Gary D . Rhodes | Oklahoma Baptist University (original) (raw)
Videos by Gary D . Rhodes
This 60-minute documentary film was a finalist at the Hollywood Film Festival and has been broadc... more This 60-minute documentary film was a finalist at the Hollywood Film Festival and has been broadcast numerous times. The entire film can be seen at the following link: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/488246861
144 views
Documentary film written and directed by Gary D. Rhodes, released through the Criterion Collectio... more Documentary film written and directed by Gary D. Rhodes, released through the Criterion Collection and Umbrella Entertainment. The entire documentary is available for view at:
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/385719203
4 views
Papers by Gary D . Rhodes
Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Jul 11, 2017
Palgrave Communications, Dec 21, 2017
Edinburgh University Press, Feb 1, 2017
Springer eBooks, 2022
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Early Popular Visual Culture, 2012
by Gary D. Rhodes, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2012, 320 pp., £45 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7165-3143... more by Gary D. Rhodes, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2012, 320 pp., £45 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7165-3143-2 Gary D. Rhodes is a prolific historian of American cinema, having written and edited several book...
Journal of Film Music, 2024
Largely forgotten in the history of cinema is Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's feature film The Terror (1... more Largely forgotten in the history of cinema is Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's feature film The Terror (1928). To the extent it is remembered, it is because the film qualifies as the second "all-talkie" feature, Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's Lights of New York (Bryan Foy, 1928) being the first. The Terror has also rightly been identified as the first talkie to feature a scream, which would become such an important sound in future horror movies. However, the key reason The Terror deserves recognition and further study is because it crucially requires a major revision in our understanding of film history. Beyond any doubt, The Terror was Hollywood's first talkie to use a background score ("nondiegetic" music), with the term "background" being critical in this context, meaning music heard along with (in back of) audible dialogue.
Choice Reviews Online, May 1, 2006
These 18 essays examine the relationships between narrative fiction films and documentary filmmak... more These 18 essays examine the relationships between narrative fiction films and documentary filmmaking, focusing on how each influenced the other and how the two were merged in diverse films and shows. Topics include the docudrama in early cinema, the industrial film as faux documentary, the fear evoked in 1950s science fiction films, the selling of "reality" in mockumentaries, and reality TV and documentary forms.
Film Quarterly, 2018
Book review of Charles Musser, Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1... more Book review of Charles Musser, Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1890s (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2016).
The Palgrave Book of the Vampire , 2023
Universal's Dracula varied noticeably from Stoker's description, with the film version taking pre... more Universal's Dracula varied noticeably from Stoker's description, with the film version taking precedent over the literary in American popular culture. While Universal's creation remains a cinematic icon, this chapter examines how much the screen Dracula changed over the span of those six films, becoming as plural as he was singular.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2022
From episode one to the final credits, whether the audience saw threatened heroes and heroines, o... more From episode one to the final credits, whether the audience saw threatened heroes and heroines, or impossible villains, serials of the 1910s were episodic cinematic entertainment known as ‘cliffhangers.’ Born of sensational melodrama and dime novels, the film serial and the ‘thrills’ it attempted to inspire was a complicated genre, a convergence of narrative forms. Such serials include The Exploits of Elaine (1914), Lucille Love, the Girl of Mystery (1914), The Perils of Pauline (1914), Zudora (1914), The Black Box (1915), The Crimson Stain Mystery (1916), The Iron Claw (1916), The Mysteries of Myra (1916), The House of Hate (1918), and The Trail of the Octopus (1919), among many others. Drawing upon trade publications and industry discourse, this essay explores the extensive influence of these serials on the horror film genre of the 1930s and beyond, examining codes and conventions that range from the supernatural to mad science/scientist, uncanny paintings to secret panels, poisonous concoctions to torture devices.
Horror Studies, 2010
This essay covers the history of Károly Lajthay's Hungarian film Drakula halála (1921), the cinem... more This essay covers the history of Károly Lajthay's Hungarian film Drakula halála (1921), the cinema's first adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. The essay attempts to construct a production history of the film, as well as to create an accurate list of cast members and key filming locations. As Drakula halála is lost, the essay also features the very first English translation of an extremely rare 1924 Hungarian novella based on the film, which offers much insight into its narrative. In recent years, a number of film historians discovered that F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) was not, as long believed, the first time that Bram Stoker's Dracula was adapted for the screen (Farkas 1997: 34-37). 1 Instead-even though it was hardly faithful to the novel-Hungarian director Károly Lajthay's Drakula halála marked the character's earliest film appearance, incorporating Stoker's vampire character into a tale that also drew heavily on Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920). Despite the growing awareness of Drakula halála, however, little is known of the film's production or its storyline, particularly in English-language texts.
Film History, 2011
The essay discusses the actions and motivations of various groups that tried to end the practice ... more The essay discusses the actions and motivations of various groups that tried to end the practice of double feature film exhibition in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Used as a price-cutting strategy, double features were embraced by marginal exhibitors and low-budget producers, but attacked by most major studios and established theatre chains. Methods employed to control the double feature included voluntary bans, governmental legislation, and legal action. During the depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal opposed the double feature as a strategy likely to undermine established admission price levels. But the double feature proved resilient and survived all these efforts, as well as an additional series of assaults, based on conservation of energy and materiel, mounted during the Second World War.
Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2017
Palgrave Communications, 2017
Though it was based on the infamous death sentence of 1587, the Edison Manufacturing Company’s fi... more Though it was based on the infamous death sentence of 1587, the Edison Manufacturing Company’s film Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895)—which was also distributed under the less-specific titles Execution and Execution Scene—features no historical context, its narrative consisting solely of brutal capitol punishment that lasts fewer than fifteen seconds.12 It remains arresting cinema, and certainly it predated the work of George Méliès. An 1895 newspaper advertisement publicized Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots as being the very first “Chamber of Horrors” moving picture to be “seen on the kinetoscope," adding that it was “blood-curdling in the extreme.”3 Twenty years later, when reviewing Kalem Company’s The Secret Room (1915), the Moving Picture World wrote:
The Projector, 2020
While many eras and evolutions are crucial in film history, the most important is likely the adve... more While many eras and evolutions are crucial in film history, the most important is likely the advent and proliferation of home video. During the first eight decades of the cinema, audiences had extremely limited control over the content and schedule of film exhibitions. Scholars had to rely on their memories of screenings from days, weeks, or even years past. Home video forever altered and corrected that problem, transferring power into the hands of an audience who could review and re-view selected films at the time and venue of their choosing. This paradigmatic shift transformed the viewer into an exhibitor and projectionist, operating a home theater relying on physical (and, later, virtual) property that had once been illegal to own. The new viewer became a cinematic time traveler, one who bested a time-based art, controlling film by use of the ability to rewind, fast-forward, and pause. --- Note: The published version of this essay is available online at https://www.theprojectorjournal.com/hit-the-pause-button
![Research paper thumbnail of The Birth of the American Horror Film [Uncorrected Proofs]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/63421464/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](This 60-minute documentary film was a finalist at the Hollywood Film Festival and has been broadc... more This 60-minute documentary film was a finalist at the Hollywood Film Festival and has been broadcast numerous times. The entire film can be seen at the following link: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/488246861
144 views
Documentary film written and directed by Gary D. Rhodes, released through the Criterion Collectio... more Documentary film written and directed by Gary D. Rhodes, released through the Criterion Collection and Umbrella Entertainment. The entire documentary is available for view at:
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/385719203
4 views
Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Jul 11, 2017
Palgrave Communications, Dec 21, 2017
Edinburgh University Press, Feb 1, 2017
Springer eBooks, 2022
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Early Popular Visual Culture, 2012
by Gary D. Rhodes, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2012, 320 pp., £45 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7165-3143... more by Gary D. Rhodes, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2012, 320 pp., £45 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7165-3143-2 Gary D. Rhodes is a prolific historian of American cinema, having written and edited several book...
Journal of Film Music, 2024
Largely forgotten in the history of cinema is Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's feature film The Terror (1... more Largely forgotten in the history of cinema is Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's feature film The Terror (1928). To the extent it is remembered, it is because the film qualifies as the second "all-talkie" feature, Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's Lights of New York (Bryan Foy, 1928) being the first. The Terror has also rightly been identified as the first talkie to feature a scream, which would become such an important sound in future horror movies. However, the key reason The Terror deserves recognition and further study is because it crucially requires a major revision in our understanding of film history. Beyond any doubt, The Terror was Hollywood's first talkie to use a background score ("nondiegetic" music), with the term "background" being critical in this context, meaning music heard along with (in back of) audible dialogue.
Choice Reviews Online, May 1, 2006
These 18 essays examine the relationships between narrative fiction films and documentary filmmak... more These 18 essays examine the relationships between narrative fiction films and documentary filmmaking, focusing on how each influenced the other and how the two were merged in diverse films and shows. Topics include the docudrama in early cinema, the industrial film as faux documentary, the fear evoked in 1950s science fiction films, the selling of "reality" in mockumentaries, and reality TV and documentary forms.
Film Quarterly, 2018
Book review of Charles Musser, Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1... more Book review of Charles Musser, Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1890s (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2016).
