Professor Ian Hunter

Job: Professor of Film Studies

Faculty: Technology

School/department: Leicester Media School

Research group(s): Cinema and Television History Centre (CATH)

Address: De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, UK, LE1 9BH

T: +44 (0)116 255 1551

E: iqhunter@dmu.ac.uk

W: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/cathi

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Personal profile

Film, British cinema, genre, exploitation, science fiction, horror, trash, Hammer, cult film, adaptations.

Publications and outputs

Caligula, History and the Erotic Imagination
Caligula, History and the Erotic Imagination Hunter, I. Q. A survey of the representation of Caligula in cinema and television.
Jaws: The Revenge and the Production of Failure
Jaws: The Revenge and the Production of Failure Hunter, I. Q. The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.
Nessie has risen from the grave
Nessie has risen from the grave Foster, Kieran; Hunter, I. Q. Hammer Films’ Nessie is the great lost British sea monster movie. Developed between 1976-1979, Nessie was Hammer’s most ambitious project, a multimillion dollar co-production with Japan’s Toho Studios that would have seen the Loch Ness Monster rampage across the world from the Scotland to the Canary Islands and Hong Kong harbour. The global scale of the films plot was mirrored off-screen, with Hammer, desperate for financial backing, entering into a number of ill fated distribution and finance deals before the production collapsed and Hammer itself went into receivership. This chapter offers a detailed pre-production history of Nessie, drawing on screenplays (by Christopher Wicking, Michael Carreras and Bryan Forbes), and day by day correspondence and financial records in the Hammer Archive at De Montfort University. It also considers the unmade film as a British ‘Jawsploitation’ movie and sets it in the context of both the Loch Ness Monster in film and TV (Secret of the Loch, ‘The Terror of the Zygons’, Loch Ness, The Water Horse) and the wider history of sea monsters in British cinema (The Giant Behemoth, Gorgo). Textual analysis of the screenplays shows how Nessie combines the elements of classic sea monster stories such as Moby Dick and Jaws with the tropes of British science fiction cinema, the disaster film, King Kong, and the ecological horror film. The chapter ends by arguing for the value of studying the ‘shadow cinema’ of unmade films. Nessie, with its production costs mooted at one point to be nearly $7 million, perhaps stands as one of the most ambitious monster movies never made, and the chronicling of its screenplay and tortuous production process not only gives us a glimpse of a project which could have potentially altered Hammer’s ailing fortunes, but also an opportunity to examine how a film seemingly too big to fail ultimately never made it in front of the camera.
Mess and Meta-Mess: Casino Royale (1967)
Mess and Meta-Mess: Casino Royale (1967) Hunter, I. Q. The black sheep among Bond films, the multi-auteured extravaganza Casino Royale was only one of many British spy films in the 1960s that spoofed the genre’s convoluted plots, boyish wish fulfilment and eroticisation of consumer capitalism. This chapter explores Casino Royale’s critically disastrous adaptation of Fleming’s novel in the context of Bond spoofs such as Carry On Spying (1964), The Intelligence Men (US title Spylarks, 1965), Licensed to Kill (1965), The Spy with the Cold Nose (1966), Modesty Blaise (1966), Hot Enough for June (1964), Sumuru (1967), Deadlier Than the Male (1967) and Zeta One (1969), and evaluates its camp satire of sixties modernism. Two key themes emerge, which Casino Royale shares with the other spoofs – the portrayal of espionage as an abstract game played more for its own sake than from ideological conviction; and, second, the changing representation of embattled English masculinity. Casino Royale and the other 1960s British spoofs are considered alongside later films, such as Licensed to Love and Kill (1969) and Johnny English (2003), and their American and continental European equivalents: the Matt Helm and Derek Flint films, Danger: Diabolik (1967), and the Austin Powers movies. The chapter ends with a consideration of Casino Royale’s recent emergence as a cult movie, not least for its Burt Bacharach soundtrack.
The Stanley Kubrick Archive: A Dossier of New Research: Introduction
The Stanley Kubrick Archive: A Dossier of New Research: Introduction Fenwick, James; Hunter, I. Q.; Pezzotta, Elisa An introduction to a co-edited Dossier of new research from The Stanley Kubrick Archive at University of Arts, London
The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History
The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History Hunter, I. Q.; Porter, Laraine; Smith, Justin Edited collection on British cinema history
Adaptation XXX
Adaptation XXX Hunter, I. Q.
Spielberg and adaptation
Spielberg and adaptation Hunter, I. Q.
Introduction: British Cinema History
Introduction: British Cinema History Hunter, I. Q.; Porter, Laraine; Smith, Justin Book chapter.
Cult and Adaptation
Cult and Adaptation Hunter, I. Q.

