Expanded from Phil Hardy, ed., with Tom Milne, Kim Newman, Julian Petley, Tim Pulleine, Paul Willemen. The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Horror. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1995. The authors see the trend of high-budget horror films in the wake of Rosemary's Baby, along with extremely low-budget schlock, but finding little qualitative difference, particularly in grisliness, apart from prestigious actors appearing in big-budgeters, and usually with shallow religious themes compared to a film like La Casa dalle Finestre che Ridono. They also find that it's the most conservative films, such as Más Alla del Terror, that have the most sensationalist and gruesome violence to fuel censorship lobbies. They note the influence of Hitchcock's Psycho but see his imitator William Castle as having more influence on Argento, as well as down-market ghoul films inspired by Romero, and consider the most original films to be rural gothics like The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
