This is a highly original study that considers parallel issues in genres set four hundred years apart-revenge tragedies of the early seventeenth century and violent cinema of the last thirty years. It offers a series of provacative and original explorations of death and revenge, and gender and state politics. What happens when we connect The White Devil with Basic Instinct? The Changeling or Titus Andronicus with Straw Dogs? Doctor Faustus with Se7en? Taxi Driver or Robocop with The Spanish Tragedy? Appealing to both literature and film students and scholars, the book also reconsiders the high/popular culture divide and reflects on the enduring significance of the revenge motif in Western culture.