Click here for a full listing of Ian Hunter's publications and outputs.

Key research outputs

British Comedy Cinema, ed. I.Q. Hunter and Laraine Porter, London: Routledge, 2012.

British Trash Cinema, London: Palgrave BFI, 2013 (in press).

Science Fiction Across Media: Adaptation / Novelization, ed. Thomas Van Parys and I.Q. Hunter, London: Glyphi, 2012.

I.Q. Hunter, ed., British Science Fiction Cinema (London: Routledge, 1999)

'Exploitation as adaptation', Scope: An Online Journal of Film & TV Studies, 15 (November 2009) and eBook Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation, ed. Iain Robert Smith, pp. 8 - 33.

Research interests/expertise

British and American cinema; cult film; genre cinema; adaptations, horror, Hammer, trash cinema.

Areas of teaching

Film studies
Adaptation

Qualifications

DPhil, Oxford University 1991 The Films of Paul Schrader
BA Hons (First Class) English Language and Literature, Brasenose College, Oxford University 1985

Courses taught

FILM 3008: Cult Film
FILM 3010: Film Genres
ENGL: 3084: Literature on Screen

Membership of external committees

Steering Committee, Association of Adaptation Studies 2005 - 2010
Member of Advisory Group, International Association of Audience and Fan Studies (IAAFS)

Conference attendance

‘Doomwatch etc.: TV SF on film’, paper at Alien Nation: A Conference on British Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Television, Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 20 July 2011.

‘Lairy white worms’, invited keynote plenary paper, Romantic Adaptations: A Strawberry Hill Symposium, Two Day International Conference, St Mary’s University College, London, 26 March 2011.

‘Facing my Waterloo – Mamma Mia!’, Romcom Actually: A Two Day International Conference on Romantic Comedy in Film and Television, CATH Research Centre, De Montfort University, and the School of Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia, Cultural eXchanges, Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University, Leicester, 2 – 3 March 2011.

‘A Clockwork Orgy: a user’s guide’, Erotic Adaptations, Centre for Adaptations and Onscenity Research Network, Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University, Leicester, 26 January 2011.

‘Three ways not to remake a British cult film’, paper at Rewriting, Remixing and Reloading: Adaptations Across the Globe International Conference, Centre for British Studies, Berlin, 30 September 2010. Attendance funded by Association of Adaptation Studies.

‘Antony Balch at The Jacey and The Times’, paper at From Silent Screen to Digital Screen: A Century Exhibition, Two-Day Conference, De Montfort University and Phoenix Square, Leicester, 11 July 2010.

‘Secrets of Sex explained for you’, paper at Cine-Excess IV: The Fourth International Conference on Global Cult Film: Corporeal Excess: Cult Bodies, Brunel University, Odeon Covent Garden, 30 April 2010. Attendance funded by MFJ Research Committee.

‘Exposé and the horror of writing’, paper at The Writer on Film: Screening Literary Authorship, A One-Day International Conference, University of York, 25 March 2010. Attendance funded by Centre for Adaptations.

‘Night Hair Child’, paper at Children’s Film and Literature: A One Day Conference, Cultural eXchanges, Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University, 1 March 2010.

‘Erotic inferno: British sex films in the 1970s’, paper at Talking ‘Dirty’: Sex and the Cinema, Leeds Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds, 14 November 2009. Attendance funded by MFJ Research Committee.

‘From adaptation to cinephilia: an intertextual odyssey’, invited keynote plenary paper, Science Fiction Across Media: Adaptation / Novelisation, Faculty of Arts, K.U. Leuven, 28 May 2009. Attendance funded by University of Leuven.

