"A study of the issue of death and dying and how it is treated in several films. Covers Buddhist concepts such as the Bardo and reincarnation"--

Boaz Hagin carries out a philosophical examination of the issue of death as it is represented and problematized in Hollywood cinema of the classical era (1920s-1950s) and in later mainstream films, looking at four major genres: the Western, the gangster film, melodrama and the war film.

"Filming an act of sex in which someone is killed should be the stuff of morbid legend. But as Yaron Svoray, an Israeli investigative journalist discovers, snuff films are terrifyingly real. Since viewing one of these films while working on an expose of the German neo-Nazi movement, Svoray has been haunted by the knowledge of such terrifying, twisted documents. In Gods of Death, Svoray's daring and conviction propel the reader through a harrowing...

"The horror and psychological denial of our mortality, along with the corruptibility of our flesh, are persistent themes in drama. Body horror films have intensified these themes in increasingly graphic terms. The aesthetic of body horror has its origins in the ideas of the Marquis de Sade and the existential philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, all of whom demonstrated that we have just cause to be anxious about our physical...