Dr Iain Robert Smith is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London.

His research interests include:

  • Transnational Cinemas post-1945
  • Film Adaptation and Remakes
  • Cult, Horror and Exploitation Cinemas
  • Movie Posters
  • The Global Popular

He was selected as an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker in 2018.

Contact him via email at iain.smith@kcl.ac.uk 

The Hollywood Meme

“Sharply argued and offering intriguing insights into the stranger realms of cultural appropriation, this book is a delight to read and an important intervention into popular genre studies and studies of transnational practices in world cinema.”

Professor Tim Bergfelder (University of Southampton)

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Global Cult Cinemas

“Through its ambitious curatorial framework and critical impulse to re-conceptualize transnationalism and decolonization with nuance and rigour, Global Cult Cinemas makes a crucial intervention that contests normative geopolitics of canonization in Anglophone film studies.”

Dr. Cüneyt Çakırlar (Nottingham Trent University)

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Transnational Film Remakes

“An excellent, historically and geographically wide-ranging collection of original work on the phenomenon of transnational film remakes and related socio-cultural issues. The editors and contributors succeed in drilling down deep in their insightful investigations of the complexities involved in these global cinematic acts of translation and relocation.”

Professor Catherine Grant (Birkbeck, University of London)
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Media Across Borders

“Media Across Borders provides a hugely welcome addition to debates about the globalisation and localisation of contemporary audiovisual culture. Its engaging, articulate and highly perceptive essays provide a series of thought provoking and timely interventions into some of the key features of the increasingly digitalised audiovisual landscape of the twenty first century.”

Professor Lucy Mazdon (University of Southampton)

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Books

Book Chapters

“Global/Local Folk Horror: Tumbbad (2018) and the Transnational Dynamics of Indian ‘Indie’ Horror Cinema,” Transnational Horror: Folklore, Genre, and Cultural Politics. Ed. Cüneyt Çakırlar. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2025. pp. 197-212.
“Go Goa Gone (2013): Bollywood undead,” The Undead in the 21st Century: A Companion. Ed. Simon Bacon. Lausanne: Peter Lang, 2022. pp. 37-43.
“Remakesploitation: Exploitation Film Remakes and the Transnational Giallo,” European Film Remakes. Eds. Eduard Cuelenaere, Gertjan Willems, Stijn Joye. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021. 
“What is Cult when it’s at Home? : Reframing Cult Cinema in Relation to Domestic Space,” Film and Domestic Space: Architectures, Representations, Dispositif. Eds. Miriam De Rosa and Stefano Baschiera. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. pp. 210-225
“Cult Cinema in the Digital Age,” Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema. Eds. Jamie Sexton and Ernest Mathijs. London: Routledge, 2019. pp. 233-243
“‘For the Dead Travel Fast’: The Transnational Afterlives of Dracula,” Transnational Film Remakes. Eds. Iain Robert Smith and Constantine Verevis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. pp.66-84
“Cowboys and Indians: Transnational Borrowings in the Indian Masala Western,” Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads: Studies in Relocation, Transition and Appropriation. Ed. Austin Fisher. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. pp.185-210
“Transnational Holmes: Theorizing the Global-Local Nexus through the Japanese Anime Sherlock Hound (1984),” Media Across Borders: Localising TV, Film and Video Games. Eds. Andrea Esser, Miguel Á. Bernal-Merino and Iain Robert Smith. London: Routledge, 2016. pp.36-52
“Tu Mera Superman: Globalization, Cultural Exchange and the Indian Superhero,” Superheroes on World Screens. Eds. Rayna Denison and Rachel Mizsei-Ward. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015. pp.113-131
“Batsploitation: Parodies, Fan Films and Remakes,” Many More Lives of the Batman. Eds. Roberta Pearson, William Uricchio, Will Brooker. London: BFI/Palgrave, 2015. pp. 107-119
“Memento in Mumbai: ‘A Few More Songs and a Lot More Ass Kicking’,” Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives. Eds. Roberta Pearson and Anthony N. Smith. London: Palgrave, 2015. pp. 108-121
“Oldboy goes to Bollywood: Zinda (2006) and the Transnational Appropriation of South Korean Extreme Cinema,” Korean Horror Cinema. Eds. Alison Peirse and Daniel Martin. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. pp. 187-198
“When Spiderman became Spiderbabe: Pornographic Appropriation and the Political Economy of the Soft-core Spoof Genre,” Peep Shows: Cult Film and the Cine-Erotic. Ed. Xavier Mendik. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. pp. 109-118
“You’re Really a Miniature Bond”: Weng Weng and the Transnational Dimensions of Cult Film Stardom,” Cult Film Stardom: Offbeat Attractions and Processes of Cultification. Eds. Kate Egan and Sarah Thomas. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. pp. 226-239

