Next week I'll be presenting work from my current book project at King's College London as part of their research seminar series.

Find the abstract for my talk, below:

The Way to Blockbuster: The Birth of the British Video Superstore
 
Since the new millennium, a number of academic works have emerged about the infancy of video’s ‘tangible phase’ in North America (Wasser 2001; Greenberg 2008; Herbert 2014; Newman 2014). However, very little has been written about video’s early days in Britain beyond the controversy surrounding 39 exploitation films that were banned as ‘video nasties.’ This focus has partly been due to the fact that histories of video technology in the UK have mostly emerged from horror film fan communities, whose members have striven to emphasise the ‘subcultural relevance’ of horror video and the dealers that allegedly traded in them (Egan 2007). The emphasis placed in these discussions on ‘outlaw’ cassettes and retailers has meant that more anodyne elements of the British video industry have gone unscrutinised.

This presentation looks to redress the balance by considering the mainstreaming of video in Britain, historicizing the birth of ‘video superstores’ in the latter half of the 1980s. During this period, negative media coverage of video nasties ran concurrent with an industry-wide decline in video rentals; the blame for which was typically put at the foot of so-called ‘cowboy’ retailers unable to sustain the levels of professionalism acquired to keep business buoyant. And while trade publications and industry bodies initially fought back against the press, they too eventually found themselves calling for the rental business to ‘clean up its image’ in a bid to win back customers. For some in the industry, this meant moving away from the image of video as a business operated out of seedy shops in provincial towns, towards something far more streamlined and corporate. To show how these aims were met, I will reflect on foundational business practices such as rack-leasing, examine trade initiatives such as Video Business magazine’s ‘Superstore 88’ campaign, and briefly reflect on the expansion of British chain stores such as Ritz Video, Azad Video and Hollywood Nites.   

This Friday I'll be delivering a keynote lecture at Exploitation Cinema in the 21st Century -- an awesome symposium organised by Dr James Newton at Canterbury Christ Church University. 

Find the amazing poster, and the equally amazing schedule, below. I can't wait!

Symposium Schedule

09.00 – 09.30             Registration and Tea/Coffee
                                    Welcome: James Newton
 
09.30 – 10.30             Panel One: Waves and Cycles
 

• Phil Wintle (University of Leicester), “Tracking the Popularity and Trends of the ‘Torture-Porn’ Film Through the Saw Series”.
• John P. Warton (Independent Scholar), “Shock and Schlock: Horror Tropes in Sharksploitation Cinema”.
• Linda McCarthy (University of East Anglia), “I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts:  Exploiting the Spectral in Ghost Hunting Films in Post-millennial America”.

 
10.30 – 10.35              Short Break
 
10.35 – 11.35              Panel Two: Exploitation Business and Industry
 

• Andrew Stubbs (Staffordshire University), “The Knick: A convergence between exploitation cinema, independent film, and Quality TV?”
• Britt Rhuart (Bowling Green State University), “Selling Grindhouse: The Distribution of Dimension Films”.
• Daniela Caterino (University of Bari), “From Django Unchained to The Hateful Eight: the author of the music and the protection of his moral rights.”

 
11.35 – 12.00              Tea Break
 
12.00 – 13.00              Panel Three: Violence, Sexual Transgression, and Exploitation
 

• David Maguire (Leeds International Film Festival), “The Body Politic: the wider issues at play in 21st century rape-revenge films”.
• Eddie Falvey (University of Exeter), “(S)Exploitation in the Mainstream: 21st Century Treatments of BDSM on Screen”.
• Virginie Guichard (Ravensbourne), “We Are the Flesh: Constructing a Sadean Carnal Theatre”.

