ELERI BUTLER is a sociologist, has an MA in Cult Film and TV, and has also produced and worked on a number of short films, including the documentaries Fear at 400 Degrees: The Cine-Excess of Suspiria (2010) and The Long Road Back From Hell: Reclaiming Cannibal Holocaust (2011). Eleri has worked professionally for several years in the prevention of violence against women, and is currently Chief Executive of a charity that supports women survivors of domestic violence and women offenders. She is also a Trustee of the UK charity Against Violence and Abuse, which supports services to improve their response to women, children and men who experience or perpetrate different forms of violence against women and girls.
JENNY BARRETT is the Programme Leader in Film Studies at Edge Hill University. She has published various work on the dominatrix and BDSM and how they are represented in popular culture. Her other research interests include American Civil War films (she is the author of Shooting the Civil War: Cinema, History and American National Identity, I. B. Tauris, 2009), and representations of ethnicity in the western.
CHRISTIAN HALLMAN is a writer/producer/director working through his production company Grindhouse Pictures in Sweden. Among his work is Desperately Seeking Seka (feature documentary) and Cravings, The White Gold and Jann of Sweden (all short fiction). He also works as a freelance production manager, and worked on the development of the Swedish vampire film Frostbiten, produced by Solid Entertainment. Christian is also member of the board and co-ordinator of the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation and its website melies.org, the largest network of genre film festivals in the world, as well as programme co-director of Lund International Fantastic Film Festival.
KEVIN HEFFERNAN teaches media culture and history in the Division of Film and Media Arts at Southern Methodist University. Divine Trash, a documentary on the early career of John Waters on which Heffernan served as associate producer and co-screenwriter, won the Filmmakers’ Trophy in Documentary at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. He is the author of Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1952–1968 (Duke University Press, 2004) and co-author, with Frances Milstead and Steve Yeager, of My Son Divine (Alyson Publications, 2001). His essays on the horror film, Asian cinema, queer filmmakers, sexploitation, and porn can be found in a number of journals and critical anthologies.
CLAIRE HINES is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Southampton Solent University, UK. Her research and publications focus on sexuality, gender, fantasy and 007. She is the co-author of Fantasy (Routledge, 2011) and the co-editor, with Darren Kerr, of Hard to Swallow: Hard-core Pornography on Screen (Wallflower Press, 2012). She is currently writing a book that explores the relationship between James Bond and Playboy.
I. Q. HUNTER is Reader in Film Studies at De Montfort University, Leicester. He has published widely on cult and trash cinema, including British Trash Cinema (BFI/Palgrave, 2013).
BETH JOHNSON is Lecturer in Television and Film Studies at Keele University, UK. She is the author of various publications in journals such as Angelaki and the Journal of Cultural Research as well as various contributions to edited anthologies. She is also the co-editor, with James Aston and Basil Glynn, of Television, Sex and Society: Analyzing Contemporary Representations (Continuum Press, 2012).
XAVIER MENDIK is Director of the Cine-Excess International Film Festival and DVD label, and has written extensively on European and American cult and exploitation cinema traditions. Some of his books (as author, editor and co-editor) include 100 Cult Movies (Palgrave BFI, 2011), The Cult Film Reader (Open University Press, 2008), Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945 (Wallflower Press, 2004), Underground USA: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon (Wallflower Press, 2002), Shocking Cinema of the Seventies (Noir Publishing, 2002), Dario Argento’s Tenebrae (Flicks Books, 2000) and Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and its Critics (FAB Press, 2000).
GARY NEEDHAM is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Nottingham Trent University. He is the author of Brokeback Mountain (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), co-editor, with Dimitris Eleftheriotis, of Asian Cinemas: A Reader and Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 2006) and, with Glyn Davis, Queer TV: Histories, Theories, Politics (Routledge, 2009).
STEFAN NYLÉN has been working as a film critic for Sweden’s most prominent men’s lifestyle magazines, Café, since the mid-1990s. He is currently working as an editor of Sweden’s major movie magazine, Cinema, which he’s been doing for several years. His main research interests are in the realms of exploitation, sexploitation, women in prison, bad action and biker films. Stefan has written profiles and appreciations on leading European female sexploitation starlets including Essy Persson, Christina Lindberg, Harriet Andersson, as well as on American porn performers including Jane Hamilton, Seka and Nina Hartley.
