Hollywood in the 1970s often brings to mind directors such as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola. But the decade was also horror's 'golden age', producing classics like Rosemary's Baby, Carrie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween by directors who would become famous and achieve massive box office success. Since then, horror has been a prominent and inventive part of popular culture. Shock Value describes how horror was re-created, ridding itself of the old supernatural cliches and instead portraying serial killers, extreme and baseless violence, and the fear to be found in everyday suburbia. Jason Zinoman draws on interviews with hundreds of its most important artists to create a character-focused account of how an often overlooked, but highly influential, golden age in American film began.
