Videos by Gary D . Rhodes
Papers by Gary D . Rhodes
Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Jul 11, 2017
No matter how topical the subject, how beautiful the color, how unique the photography, a roll of... more No matter how topical the subject, how beautiful the color, how unique the photography, a roll of film is practically worthless with a big scratch running down the middle.

Palgrave Communications, Dec 21, 2017
Horror film scholarship has generally suggested that the supernatural vampire either did not appe... more Horror film scholarship has generally suggested that the supernatural vampire either did not appear onscreen during the early cinema period, or that it appeared only once, in Georges Méliès' Le manoir du diable/The Devil's Castle (1896). By making rigorous use of archival materials, this essay tests those assumptions and determines them to be incorrect, while at the same time acknowledging the ambiguity of vampires and early cinema, both being prone to misreadings and misunderstandings. Between 1895 and 1915, moving pictures underwent major evolutions that transformed their narrative codes of intelligibility. During the same years, the subject of vampirism also experienced great change, with the supernatural characters of folklore largely dislocated by the non-supernatural "vamps" of popular culture. In an effort to reconcile the onscreen ambiguities, this paper adopts a New Film History methodology to examine four early films distributed in America, showing how characters in two of them-Le manoir du diable and La légende du fantôme/Legend of a Ghost (Pathé Frères, 1908) have in different eras been mistakenly read as supernatural vampires, as well as how a third-The Vampire, a little-known chapter of the serial The Exploits of Elaine (Pathé, 1915)invoked supernatural vampirism, but only as a metaphor. The paper concludes by analyzing Loïe Fuller (Pathé Frères, 1905), the only film of the era that seems to have depicted a supernatural vampire. Revising the early history of vampires onscreen brings renewed focus to the intrinsic similarities between the supernatural creatures and the cinema.
Edinburgh University Press, Feb 1, 2017
Springer eBooks, 2022
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Early Popular Visual Culture, 2012
by Gary D. Rhodes, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2012, 320 pp., £45 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7165-3143... more by Gary D. Rhodes, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2012, 320 pp., £45 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7165-3143-2 Gary D. Rhodes is a prolific historian of American cinema, having written and edited several book...
Journal of Film Music, 2024
Largely forgotten in the history of cinema is Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's feature film The Terror (1... more Largely forgotten in the history of cinema is Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's feature film The Terror (1928). To the extent it is remembered, it is because the film qualifies as the second "all-talkie" feature, Warner Bros.-Vitaphone's Lights of New York (Bryan Foy, 1928) being the first. The Terror has also rightly been identified as the first talkie to feature a scream, which would become such an important sound in future horror movies. However, the key reason The Terror deserves recognition and further study is because it crucially requires a major revision in our understanding of film history. Beyond any doubt, The Terror was Hollywood's first talkie to use a background score ("nondiegetic" music), with the term "background" being critical in this context, meaning music heard along with (in back of) audible dialogue.
Choice Reviews Online, May 1, 2006
These 18 essays examine the relationships between narrative fiction films and documentary filmmak... more These 18 essays examine the relationships between narrative fiction films and documentary filmmaking, focusing on how each influenced the other and how the two were merged in diverse films and shows. Topics include the docudrama in early cinema, the industrial film as faux documentary, the fear evoked in 1950s science fiction films, the selling of "reality" in mockumentaries, and reality TV and documentary forms.
Film Quarterly, 2018
Book review of Charles Musser, Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1... more Book review of Charles Musser, Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1890s (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2016).
The Palgrave Book of the Vampire , 2023
Universal's Dracula varied noticeably from Stoker's description, with the film version taking pre... more Universal's Dracula varied noticeably from Stoker's description, with the film version taking precedent over the literary in American popular culture. While Universal's creation remains a cinematic icon, this chapter examines how much the screen Dracula changed over the span of those six films, becoming as plural as he was singular.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2022
From episode one to the final credits, whether the audience saw threatened heroes and heroines, o... more From episode one to the final credits, whether the audience saw threatened heroes and heroines, or impossible villains, serials of the 1910s were episodic cinematic entertainment known as ‘cliffhangers.’ Born of sensational melodrama and dime novels, the film serial and the ‘thrills’ it attempted to inspire was a complicated genre, a convergence of narrative forms. Such serials include The Exploits of Elaine (1914), Lucille Love, the Girl of Mystery (1914), The Perils of Pauline (1914), Zudora (1914), The Black Box (1915), The Crimson Stain Mystery (1916), The Iron Claw (1916), The Mysteries of Myra (1916), The House of Hate (1918), and The Trail of the Octopus (1919), among many others. Drawing upon trade publications and industry discourse, this essay explores the extensive influence of these serials on the horror film genre of the 1930s and beyond, examining codes and conventions that range from the supernatural to mad science/scientist, uncanny paintings to secret panels, poisonous concoctions to torture devices.

