Film Genres

A contemporary variant of the horror film with a particular focus on human bodies that are subject to torture, mutilation, mutation, decay, degeneration, and transformation, usually shown in graphic detail via the use of special effects. Appearing in distinct cycles within a number of national cinemas, body horror can arguably be traced back to 1950s horror/science fiction hybrids such as The Blob (Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr, US, 1958) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, US, 1956), which show processes of bodily takeover and/or dissolution. The term, however, was coined in a 1986 special issue of Screen (see film studies journal): contributing scholars noted the fascination with corporeal decay in US zombie movies such as Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968), and with dismemberment and cannibalism in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) and The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven, 1977). This group of films is also known as splatter films as a result of the liberal amount of blood, gore, and bodily fluids shown on screen. David Cronenberg’s fascination with the havoc wreaked on bodies by parasites, viruses, and biotechnology, in films such as Shivers (1975), Rabid (1976), and The Brood (1979), is also considered indicative. The slasher film is often considered part of the wider body horror corpus. In Japan, films such as Tetsuo—The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989) indicate how body horror has been a central component of the Japanese horror film. In film studies, body horror has been addressed in feminist film theory, drawing on psychoanalytical terms such as Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection to interrogate body horror films such as the Alien series (1979–97) (see psychoanalytic film theory). A number of other genres or film types, such as the musical and pornography, are claimed to have powerful embodied, or bodily, or corporeal dimensions; these, along with the horror film, have been described as body genres. Recent film studies work has tended to approach body horror as a distinct, but not determinate, element within horror cycles examined in their distinct national contexts, and as having transnational appeal (see transnational cinema). The idea of embodiment ensures that writing on this topic also engages with wider accounts of immersive cinema (see haptic visuality). Thematically, formally, and in terms of the kinds of theoretical frameworks deployed by scholars to describe it, body horror shares territory with extreme cinema.

Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Body horror. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 11 Jun. 2025

You can use the following links to start your research in the online catalog: