From the author of the acclaimed English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema, American Gothic presents an in-depth survey of the early years of the American horror film--ranging from the birth of cinema and the silent era to the mid-1950s. Jonathan Rigby examines a great many of the seminal films, including Cat People, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, The Fly, Frankenstein, Freaks, House of Wax, The Invisible Man, and She. He also looks at the actors and directors--Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Vincent Price, to name but a few. For fans and students of the horror classics, American Gothic is an essential work. This is the genre as it flourished from Univeral"s early-thirties cycle and which culminated in Alfred Hitchcock"s 1960 masterpiece Psycho, a film which forever changed and expanded the possibilities of horror cinema.