I’m delighted to announce the publication of my book, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Film, by State University of New York Press. The book is currently available in electronic form, and the hardcover edition will be released on November 1.
This book wrangles with the numerous child villains who have haunted horror cinema over many decades, including Damien Thorn (The Omen), Regan MacNeil (The Exorcist), Samara (The Ring), and Rhoda Penmark (The Bad Seed), and the psychic terrors of Village of the Damned (pictured on the cover), among others. It interrogates in detail and with a variety of theoretical tools a cultural obsession with imagining children as objects of terror. In doing so, it highlights popular horror cinema as a vital topic of analysis, exposing it as a site of deep and volatile ambivalence toward children.
Available in print and digital form from the publisher, SUNY Press; Amazon; and others.
“This is impeccably well researched and presented. It holds its own at the top of film studies scholarship. Sprightly in its survey across key areas of cultural anxiety and able to draw on a range of lucid examples, Lennard produces sophisticated and complex extended analyses where necessary. A pleasure to read.” — Linda Ruth Williams, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
“Deftly organized, elegantly written, and graced throughout with numerous stills and frame blowups, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors has something to offer both the lay reader and the scholar.” — CHOICE
It's all done with mirrors 