Temporal Dispersions of Disgust: Or, Reconceiving Genre Through Direct-to-Video Horror

Many scholars have noted that the US video rental boom of the mid-1980s led to a surge in horror production, yet few acknowledge that these features were not in fact films. Direct-to-video (DTV) horror movies like Breeders–The Sexual Invasion and Video Violence were not made for and never received theatrical release, yet they were repeatedly pilloried as failed films. Dispensing with the preconception that DTV movies would or should follow the same genre norms as films, this essay argues that DTV horror movies demonstrate their creators’ exploration and creation of a new medium. The conventions of 1980s DTV horror are not the same as those of contemporaneous US horror films, and contrasting them shows how genre helped DTV creators develop the automatisms of videotape and how DTV horror can help scholars identify the norms and logic of contemporary on-demand culture.