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

By Cullen Wade

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1476698155
• ISBN13: 9781476698151
• Release Date: December 2025
• Publisher: McFarland & Company
• Length: 259 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.0" x 10.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up