1st Edition

Exploring Film through Bad Cinema

By David C. Wall Copyright 2026
204 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

204 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Exploring Film through Bad Cinema offers an overview of the practice of film analysis through a specific focus on the concept of “bad” cinema within a series of broad cultural and historical contexts. Providing a wide-ranging discussion of film from multiple perspectives, including history, aesthetics, and criticism, this broad theoretical engagement illustrates the ways in which the... Read more

1. Introduction: Creatures of the Screen

2. Early Film Form, Narrative, and the Cinema of Attractions

3. Cult, Pleasure, and Nostalgia: Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and the Triumph of Irony

4. “Paging Dr. Freud!” Theorizing John Boorman’s Zardoz

5. The World's Worst Director? Ed Wood and Auteur Theory

6. Nudie Cuties and Radical Roughies: Doris Wishman’s World of Exploitation

7. Reel Nasty: The Night Porter, The Gestapo’s Last Orgy, and Sadiconazista Cinema of the 1970s

8. She Found It at the Movies: Pauline Kael and the Mystery of the Disappearing Film Critic

9. When the Blockbuster Goes Bad: Cleopatra’s Epic Excess and the Italian Peplum

10. The Worst Masterpiece Ever Made: Heaven’s Gate and The New Hollywood

11. Where Did It All Go Right? 

Index

Biography

David C. Wall is Professor of Film and Visual Studies at Utah State University.