Another man’s memories: Masculine trauma and Satanic Panic in The Believers (1987) and Angel Heart (1987) | Intellect Skip to content
1981
1980s Horror Film Culture
  • ISSN: 2040-3275
  • E-ISSN: 2040-3283

Abstract

Focusing on (1987) and (1987), this article examines how occult crime is framed through the central male protagonists’ fragmented subjectivity in the respective investigation narratives. Through close analysis of the films’ shared cinematic languages of horror and neo-noir, I present how these texts are in direct dialogue with the ‘Satanic Panic’, the contemporary phenomenon of religious hysteria propagated by Reaganite conservatism and the New Christian Right. I argue that post-Vietnam masculine identity anxieties are intimately tied, and interrogated in these films, as part of a traumatic national history of white, patriarchal Satanic scapegoating and theocratic hegemony in the United States.

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2022-10-01
2024-04-24
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): 1980s; American horror; cult; masculinity; noir; occult; Satanic; trauma
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