[Commlist] Cine-Excess Issue 6 published: Raising Hell: Demons, Darkness and the Abject

/Cine-Excess Journal, Issue 6/

(January 2025)

OUT NOW

*Raising Hell: Demons, Darkness and the Abject 
<https://bit.ly/cine-excess-issue-6>*

Edited by John Atkinson, Xavier Mendik & Daniel Sheppard

FEATURING…

*All-New Essay by Barbara Creed*

‘The Monstrous-Feminine: Radical Abjection and Transformation’

*Exclusive Interviews*

Doug Bradley (Pinhead, /Hellraiser/) & Nicolas Vince (Chatterer, 
/Hellraiser/)

*Foreword by Barbie Wilde*

Author & Star of /Hellbound: Hellraiser II/

//

AND…

*New Critical Perspectives*

/The Exorcist/, /The Omen/, /Hellraiser /& /Hellbound: Hellraiser II/, 
/Hocus Pocus /& /Hocus Pocus 2/, /Raw/, /Stree/, /The Hole in the 
Ground/, /Hatching/, /Barbarian/, /M3GAN/, and more…

/Cine-Excess/is delighted to launch the sixth issue of its FREE online 
(peer-reviewed) journal, *Raising Hell: Demons, Darkness and the Abject 
<https://bit.ly/cine-excess-issue-6>*, which promotes the latest 
cutting-edge research in horror and cult cinema studies. This issue was 
funded by BCU’s Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research and 
celebrates the insurmountable influence of feminist film theorist 
Barbara Creed, whose recent books /Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: 
Feminist New Wave Cinema /(2022) and /The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, 
Feminism, Psychoanalysis/, 2nd ed. (2023) crucially reassess the abject 
woman-as-monster she first coined in 1986. In celebration, we’re 
thrilled to feature an all-new essay by Creed, ‘The Monstrous-Feminine: 
Radical Abjection and Transformation,’ as well as the author’s interview 
with filmmaker Ursula Dabrowsky whose film /The Devil’s Work/ (2023) 
premiered at /Cine-Excess/ in 2023. Subsequent featured articles engage 
not only with Creed’s archetype of the monstrous-feminine, providing 
critical new insights into understudied texts, but interrogate Julia 
Kristeva’s very notion of abjection that Creed necessarily introduced to 
film studies. As this issue delves deep into the abject, 
/Hellraiser/—one of the horror genre’s most adorned film franchises that 
is truly abound in abject imagery—takes centre stage, as we feature 
exclusive video interviews with actors Doug Bradley and Nicolas Vince, 
and a foreword by Barbie Wilde.

*Table of Contents*

*Foreword*| Barbie Wilde

*Introduction*| John Atkinson, Xavier Mendik & Daniel Sheppard

*SECTION 1. Revisiting the Monstrous-Feminine*

**

The Monstrous-Feminine: Radical Abjection and Transformation | Barbara Creed

*SECTION 2. Research Articles*

Domestic AI is the New Monstrous-Feminine: Compulsory Roles for 
Robot-Girls and Mothers in /M3GAN/ (2023) | Joy C. Schaefer

You Are What You Eat: Vegetarianism and Cannibalism in Julia Ducornau’s 
/Raw/ (2016) | Iliana Cuellar

The Anti-Mother, /Barbarian/ and Contemporary Representations of the 
Monstrous-Feminine | Elinor Dolliver

/Hatching/’s ‘Radical Abjection’: Beyond Sex and Species in the Feminist 
New Wave | Lumi Etienne

Transforming the AIDS Monster: Tearing Apart the Human(e) in 
/Hellraiser/ and /Hellbound: Hellraiser II/ Through Gothic 
Becoming-Withs | Maximillan Breckwoldt

Abject Motherhood and the Open Wounds of (Eco)Trauma in Lee Cronin’s 
/The Hole in the Ground/ (2019) | Marine Galiné

A Restoration of the Symbolic Order? The Priest as Faux Father and the 
Threat of the Unruly Child in 1970s American Horror Cinema | Lakkaya Palmer

Redefining Consent and Gender Roles in Bollywood Romance: Promiscuity, 
Violence and the Monstrous-Feminine in /Stree/ | Rohini Chakraborty

‘The Witches are Back!’: Reframing the Witch and Abjection from /Hocus 
Pocus/ (1993) to /Hocus Pocus 2/ (2022) | Emily Smith

*SECTION 3. Supplementary Video Interviews*

**

/The Devil’s Work/(2023): Interview with Writer/Director Ursula 
Dabrowsky | Barbara Creed

/Hellraiser/(1987): Interview with Actor Doug Bradley | Paul McEvoy

/I Am Monsters!/(2023): Interview with Writer/Director Nicolas Vince | 
Xavier Mendik

**

*SECTION 4. Book Reviews and Festival Reports*

**

Heidi Honeycutt, /I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women 
Directing Horror Movies /(Oxford: Headpress, 2024) | Valeria Villegas 
Lindvall

Far East Film Festival: Udine, Italy (25 April – 2 June 2024) | 
Valentina Vitali

Barbara Creed, /The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis/, 
2nd ed. (London & New York, NY: Routledge, 2023) | Daniel Sheppard

**


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