S(p)Lasher Flicks: The Swimming Pool in Horror Cinema

Who’s afraid of a midnight swim? This book dissects more than 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 sociological critiques, this work confronts aquatic monsters, suburban aliens, queer vampires, death cults, and bloody vengeance. The author dives into the tension of municipal pools as a health and fitness space with a history of discrimination; the roles of residential pools in community building and enforcing boundaries; and the mixed messages (resentment, alienation, prosperity) conveyed by backyard pools. Horror fans, swimmers, aquaphobics, students of pop culture, and others will find the site of the swimming pool forever transformed by this analysis.

Cullen Wade is a writer, musician, and high school teacher from Charlottesville, Virginia. His film writing has appeared in online outlets like Deaf Sparrow and Boy in a Box, and he has been a guest programmer and panelist at the Virginia Film Festival.