Genre fans in search of some provocative summer reading would do well to check out Jason Zinoman's new hardcover tome Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror from Penguin Press.

By the mid 1960s, horror cinema found itself in a creaky state of affairs, relegated to drive-in theaters burdened by tired exploitation schlock.

It's from this vantage point that Shock Value begins. What interests Zinoman most, however, is a close examination of the modern horror movement which burst onto the scene beginning in the late '60s and which continued throughout the '70s.

This "New Horror" wave (inaugurated in part by Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby in 1968) was bolstered by an inventive style of filmmaking which conquered moviegoers' imaginations and shocked them in fresh and exciting (not to mention lucrative) ways. Old Horror mainstays like vampires and werewolves were replaced by serial killers, faceless boogeymen, and the real-life terrors of smalltown suburbia.

What drove a diverse group of directors to craft such classics as Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968), William Freidkin's The Exorcist (1973), Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), or Ridley Scott's Alien (1979)?

How did these Hollywood outsiders revitalize a then-sagging genre, while at the same time pioneering new templates which would be used -- and re-used -- for decades to come?

Shock Value answers much of the above.

And often, the real cream is in the anecdotes which dot its well-researched landscape. Betty Buckley pleads with Brian De Palma not to kill her character in the climactic prom scene in Carrie (1976) (sorry Betty, no such luck); working on Halloween (1978), John Carpenter recalls being inspired by the spectral figures in Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961); a young Tobe Hooper, filming a documentary for premed students, learns how the nasty throes of real-life death can become infinitely more powerful when viewed through the stoic eye of a camera lens.

A theater critic for The New York Times, Zinoman takes an invigorating walk on the dark side with Shock Value, serving up an authoritative look at the making of these modern gems, while at the same time casting a keen eye on the films' social impact and their enduring legacy.

Buoyed by unprecedented access to many of the major players, as well as a hearty cache of author interviews, Shock Value frequently includes behind-the-scenes accounts of the filmmaking process during the Golden Age of '70s horror. Sadly, it's an era which is unlikely to be duplicated.

For that reason alone, Shock Value is a must read for horror aficionados.