‘A (Psychogeographical) Rough Guide to The Lost Continent’, paper at Third Annual Association of Literature on Screen Studies Conference, University of Amsterdam, 26 September 2008. Attendance funded by Association of Adaptation Studies.

‘Exploitation as adaptation: imitation, rip-off and parody in Jawsploitation films from Gums to Deep Blue Sea’, paper at Cine -Excess II: The Second International Conference on Global Cult Film Traditions, Brunel University, ICA, London 1 May 2008. Attendance funded by MFJ Research Committee.

‘Exploitation as adaptation: imitation, rip-off and parody in Jawsploitation films from Gums to Deep Blue Sea’, invited keynote plenary paper at Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking and Transformation, University of Nottingham, 19 March 2008. Attendance funded by University of Nottingham.

‘Sex Lives of the Potato Men and the decline of the British working class’, paper at Playing for Laughs: On Comedy in Performance Symposium, De Montfort University, Leicester, 10 February 2008.

Other forms of public presentation

Interviewed for Rex Appeal tx. BBC4 28 September 2011.

‘British sex films’, public talk at Fantasma: A One-Day Symposium on Fantastic Films, TIMECODE seminar series, National Media Museum, Bradford, 4 June 2010. Podcast: http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/31525768

Introduction and post-film Q&A at screening of A Clockwork Orange, From Page to Screen: Bridport’s Film Festival, Bridport Arts Centre, Bridport, 3 April 2010.

‘Cult film as a guide to life’, public lecture, Cultural eXchanges, Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University, 6 March 2009.

‘Intertextuality unleashed: in pursuit of Jaws from novel to videogame and beyond’, paper at Centre for Adaptations Research Seminar, Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University, 4 December 2008.

‘The Golden Age of cult films maudits’, invited research paper at Film Studies Seminar Series, School of Humanities, University of Southampton, 2 December 2008.

Panel member, Future of Adaptation Studies, Cultural eXchanges, Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University, 27 February 2008.

Convenor and paper, ‘Through a slash optic – or what my epic three-part journey through slash taught me about fandom, pornography and my own dumb ignorance’, Slash 3: The Final Cut, The 3rd and Last DMU Fanfiction Study Day, Cultural eXchanges, Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University, 25 February 2008.

Consultancy work

External Advisor for development of MRes programmes in Department of English and History, Edge Hill University, 2011 – 2012.

Consultant to the Dinosaur Gallery at the Natural History Museum, London, April 2011.

External panel member, validation of BA/BSc Film & Popular Culture, School of Communication, Culture and Creative Arts, St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, London, 7 September 2009.

Undergraduate Programme Assessor (Chief), BA (Hons) Media and Communication, Glasgow Caledonian University 2006 – 2010

Current research students

Eve Bennett, PhD (AHRC funded), 1st supervisor
Laura Mee, PhD (AHRC funded), 1st supervisor
Johnny Walker, PhD, 2nd supervisor
James Fenwick, MAIS, 1st supervisor
Trevor Edwards, MAIS, 1st supervisor

Externally funded research grants information

Onscenity: Sex, Commerce, Media and Technology Research Network, AHRC funded, 2010 – 12, on steering committee

Internally funded research project information

Included in Film Studies RIF bid, co-ordinated by Steve Chibnall, in 2008 – 9 that led to funding for Bloodlines conference in February 2010 and in 2009 – 10 that led to funding for Romcom Actually conference in March 2011.

Professional esteem indicators

Transgressive Culture (Glyphi), member of editorial board since 2010.

Book proposal reviewing for Routledge, Horror, 2010, Brigid Cherry

Book proposal reviewing for BFI/Palgrave, 100 Cult Films, Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik, forthcoming 2011, 100 SF Film, Barry Keith Grant, forthcoming 2011.

Case studies

Invitation to give talk on cult film at film festival in Brussels, March 2012.

Broadcast on Rex Appeal BBC4 programme on dinosaurs on film.

Consultant to Natural History Museum in 2011 re. copy on dinosaurs on film in Dinosaur Gallery.

Commissioned article on British science fiction film in Little White Lies.

Online reviews of booklet notes for Permissive.