Elder Horror: Essays on Film’s Frightening Images of Aging

As baby boomers gray, cinematic depictions of aging and the aged are on the rise. In the horror genre, fears of growing old take on fantastic proportions. Elderly characters are portrayed as either eccentric harbingers of doom--the crone who stops at nothing to restore her youth, the ancient ancestor who haunts the living--or as frail victims.

This collection of new essays explores how various filmic portrayals of aging, as an inescapable horror destined to overtake us all, reflect our complex attitudes toward growing old, along with its social, psychological and economic consequences.

Cynthia J. Miller, a cultural anthropologist focussing on popular culture and visual media, teaches in the Institute for Liberal Arts at Emerson College in Boston. She is the editor or coeditor of over a dozen scholarly volumes, many of which explore the horror genre. A. Bowdoin Van Riper is an historian specializing in depictions of science and technology in popular culture. He is the reference librarian at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, and is the author or editor of a wide range of volumes, ranging from science to science fiction to horror.