BILL OSGERBY is Professor of Media, Culture and Communications at London Metropolitan University. His research focuses on twentieth century British and American cultural history, and his books include Youth in Britain Since 1945 (Blackwell, 1998), Playboys in Paradise: Youth, Masculinity and Leisure-Style in Modern America (Berg/New York University Press, 2001), Youth Media (Routledge, 2004), and a co-edited anthology, with Anna Gough Yates, Action TV: Tough-Guys, Smooth Operators and Foxy Chicks (Routledge, 2001).
MAGNUS PAULSSON is a film producer at Solid Entertainment in Sweden. He is also the founder of Fantastisk Filmfestival FFF – Scandinavia’s only film festival dedicated to horror, sci-fi and fantasy.
JULIAN PETLEY is Professor of Screen Media in the School of Arts, Brunel University, Chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and a member of the board of Index on Censorship. Julian’s recent books include Censorship: A Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld 2009) and Film and Video Censorship in Contemporary Britain (Edinburgh University Press, 2011).
MARCELLE PERKS is a British author and journalist presently living in Germany. She has specialised in writing sexually-themed guide books and the analysis of gender in horror cinema, but also writes short stories. She is the author of Secrets of Porn Star Sex (Infinite Ideas, 2007), and has contributed to a wide variety of books and journals that deal with issues of horror, erotica and the fantastic, as well as writing extensively about horror films in Fangoria, Shivers, Redeemer, Flesh and Blood, Eyeball and Videoworld magazines.
SIMONE PYNE is a Film and Event Programmer. After graduating from the University of East Anglia with a BA in Film Studies and MA in Film and Film Archiving, Simone worked as an archive film researcher for Associated Press as well as on numerous freelance projects including an award-winning documentary on the artist Grayson Perry for Channel 4. She currently works for The Hospital Club, programming films and events, but has also worked for Curzon Cinemas and the BFI London Film Festival. She has presented academic papers on early colour film processes in the US and UK and visited as guest-lecturer at Brunel University. As well as being one of four producers of The Smoking Cabinet, she has also been a programmer of guest programmes for several festivals including The London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and is also a judge for Rushes Soho Shorts Film Festival, amongst others.
EMILY SHELTON graduated from Amherst College and received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago, where she was a Whiting Fellow. Her work has appeared in Camera Obscura, Chicago Review, Quarterly West, La Petite Zine and Another Chicago Magazine, among other journals. Emily teaches in the College Writing Program at Harvard University, and is at work on a novel based on the West Memphis Three case.
CLARISSA SMITH is Reader in Sexual Cultures at the University of Sunderland, UK. Her research is in the areas of sexuality in contemporary culture; representations of sex and sexuality; identities and the body; pornographies, their production, consumption and regulation; taboo/controversial media. Her publications include One for the Girls!: The Pleasures and Practices of Women’s Porn (Intellect, 2007) and the co-editor, with Feona Attwood, of a Sex Education special issue on Sexualisation and Young People (2011).
IAIN ROBERT SMITH is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Roehampton, London. He is the author of The Hollywood Meme: Global Adaptations of American Film and Television (Edinburgh University Press, 2013) and editor of Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation (Scope: An Online Journal of Film and TV Studies, 2009). He has published articles in a range of international journals including Velvet Light Trap and he is currently a co-investigator on the AHRC-funded research network ‘Media Across Borders’.
JACOB SMITH is Assistant Professor in the Radio-Television-Film Department at Northwestern University. In addition to writing the books Vocal Tracks: Performance and Sound Media (University of California Press, 2008), Spoken Word: Postwar American Phonograph Cultures (University of California Press, 2011) and The Thrill Makers: Celebrity, Masculinity and Stunt Performance (University of California Press, 2012), he has published articles on media history, sound and performance.
ALEXANDER ZAHLTEN is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. His research on film and audiovisual culture in East Asia and especially Japan from the 1960s onward focuses on the connection between larger economic, social and institutional structures and aesthetic modalities. Recent publications have examined the role of postcolonial fantasy in Korean ‘remakes’ of Japanese films, the question of categories in a media mix environment, and the history of German sexploitation cinema. Alex has also curated film programmes for institutions such as the German Film Museum and the Athenee Francais Cultural Center, Tokyo, and was Program Director for the Nippon Connection Film Festival from 2002 to 2010.