A major horror and fantasy sub-genre of cinema's first decades was that dealing with rampaging gorillas - either jungle-wild, circustamed or trained to serve wicked masters - killer apes, and a range of ape-human hybrids, either evolutionary 'missing links' or creatures spawned by medical experimentation and radical surgeries. Inspirations for this genre came from both fantasy-horror literature and the populist cultural trope of gorillas as abductors and ravishers of human females, a fear which arose from early European expeditions into Africa. This idea found its apex expression in RKO's King Kong (1932) - with Fay Wray as the blonde snatched away by a giant ape - while its unspoken logical conclusion, a grotesque miscegenation of species, was shown in the infamous Ingagi (1931). Charles Gemora, Ray 'Crash' Corrigan, Emil Van Horn and Hollywood's other delinquent gorilla men - seen in feature films, shorts and serials alike - persisted into the 1940s and only began to slow with the mass advent of colour cinema, marking the period up until 1949 as the golden age of beasts and beauties. This book documents that period with an annotated filmography of informative texts and a stunning array of over 150 rare film stills, many culled from the darkest depths of cine-archives and never published before either in books or online.

Bestriding the many visual deceits and narratives to be found in early cinema was the singular figure of Satan, the Devil incarnate. From Goethe's Faust to Dante's graphic renderings of the Inferno, classic art and literature were the well whence sprang the first cinematic depictions of the Devil, his deeds and his dwelling-place. These feverish imaginings led to more elaborate and complex films which vividly explored the terrors of the fallen angel's relentless war against humanity. From Georges Melies' diabolic trick-film Le Manoir Du Diable, shot in 1896, to such mysterious silent works as Witchcraft Through The Ages, Faust and Birth Of The Anti-Christ, and beyond to the burgeoning sound era, SATANIC SHADOWS documents all of the key filmic invocations of Satan, his victims and his worshippers unleashed in the first four decades of commercial cinema. SATANIC SHADOWS shows how narratives of sin, temptation and damnation were central to the roots of cinema's horror and phantasy genres, and how the Devil's dark, horned figure overshadowed all others in the race to astonish and terrify the spectator. With a wide array of more than 100 illuminating production photographs - many assembled from global film archives and seldom, if ever, previously published - this comprehensive illustrated filmography references over 250 films, and also includes a full index of titles.

The ORGY PLUS MASSACRE series presents a visually-led sampler of sexy, scary and sensational cinema from the years 1950 to 1979, three of the most consequential decades in film history. It was during these years that global cinema came of age, not only in the technological sense but especially by way of pushing back pre-war restrictions of censorship, so much so that by the end of the 1960s, explicit sex and graphic violence had both become accepted in the mainstream. This new liberalism peaked in the mid-70s, when pretty much anything could be legally seen on commercially available film in one form in another, from picture houses to backstreet projection booths. ORGY PLUS MASSACRE will focus on these decades when film-makers were increasingly free to express their most expansive, excessive and extreme visions on celluloid. ORGY PLUS MASSACRE Volume 1 includes over 100 rare and unusual photographs, with accompanying informative texts, from the years 1950 to 1956. This period saw global cinema in full recovery from the recent world war, and the transition of pulp narratives towards a darker realm informed by fears born of the new atomic age and the horrors of the concentration camps. The book is divided into five sections: Horror, Science Fixtion, Mayhem (delinquency, crime, murder, atrocity), Myth (fantasies of other worlds and time periods), and last but not least, Sex (nudity, sexploitation, adult).

A major horror and fantasy sub-genre of cinema's first decades was that dealing with rampaging gorillas - either jungle-wild, circustamed or trained to serve wicked masters - killer apes, and a range of ape-human hybrids, either evolutionary 'missing links' or creatures spawned by medical experimentation and radical surgeries. Inspirations for this genre came from both fantasy-horror literature and the populist cultural trope of gorillas as abductors and ravishers of human females, a fear which arose from early European expeditions into Africa. This idea found its apex expression in RKO's King Kong (1932) - with Fay Wray as the blonde snatched away by a giant ape - while its unspoken logical conclusion, a grotesque miscegenation of species, was shown in the infamous Ingagi (1931). Charles Gemora, Ray 'Crash' Corrigan, Emil Van Horn and Hollywood's other delinquent gorilla men - seen in feature films, shorts and serials alike - persisted into the 1940s and only began to slow with the mass advent of colour cinema, marking the period up until 1949 as the golden age of beasts and beauties. This book documents that period with an annotated filmography of informative texts and a stunning array of over 150 rare film stills, many culled from the darkest depths of cine-archives and never published before either in books or online.

Bestriding the many visual deceits and narratives to be found in early cinema was the singular figure of Satan, the Devil incarnate. From Goethe's Faust to Dante's graphic renderings of the Inferno, classic art and literature were the well whence sprang the first cinematic depictions of the Devil, his deeds and his dwelling-place. These feverish imaginings led to more elaborate and complex films which vividly explored the terrors of the fallen angel's relentless war against humanity. From Georges Melies' diabolic trick-film Le Manoir Du Diable, shot in 1896, to such mysterious silent works as Witchcraft Through The Ages, Faust and Birth Of The Anti-Christ, and beyond to the burgeoning sound era, SATANIC SHADOWS documents all of the key filmic invocations of Satan, his victims and his worshippers unleashed in the first four decades of commercial cinema. SATANIC SHADOWS shows how narratives of sin, temptation and damnation were central to the roots of cinema's horror and phantasy genres, and how the Devil's dark, horned figure overshadowed all others in the race to astonish and terrify the spectator. With a wide array of more than 100 illuminating production photographs - many assembled from global film archives and seldom, if ever, previously published - this comprehensive illustrated filmography references over 250 films, and also includes a full index of titles.

The ORGY PLUS MASSACRE series presents a visually-led sampler of sexy, scary and sensational cinema from the years 1950 to 1979, three of the most consequential decades in film history. It was during these years that global cinema came of age, not only in the technological sense but especially by way of pushing back pre-war restrictions of censorship, so much so that by the end of the 1960s, explicit sex and graphic violence had both become accepted in the mainstream. This new liberalism peaked in the mid-70s, when pretty much anything could be legally seen on commercially available film in one form in another, from picture houses to backstreet projection booths. ORGY PLUS MASSACRE will focus on these decades when film-makers were increasingly free to express their most expansive, excessive and extreme visions on celluloid. ORGY PLUS MASSACRE Volume 1 includes over 100 rare and unusual photographs, with accompanying informative texts, from the years 1950 to 1956. This period saw global cinema in full recovery from the recent world war, and the transition of pulp narratives towards a darker realm informed by fears born of the new atomic age and the horrors of the concentration camps. The book is divided into five sections: Horror, Science Fixtion, Mayhem (delinquency, crime, murder, atrocity), Myth (fantasies of other worlds and time periods), and last but not least, Sex (nudity, sexploitation, adult).