The Palgrave Book of the Vampire , 2023
Universal's Dracula varied noticeably from Stoker's description, with the film version taking pre... more Universal's Dracula varied noticeably from Stoker's description, with the film version taking precedent over the literary in American popular culture. While Universal's creation remains a cinematic icon, this chapter examines how much the screen Dracula changed over the span of those six films, becoming as plural as he was singular.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2022
From episode one to the final credits, whether the audience saw threatened heroes and heroines, o... more From episode one to the final credits, whether the audience saw threatened heroes and heroines, or impossible villains, serials of the 1910s were episodic cinematic entertainment known as ‘cliffhangers.’ Born of sensational melodrama and dime novels, the film serial and the ‘thrills’ it attempted to inspire was a complicated genre, a convergence of narrative forms. Such serials include The Exploits of Elaine (1914), Lucille Love, the Girl of Mystery (1914), The Perils of Pauline (1914), Zudora (1914), The Black Box (1915), The Crimson Stain Mystery (1916), The Iron Claw (1916), The Mysteries of Myra (1916), The House of Hate (1918), and The Trail of the Octopus (1919), among many others. Drawing upon trade publications and industry discourse, this essay explores the extensive influence of these serials on the horror film genre of the 1930s and beyond, examining codes and conventions that range from the supernatural to mad science/scientist, uncanny paintings to secret panels, poisonous concoctions to torture devices.
Horror Studies, 2010
This essay covers the history of Károly Lajthay's Hungarian film Drakula halála (1921), the cinem... more This essay covers the history of Károly Lajthay's Hungarian film Drakula halála (1921), the cinema's first adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. The essay attempts to construct a production history of the film, as well as to create an accurate list of cast members and key filming locations. As Drakula halála is lost, the essay also features the very first English translation of an extremely rare 1924 Hungarian novella based on the film, which offers much insight into its narrative. In recent years, a number of film historians discovered that F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) was not, as long believed, the first time that Bram Stoker's Dracula was adapted for the screen (Farkas 1997: 34-37). 1 Instead-even though it was hardly faithful to the novel-Hungarian director Károly Lajthay's Drakula halála marked the character's earliest film appearance, incorporating Stoker's vampire character into a tale that also drew heavily on Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920). Despite the growing awareness of Drakula halála, however, little is known of the film's production or its storyline, particularly in English-language texts.
Film History, 2011
The essay discusses the actions and motivations of various groups that tried to end the practice ... more The essay discusses the actions and motivations of various groups that tried to end the practice of double feature film exhibition in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Used as a price-cutting strategy, double features were embraced by marginal exhibitors and low-budget producers, but attacked by most major studios and established theatre chains. Methods employed to control the double feature included voluntary bans, governmental legislation, and legal action. During the depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal opposed the double feature as a strategy likely to undermine established admission price levels. But the double feature proved resilient and survived all these efforts, as well as an additional series of assaults, based on conservation of energy and materiel, mounted during the Second World War.
Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2017
Palgrave Communications, 2017
Though it was based on the infamous death sentence of 1587, the Edison Manufacturing Company’s fi... more Though it was based on the infamous death sentence of 1587, the Edison Manufacturing Company’s film Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895)—which was also distributed under the less-specific titles Execution and Execution Scene—features no historical context, its narrative consisting solely of brutal capitol punishment that lasts fewer than fifteen seconds.12 It remains arresting cinema, and certainly it predated the work of George Méliès. An 1895 newspaper advertisement publicized Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots as being the very first “Chamber of Horrors” moving picture to be “seen on the kinetoscope," adding that it was “blood-curdling in the extreme.”3 Twenty years later, when reviewing Kalem Company’s The Secret Room (1915), the Moving Picture World wrote:
The Projector, 2020
While many eras and evolutions are crucial in film history, the most important is likely the adve... more While many eras and evolutions are crucial in film history, the most important is likely the advent and proliferation of home video. During the first eight decades of the cinema, audiences had extremely limited control over the content and schedule of film exhibitions. Scholars had to rely on their memories of screenings from days, weeks, or even years past. Home video forever altered and corrected that problem, transferring power into the hands of an audience who could review and re-view selected films at the time and venue of their choosing. This paradigmatic shift transformed the viewer into an exhibitor and projectionist, operating a home theater relying on physical (and, later, virtual) property that had once been illegal to own. The new viewer became a cinematic time traveler, one who bested a time-based art, controlling film by use of the ability to rewind, fast-forward, and pause. --- Note: The published version of this essay is available online at https://www.theprojectorjournal.com/hit-the-pause-button
Horror Studies, 2010
This essay covers the history of Károly Lajthay’s Hungarian film Drakula halála (1921), the cinem... more This essay covers the history of Károly Lajthay’s Hungarian film Drakula halála (1921), the cinema’s first adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. The essay attempts to construct a production history of the film, as well as to create an accurate list of cast members and key filming locations. As Drakula halála is lost, the essay also features the very first English translation of an extremely rare 1924 Hungarian novella based on the film, which offers much insight into its narrative.
