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 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 7 reveals a flickering carnival of attractions and aberrations from 1925 to 1927, a period which saw worldwide releases including landmark horror films such as Phantom Of The Opera and The Magician; seminal dark-house mystery-thrillers including The Bat, The Gorilla and The Cat And The Canary; a new wave of ultra-violent samurai cinema from Japan; countless Hollywood-inspired stunt-action movies from India; Abel Gance's experimental epic Napoléon; and the first propaganda films from Weimar Germany's rising Nazi party. This volume references around 1,000 films from all countries and reproduces more than 300 rare photographic images, posters and illustrations, many newly unearthed from international film archives and never before published.