Review Essays and Columns

“Supernatural Hybridity: Cross-Cultural Borrowings in the 1980s Horror Cinema of Hong Kong and Taiwan”, Booklet essay for Blu-ray release of Ghouls Gone Wild (Oct 2026)

“Las mujeres panteras and the resurgence of Mexican popular cinema”, Booklet essay for Blu-ray release of The Panther Women (Mar 2024)

“Bollywood Adaptations of Agatha Christie,” Alluvium 5:4 (October 2016)

“Bollywood B-Movies: Cult Cosmopolitanism and the Reception of Indian Genre Cinema in the West,” Frames Cinema Journal 7 (December 2014)

“Collecting the Trash: The Cult of the Ephemeral Clip from VHS to YouTube,” FLOW 14:08 (Sept 2011)

“Bootleg Archives: Notes on BitTorrent Communities and Issues of Access” FLOW 14:02 (June 2011)

Section Editor: “Turkish Fantastic Cinema” and Entry on Karanlik Sular (1995) in the Directory of World Cinema: Turkey. Ed. Eylem Atakav. London: Intellect, 2012

“James Bond is my sworn brother: The 1960s Hong Kong ‘bangpian’ genre”, Booklet essay for Blu-ray release of Super Spies and Secret Lies (Nov 2024)

“Media,” The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, Volume 26, Issue 1, 1 September 2018, Pages 388–409

“Media,” The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, Volume 25, Issue 1, 1 October 2017, Pages 398–417

“Game of Thrones: Adaptation and Fidelity in an Age of Convergence,” Antenna: Responses to Media & Culture (April 2015)

“Sherlock Hound and the Transnational,” Alluvium 1:3 (August 2012)

“‘It’s a Very Curious English Thing’: Failed Pilots for American Remakes of British Television,” FLOW 14:05 (August 2011)

Entries on Django (1966) and Keoma (1976) in the Directory of World Cinema: Italy. Ed. Louis Bayman. London: Intellect, 2011.

Podcasts

Radio

Should Salman Rushdie Live and Let Die?

by Iain Smith | BBC The Essay

From Indian Superman to Batman in the Philippines

by Iain Smith | BBC Free Thinking

Turkish Star Wars

by Iain Smith | BBC Free Thinking

Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2018

by Iain Smith | BBC Free Thinking

Videos

Professional Distinctions

Co-Chair & Co-Founder of the SCMS Transnational Cinemas scholarly interest group (2012-2017)

Co-investigator on the AHRC-funded ‘Media Across Borders’ network (2012-2013)

Keynote/Plenary speaker at ‘India in Asia, Asia in India’ (Hong Kong, 2026), ‘Association of Adaptation Studies’ (Istanbul, 2025), ‘Media Mutations’ (Bologna, 2024), ‘Fear 2000’ (Sheffield, 2019), ‘Transcultural Adaptation’ (Dresden, 2018), and ‘Remaking European Cinema’ (Ghent, 2018).

Organiser of conferences on ‘DeWesternizing Horror Cinema’ (2022), ‘Turkish Film Remakes’ (2022), ‘TV in the Age of Transnationalisation’ (2015), ‘Media Across Borders’ (2012), ‘Cultural Borrowings’ (2008).

Co-organiser of the annual ‘To Be Continued’ symposium on seriality and adaptation (alongside Thomas Leitch, Constantine Verevis and Julie Grossman). 

Founder of the Remakesploitation Film Club (2016-) with regular screenings at The Cinema Museum, including a two-day festival of Turkish Film Remakes in April 2022. 

Lead on the ‘Restoring, Preserving and Exhibiting the Neglected Popular Cinema of Turkey’ research project.

Collaborated with Ed Glaser on a 2K restoration of the Turkish film Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (AKA Turkish Star Wars, 1982)

Member of the Editorial Board for the journals Literature/Film Quarterly (2024-) and Transnational Screens (formerly Transnational Cinemas) (2013-)

Member of the Editorial Board for the book series ‘Contemporary Cinema’ (Brill), ‘Asian Cinema and Screen’ (Brill) and ‘Global Exploitation Cinemas’ (Bloomsbury).

Senior Fellow of the HEA (2018-)