S(p)Lasher Flicks

Who's afraid of a midnight swim? In this first-of-its-kind book, Cullen Wade dissects over 100 horror films, covering nine decades and four continents, in an engaging exploration of the swimming pool as a site of secrets, sexuality, and social segregation. Drawing from cultural history, aquatics research, and a variety of sociological critiques, this work confronts aquatic monsters, suburban aliens, queer vampires, death cults, and bloody vengeance. Wade unpacks the municipal pool's tension as a health and fitness space with a history of discrimination; the way residential pools create community but also police boundaries; and how the backyard pool connotes resentment and alienation as much as it does prosperity. Whether a horror fan, swimmer, aquaphobic, or a student of pop culture, readers will find the site of the swimming pool forever transformed by this analysis.