable” women, villainesses and bad girls play a key role in horror cinema. In this book, Anna Bogutskaya (a horror expert herself) offers a general history of the evolution of unlikeable female characters in film, TV and pop culture.
Feeding the Monster - Why Horror has a hold on Us by Anna Bogutskaya
Another Bogutskaya banger is this book of essays about horror film and culture, examining how horror responds to and fuels our feelings of fear, anxiety, pain, hunger and power.
Spectacle Every Day: Essays on Classical Mexican Cinema, 1940-69 by Jorge Javier Negrete Camacho and Alonso Díaz de la Vega
We’re huge fans of Mexican genre cinema, so we love this in-depth exploration of film production in Mexico from the 1940s to the 1960s, three decades of exceptional creativity populated by screen gods and goddesses and extraordinary filmmakers that have inspired subsequent generations of moviegoers.
Luchadores vs Everything by Viviana Garcia Besne
A one-of-a-kind exploration of the lucha libre film genre, this book uncovers the hidden history of wrestling heroes on screen. Tracing the origins of lucha monster movies in Cuba and Mexico, it brings to life iconic figures such as El Santo, Blue Demon, and Batwoman, revealing a vibrant cinematic world where masked wrestlers battled everything from vampires to mad scientists.
Men, Women and Chainsaws by Carol J Clover
A groundbreaking study of gender and sexuality in slasher films, a real classic!
The Cinema of Stephanie Rothman: Radical Acts in Filmmaking by Alicia Kozma
A fascinating biography of Stephanie Rothman (director of The Velvet Vampire), which also serves as a study of taste cultures in cinema, and why certain women filmmakers are remembered and others not, even within feminist film circles. Completely indispensable and very readable too.
Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Gender Edited by Alison Pierse
A great essay collection which debunks misconceptions about women working in horror, as filmmakers or academics, while also offering some brilliant case studies of global horror cinema from feminist perspectives.
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
This collection of short stories based on fairytales is rightly a feminist classic. These wild edged stories brim with gothic atmosphere, transgressive transformations, subversive desires and “monstrous” femininity (very She’s A Maneater! energy…)
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
This shimmering, genre-melting selection of short stories brims with the unexpected, drawing inspiration from a vast array of references - urban legends, surgical horror stories, violent TV crime shows, erotic fantasies - to conjure uncanny new worlds.
Rouge by Mona Awad
Beauty, its power and the danger it signifies, is a running theme in horror films (see Dumplings and Santo vs Frankenstein’s Daughter!) This hypnotic, shape-shifting novel about a skin-care obsessed young woman explores the self-improvement industrial complex with pitch black wit and unsettling atmosphere.
And there's more...
The DCA Shop team have selected a fiendish collection of books inspired by Dundead, cinema and the horror genre, including:
- Ghostlore: Unveiling 50 Phantoms That Have Haunted History by Icy Sedgwick
- The Art of Junji Ito: Twisted Visions by by Junji Ito
- The Pocket Horror Movies from Gemini Books
- Weird Fiction: An Anthology from Penguin Weird Fiction
- Hitchcocktails : Lethal Libations Inspired by the Master of Suspense by Laurence Maslon
- It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror Edited by Joe Vallese
Find these titles in store, alongside prints from the Dundead archive, spooky bookmarks from ARK Colour Design and our Dundead tote bag. Over the weekend of the festival you'll also be able to pick up this year's festival t-shirt and screenprint, featuring our design by Agnes Xantippa Boman.
Shop Dundead
Show your love of horror with some Dundead merch.