Horror Studies, 2010
This essay covers the history of Károly Lajthay's Hungarian film Drakula halála (1921), the cinem... more This essay covers the history of Károly Lajthay's Hungarian film Drakula halála (1921), the cinema's first adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. The essay attempts to construct a production history of the film, as well as to create an accurate list of cast members and key filming locations. As Drakula halála is lost, the essay also features the very first English translation of an extremely rare 1924 Hungarian novella based on the film, which offers much insight into its narrative. In recent years, a number of film historians discovered that F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) was not, as long believed, the first time that Bram Stoker's Dracula was adapted for the screen (Farkas 1997: 34-37). 1 Instead-even though it was hardly faithful to the novel-Hungarian director Károly Lajthay's Drakula halála marked the character's earliest film appearance, incorporating Stoker's vampire character into a tale that also drew heavily on Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920). Despite the growing awareness of Drakula halála, however, little is known of the film's production or its storyline, particularly in English-language texts.
Film History, 2011
The essay discusses the actions and motivations of various groups that tried to end the practice ... more The essay discusses the actions and motivations of various groups that tried to end the practice of double feature film exhibition in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Used as a price-cutting strategy, double features were embraced by marginal exhibitors and low-budget producers, but attacked by most major studios and established theatre chains. Methods employed to control the double feature included voluntary bans, governmental legislation, and legal action. During the depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal opposed the double feature as a strategy likely to undermine established admission price levels. But the double feature proved resilient and survived all these efforts, as well as an additional series of assaults, based on conservation of energy and materiel, mounted during the Second World War.
Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2017

Palgrave Communications, 2017
Horror film scholarship has generally suggested that the supernatural vampire either did not appe... more Horror film scholarship has generally suggested that the supernatural vampire either did not appear onscreen during the early cinema period, or that it appeared only once, in Georges Méliès' Le manoir du diable/The Devil's Castle (1896). By making rigorous use of archival materials, this essay tests those assumptions and determines them to be incorrect, while at the same time acknowledging the ambiguity of vampires and early cinema, both being prone to misreadings and misunderstandings. Between 1895 and 1915, moving pictures underwent major evolutions that transformed their narrative codes of intelligibility. During the same years, the subject of vampirism also experienced great change, with the supernatural characters of folklore largely dislocated by the non-supernatural "vamps" of popular culture. In an effort to reconcile the onscreen ambiguities, this paper adopts a New Film History methodology to examine four early films distributed in America, showing how characters in two of them-Le manoir du diable and La légende du fantôme/Legend of a Ghost (Pathé Frères, 1908) have in different eras been mistakenly read as supernatural vampires, as well as how a third-The Vampire, a little-known chapter of the serial The Exploits of Elaine (Pathé, 1915)invoked supernatural vampirism, but only as a metaphor. The paper concludes by analyzing Loïe Fuller (Pathé Frères, 1905), the only film of the era that seems to have depicted a supernatural vampire. Revising the early history of vampires onscreen brings renewed focus to the intrinsic similarities between the supernatural creatures and the cinema.
Though it was based on the infamous death sentence of 1587, the Edison Manufacturing Company’s fi... more Though it was based on the infamous death sentence of 1587, the Edison Manufacturing Company’s film Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895)—which was also distributed under the less-specific titles Execution and Execution Scene—features no historical context, its narrative consisting solely of brutal capitol punishment that lasts fewer than fifteen seconds.12 It remains arresting cinema, and certainly it predated the work of George Méliès. An 1895 newspaper advertisement publicized Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots as being the very first “Chamber of Horrors” moving picture to be “seen on the kinetoscope," adding that it was “blood-curdling in the extreme.”3 Twenty years later, when reviewing Kalem Company’s The Secret Room (1915), the Moving Picture World wrote:

The Projector, 2020
While many eras and evolutions are crucial in film history, the most important is likely the adve... more While many eras and evolutions are crucial in film history, the most important is likely the advent and proliferation of home video. During the first eight decades of the cinema, audiences had extremely limited control over the content and schedule of film exhibitions. Scholars had to rely on their memories of screenings from days, weeks, or even years past. Home video forever altered and corrected that problem, transferring power into the hands of an audience who could review and re-view selected films at the time and venue of their choosing. This paradigmatic shift transformed the viewer into an exhibitor and projectionist, operating a home theater relying on physical (and, later, virtual) property that had once been illegal to own. The new viewer became a cinematic time traveler, one who bested a time-based art, controlling film by use of the ability to rewind, fast-forward, and pause. --- Note: The published version of this essay is available online at https://www.theprojectorjournal.com/hit-the-pause-button
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While at times exaggerated, these song lyrics nevertheless offer an opportunity to augment our understanding of the many similarities shared by American audiences in the period, ranging from widespread interest in emergent stardom to the use of the darkened auditorium as an appropriate location for romantic interludes. As a result, even while approaching these sources with appropriate caution, this paper stresses the need to rethink early film audiences, particularly in terms of de-fragmenting those viewers and emphasizing the traits they shared.
While I am sharing this online, it is crucial for any readers to understand that this is an uncorrected proof. Anyone wishing to cite this work should refer to a published copy.
Ackerman's anecdote draws attention to a particular type of screen accident, one in which actors whose characters become corpses are clearly still alive, the camera capturing obvious signs of life in the dead. With rare exceptions such as Janet Leigh's dead character Marion Crane in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), the obviously breathing corpse became a relatively common sight in the history of Hollywood cinema.
My paper examines how the living actor and deceased character interact, resulting in an unplanned, but not necessarily unexpected accident. Here is a particular type of double movement, of figuration and disfiguration, one in which the testimony of the actor's body tempers the testimony of the character's corpse. These accients mitigate the reality of the narrative and thus the emotional impact of the character's death, including the monstrous ways in which the character died.