Horror cinema flourishes in times of ideological crisis and national trauma - the Great Depression, the Cold War, the Vietnam era, post-9/11. This book argues that a succession of filmmakers working in horror - from James Whale to Sylvia Soska - have used the genre, and the shock value it affords, to challenge the status quo during these times. Spanning the decades from the 1930s onwards this critical text examines the work of a variety of producers and directors.