 
13.00 – 14.00              Lunch
 
14.00 – 15.15              Panel Four: Wider Contexts of Exploitation
 

• Lee Kenny (University of Kent), “Chavs On Screen: Exploiting fears of Anti-Social Behaviour in 21st Century British Cinema”.
• Stefano Guerini Rocco (University of Bergamo), “Is this just fantasy? The Teen Movie Genre Between Exploitation and Convergence Culture”.
• Neil Jackson (University of Lincoln), “Losing Ben Gardner’s Head: Jaws: The Sharksploitation Edit and the gutting of Spielberg’s big fish”.
• David Annandale (University of Manitoba), “Scorched Earth: She Who Must Burn and the Exploitation Film’s Assault on the Cinematic Norm”.

 
15.15 – 15.30              Break
 
15.30 – 16.45              Panel Five: International Exploitation Cinema
 

• Momina Masood (University of the Punjab, Pakistan) “Omar Khan’s Zibahkhana: The Slasher in Pakistan, and Legacy of the Exploitation”.
• Nilay Erbalaban (Gaziantep University), “Turkish Style Exploitation Cinema: Arabesque Movies”. Video Presentation.
• Iain Robert Smith (Kings College London), “The Indian Ed Wood?: The Cult of Indian exploitation director Kanti Shah”.

 
 
16.45 – 17.00              Break
 
17.00 – 18.00              Keynote:

• Johnny Walker (Northumbria University), “Easy-to-make money machines: making and marketing exploitation films in the early 2000s”.

 
18.00                           Drinks reception.

On 9 June I will be delivering a keynote lecture at "Exploitation Cinema in the 21st Century", a day symposium organised by Dr James Newton. 

My talk will consider "direct to video" horror movies in the early 2000s. Find my abstract below.

​Easy-to-make money machines: making and marketing exploitation films in the early 2000s
 
This talk will examine direct-to-video (DTV) horror movies at the turn of the new millennium, addressing the production contexts and marketing strategies of numerous films released just as video’s “tangible phase” was beginning to wane (Herbert 2014). I will consider various North American DTV cycles which emerged in the wake of Scream (1996), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and The Blair Witch Project (1999), and discuss how such films were marketed to consumers. Key to the visibility of DTV horror during this period, I maintain, is the mainstream video chain Blockbuster, which sharply became a key access point for audiences of contemporary exploitation films at the beginning of the DVD age. The talk will show how Blockbuster’s movie acquisitions company, DEJ Productions, was, for a short while, a threat to DTV market-leaders Artisan and Lions Gate, both of which relied on the rental chain to stock their “B-level” fare (Perren 2013: 110).
 
Through acknowledging the rise in popularity of DTV horror movies since the 1980s, this paper maintains that DTV films such as Scream Bloody Murder (2000), I’ve Been Watching You (2001), Voyeur.com (2001), Do You Wanna Know a Secret? (2001) and Final Scream (2001) complicate how contemporary exploitation movies are so often—and, in my view, so wrongly—framed as retroactive “cult objects” above all else, and that Blockbuster—in spite of its traditional “family” image—facilitated the widespread distribution of new, low budget, horror films aimed at mainstream audiences. I will argue that these films’ tangibility, as VHS cassettes and DVDs on shelves in video stores through North America and the UK, was central to their market visibility.  

Last November I delivered a keynote lecture to the delegates at "Spectacular Now", an excellent conference which took place at the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany. 

Recently I was sent some photos of my presentation by one of the organisers, Dr Mark Schmitt. Thanks for the memories guys!

I will be participating in a roundtable discussion that will close the forthcoming Transnational Monstrosity in Popular Culture event at York St John University on 3rd June.

From the official website:

• This one-day conference will explore the figure of the monster in transnational popular culture, across cinema, television, games, comics and literature, as well as through fandoms attached to global monster cultures. It is our intention to bring together researchers to consider how transnational monstrosity is constructed, represented and disseminated in global popular culture.

My fellow panellists comprise: Dr Colette Balmain (Kingston University), 
Dr Donna McCormack (University of Surrey) and Professor Andrew Smith (University of Sheffield). 

The full programme can be accessed here.