Genre films essentially ask the audience, "Do you still want to believe
this?" Popularity is the audience answering, "Yes." Change in genres
occur when the audience says, "That's too infantile a form of what we
believe. Show us something more complicated."
LEO BRAUDY, The World in a Frame, 1977

There is general agreement among critics and scholars that the 1970s witnessed the regular production of genre films for the first time since the classical studio era (excepting the musicals and Westerns made during the 1950s).¹ The return to genre production grew out of the preoccupation of New Hollywood auteurs with film history and film form, and was underwritten by the studios as a form of risk reduction since genre films, like stars, were inherently "pre-sold" and easy to package. Influenced by the French New Wave, early Hollywood Renaissance directors...