Since the late 19th century, film has been the ultimate medium by which to express and illuminate the darker, wilder recesses of man's imagination. An alchemical convergence of magic lantern experiments and new photographic technology led to the production of the very first moving images, including visual captures of magic, mystery, violence, cruelty, crime, sex, nudity, devilry and death.
SHADOWS IN A PHANTOM EYE is an extensive and unprecedented 15-volume book series that reveals a flickering carnival of attractions and aberrations, from the ground-breaking motion capture experiments conceived by Eadweard Muybridge in 1872 to the shocking documentary footage of atrocity, destruction and horror which emerged from the ruins of war-torn Europe in the late 1940s. This is the ultimate multi-volume guide for those wishing to explore an alternative global history of the moving image in its inaugural decades - a history that reveals a wild, often disturbing and provocative world which includes Hollywood but also stretches far, far beyond.
SHADOWS IN A PHANTOM EYE Volume 10 covers the period 1932 through 1933, a period when Hollywood film production reached its zenith of permissiveness for crime and horror themes of violence, sadism and perversity whilst flaunting new levels of exposed female flesh, sexual innuendo, debauchery and degradation on screen. This "pre-code" culture was also reflected in animated cartoons and newsreels, and underpinned by a clandestine national network of unregulated roadshows where the most salacious and shocking material could be seen on a nightly basis. This volume references more than 900 films from all countries and reproduces over 300 rare photographic images and illustrations, many newly unearthed from international film archives and never before published.