This collection of new essays explores how various filmic portrayals of aging - as an inescapable horror destined to overtake us all, as a terrifying time of reckoning with the past, as a portal to unimaginable powers - reflect our complex attitudes towards the elderly.

Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper I. Victims No More “Ask not what your rest home can do for you”: ­Self-Agency and Public Service in Bubba ­Ho-Tep (Philip L. Simpson) Panic in Detroit: Don’t Breathe and the Fear of Old Cities, Homes and Men (Isaac Rooks) “It’s the work of a crazy old woman”: Revenge of the Elderly in The ­Devil-Doll (Martin F. Norden) From Beneficent Elderly to Vile M’others: Familial Relations and Cannibalism in Troma’s Rabid Grannies (1988) (Steve J. Webley) II. Aesthetics of Decay The Shock of Aging (Women) in Horror Film (Dawn Keetley) “To Grandmother’s house we go”: Documenting the Horror of the Aging Woman in Found Footage Films (Maddi McGillvray) “More like music”: Aging, Abjection and Dementia at the Overlook Hotel (Sue Matheson) The Skeleton Key, the Southern Gothic and the Uncanny Decay of Teleological History (Jessica Balanzategui) III. Elders as Others/Outsiders Making the Hard Choices: The Economics of Damnation in Drag Me to Hell (Cynthia J. Miller) “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the ugliest of them all?” The Elderly as “Other” in Countess Dracula (Jennifer Richards) Old and In the Way: Torments of the Aging Male in Psycho Hans Staats The Limits of “Sundowning”: M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit and the Horror of the Aging Body (Stephanie M. Flint) IV. Fighting Back Time “The powers of time can be altered”: The Ambiguities of Aging in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) (Thomas Prasch) “You can be young forever”: The Dread of Aging in Tony Scott’s ­Art-Horror Film The Hunger (James J. Ward) The Brittle Body: The Elderly and Cars in The Brotherhood of Satan (Brian Brems) The Evil Aging Women of American Horror Story (Karen J. Renner) V. What the Old Folks Know Disturbing the Past: Horror and Historical Memory in Ghost Story (1981) (A. Bowdoin Van Riper) Becoming Dr. Caligari (Robert B. Luehrs) “Some kind of special”: Queering Death Through Elder/Child Relationships in The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (Olivia ­Oliver-Hopkins) Flowers in the Attic: The Elderly as Monster (Liam T. Webb) About the Contributors Index