Immagine, No. 4, 2016
Relying upon concepts of “soft” evidence as a working methodology, this paper examines a corpus o... more Relying upon concepts of “soft” evidence as a working methodology, this paper examines a corpus of pre-1920 sheet music in order to reach new conclusions about early American film audiences. The fictional lyrics in these songs, as well as the artwork on their covers, reflect perceived patterns of behavior in viewers that defy simple demographical classification. Here is not “hard” data as recorded by theatre managers or as noted in scientific polls, or even present in fan letters published in film magazines, but rather fictional commentary that has the potentiality of giving insight into nonfiction audience members.
While at times exaggerated, these song lyrics nevertheless offer an opportunity to augment our understanding of the many similarities shared by American audiences in the period, ranging from widespread interest in emergent stardom to the use of the darkened auditorium as an appropriate location for romantic interludes. As a result, even while approaching these sources with appropriate caution, this paper stresses the need to rethink early film audiences, particularly in terms of de-fragmenting those viewers and emphasizing the traits they shared.
Edinburgh University Press, 2020
The American television commercial exhibits an aesthetic and historical dynamic linking it direct... more The American television commercial exhibits an aesthetic and historical dynamic linking it directly to cinematic and media cultures. Consuming Images: Film Art and the American Television Commercial establishes the complex vitality of the television commercial both as a short film and as an art form. Through close and comparative readings, the book examines the influence of Hollywood film styles on the television commercial, and the resulting influence of the television commercial on Hollywood, exploring an intertwined aesthetic and technical relationship. Analysing key commercials over the decades that feature new technologies and film aesthetics that were subsequently adopted by feature filmmakers, the book establishes the television commercial as film art.
![Research paper thumbnail of The Palgrave Encyclopedia of American Horror Film Shorts, 1915-1976 [Uncorrected Proofs]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/96388242/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Uncorrected proofs. If you need to cite the work etc, please be sure you refer to the published v... more Uncorrected proofs. If you need to cite the work etc, please be sure you refer to the published version of this work, as these are uncorrected proofs.
Co-edited with Gary D. Rhodes, illustrated by Jeremy Ray
![Research paper thumbnail of The Birth of the American Horror Film [Uncorrected Proofs]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/63421584/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Edinburgh University Press, 2018
This is a low-resolution, uncorrected proof of my monograph THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN HORROR FILM... more This is a low-resolution, uncorrected proof of my monograph THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN HORROR FILM, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2018. It contains a small number of typos that were corrected for publication.
While I am sharing this online, it is crucial for any readers to understand that this is an uncorrected proof. Anyone wishing to cite this work should refer to a published copy.
Book cover only. Includes back cover with blurbs.
Book cover only. Includes back cover with blurbs.
![Research paper thumbnail of The Perils of Moviegoing in America [Uncorrected Proofs]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/51716951/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](
The Mailer Review, Sep 22, 2013
"Recovering the Vampire" Conference, 2022
There is something in the blood, and something in the mind. In 1929, Austrian psychologist Wilhel... more There is something in the blood, and something in the mind. In 1929, Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Stekel completed his monumental work, Sadism and Masochism: The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty. Published while Dracula was a hit on the stage and while readers thrilled to the vampire books of Montague Summers, Sadism and Masochism presented case studies of patients who desired blood. Stekel announced, "The saga of the vampire has never disappeared from folk consciousness." While his preface heralds a "great advance of scientific knowledge," Stekel's vampires are not cured of their bloodlust, but instead documented and exhibited for public consumption, not dissimilar to nineteenth-century exhibits of vampire bats.
Presented at the conference "Freak Accidents: De l' accident improbable et monstrueux au cinéma", 2022
In 1985, Forrest J Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, told me about his ca... more In 1985, Forrest J Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, told me about his cameo appearance in Al Adamson's Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). Having watched so many films in which he saw onscreen corpses breathing, thanks to what he perceived to be less-than-dedicated actors, Ackerman took pride in "dying" in Adamson's film, holding his breath tightly so as to appear truly dead. Unfortunately, Adamson neglected to call, "cut," and Ackerman nearly passed out.
Ackerman's anecdote draws attention to a particular type of screen accident, one in which actors whose characters become corpses are clearly still alive, the camera capturing obvious signs of life in the dead. With rare exceptions such as Janet Leigh's dead character Marion Crane in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), the obviously breathing corpse became a relatively common sight in the history of Hollywood cinema.
My paper examines how the living actor and deceased character interact, resulting in an unplanned, but not necessarily unexpected accident. Here is a particular type of double movement, of figuration and disfiguration, one in which the testimony of the actor's body tempers the testimony of the character's corpse. These accients mitigate the reality of the narrative and thus the emotional impact of the character's death, including the monstrous ways in which the character died.