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The American Nightmare

Halloween Special!
Directed by Adam Simon.
With George Romero, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg.
UK, 2000, video, color, 73 min.

This provocative new documentary passionately proposes that American horror films of the seventies—low-budget, independent, produced completely outside of the mainstream—were, in fact, the works of cinema art that best captured the fears and desires of America in one of its most dramatic decades. Through film excerpts and extensive interviews with director George Romero, Night of the Living Dead is appreciated for brilliantly capturing anxieties over race in America. The utlra-violence of Wes Craven’s early work is juxtaposed with the violence of Vietnam, while David Cronenberg’s films are viewed in the context of the sexual revolution. Harvard graduate Adam Simon and British producer Colin McCabe allow these articulate auteurs to speak about their chosen genre and complement their insights with horrifically compelling excerpts from their bodies of work.

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