Historical Dictionary of Horror Cinema
Historical Dictionary of Horror Cinema
HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF
Horror cinema
HUTCHINGS
Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts, No. 25
Horror is one of the most enduring and controversial of all cinematic genres.
Horror films range from subtle and poetic to graphic and gory, but what links
them together is their ability to frighten, disturb, shock, provoke, delight, irri-
tate, and amuse audiences. Horror’s capacity to take the form of our evolving
fears and anxieties has ensured not only its notoriety but also its long-term
survival and international popularity. Above all, the audiences’ continuing
desire to experience new frights and ever more horrifying sights makes films
HISTORICAL
like The Exorcist, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Night of the Living
DICTIONARY
Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, Ringu, and The Shining so cap-
OF
tivating.
Horror cinema
This Historical Dictionary of Horror Cinema traces the development of the
genre from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. This is done
through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of
cross-referenced dictionary entries. The entries cover all major movie villains,
including Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, the vampire, the werewolf, the
mummy, the zombie, the ghost, and the serial killer; film directors, producers,
writers, actors, cinematographers, make-up artists, special-effects technicians,
and composers who have helped shape horror history; significant production
companies; major films that are milestones in the development of the horror
genre; and different national traditions in horror cinema—as well as popular
themes, formats, conventions, and cycles.
Historical Dictionary
of Horror Cinema
Peter Hutchings
Estover Road
Plymouth PL6 7PY
United Kingdom
Hutchings, Peter.
Historical dictionary of horror cinema / Peter Hutchings.
p. cm. — (Historical dictionaries of literature and the arts ; no. 25)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5585-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8108-5585-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Horror films—Dictionaries. I. Title
PN195.9.H6H836 2008
791.43'616403—dc22 2007043634
Contents
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Editor’s Foreword
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Jon Woronoff
Series Editor
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Reader’s Note
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Chronology
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turns out to be one of the most stylish of all 1930s Universal horrors.
In comparison, the independently produced Maniac is a low-budget
curiosity.
1935 Great Britain: The Mystery of the Mary Celeste, which stars
Bela Lugosi, comes from an early version of the Hammer company, a
later incarnation of which would become a leading horror specialist in
the 1950s. United States: This is a key year for the American horror
film with the release of James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, Karl Fre-
und’s Mad Love, and Tod Browning’s Mark of the Vampire. Other hor-
rors include The Black Room, The Crime of Dr. Crespi, The Raven, and
Werewolf of London.
1936 France: Julien Duvivier’s Le Golem (The Golem) is a rare
French horror production. Great Britain: Tod Slaughter stars in two
horror-themed melodramas, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke and Sweeney
Todd—The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, while Boris Karloff stars in
The Man Who Changed His Mind. United States: Dracula’s Daughter
is an impressive follow-up to the 1931 Dracula. Other horrors include
the mad scientist drama The Invisible Ray, Tod Browning’s The Devil-
Doll, Victor Halperin’s Revolt of the Zombies, and Michael Curtiz’s fi-
nal horror film, The Walking Dead.
1939 Great Britain: Tod Slaughter returns in The Face at the
Window, and Bela Lugosi stars in Dark Eyes of London. United
States: Bob Hope stars in a version of The Cat and the Canary that
increases the comedy element. The Hound of the Baskervilles inau-
gurates a series of occasionally horror-themed Sherlock Holmes sto-
ries that feature Basil Rathbone as the great detective. Charles
Laughton generates pathos as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre
Dame, while Boris Karloff is a mad scientist in The Man They Could
Not Hang. Universal’s Son of Frankenstein and Tower of London rep-
resent the company’s return to the horror genre after a three year
break.
1940 United States: The Mummy’s Hand starts a cycle of Mummy
films. A busy Boris Karloff stars in The Ape, Before I Hang, and Black
Friday, and Bela Lugosi stars in The Devil Bat. Bob Hope returns to
comedy-horror in Ghost Breakers, and Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre send
themselves up in You’ll Find Out.
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1941 United States: Lon Chaney Jr. becomes a horror star through
his role in The Wolf Man and also features in Man Made Monster.
Meanwhile, comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello make their com-
edy-horror debut with the haunted house spoof Hold That Ghost.
1942 France: Le loup des Malveneur (The Wolf of the Malveneurs) is
an unusual—for French cinema at least—horror-like production.
United States: Universal’s The Ghost of Frankenstein and The
Mummy’s Tomb demonstrate the studio’s commitment to the production
of sequels. By contrast, producer Val Lewton, who is based at RKO, of-
fers a more middlebrow version of horror in Cat People. Other horror-
themed entertainments include the comedies The Boogie Man Will Get
You and I Married a Witch, as well as the innovative werewolf film The
Undying Monster.
1943 Denmark: Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vredens dag (Day of Wrath) is
a somber tale of witchcraft. France: La main du diable (The Devil’s
Hand) is a stylish version of the Faustian pact. United States: Universal
continues sequel production with Son of Dracula and Frankenstein Meets
the Wolf Man, the first of its multiple monster films. More tasteful is the
studio’s production of The Phantom of the Opera. More ludicrous is Cap-
tive Wild Woman, in which a mad scientist turns an ape into a woman. Val
Lewton develops his artful strain of horror with The Ghost Ship, I Walked
with a Zombie, The Leopard Man, and The Seventh Victim.
1944 United States: More sequels appear from Universal, namely
House of Frankenstein, The Mummy’s Ghost and The Mummy’s Curse.
Val Lewton makes a more upmarket sequel in the form of The Curse of
the Cat People. Bela Lugosi plays a Dracula-like vampire in The Return
of the Vampire, while the Sherlock Holmes films The Pearl of Death,
The Scarlet Claw, and Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman all con-
tain horror-related material. Other horrors include The Climax and the
ghost story The Uninvited.
1945 Great Britain: Ealing Studios produces one of the great
horror anthologies, Dead of Night. United States: Universal’s House of
Dracula is the last of its non-comedy multiple monster films. At RKO,
Val Lewton produces the period drama The Body Snatcher and the styl-
ish but morbid Isle of the Dead. Albert Lewin directs a similarly up-
market adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Robert
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Siodmak directs the stylish serial killer drama The Spiral Staircase.
More prosaically, Sherlock Holmes and the House of Fear is another
horror-themed adventure for the great detective.
1946 Great Britain: The indefatigable Tod Slaughter performs in an-
other overheated horror melodrama, The Curse of the Wraydons, while
Vernon Sewell directs Latin Quarter, a stylish tale of artistic insanity.
United States: Insanity is the theme in Robert Florey’s The Beast with
Five Fingers and Val Lewton’s final horror film, Bedlam. She-Wolf of
London turns out to be a whodunnit rather than a werewolf film.
1948 Great Britain: Tod Slaughter is back in The Greed of William
Hart, an everyday tale of body snatching. United States: Abbott and
Costello Meet Frankenstein is the first and best of a series of comedies
in which the duo encounter classic monsters, in this case, Frankenstein’s
monster, Dracula and the Wolf Man (although, oddly, not Frankenstein).
1951 Great Britain: The “X” certificate—denoting films for adults
only—is introduced. United States: Howard Hawks’ production of The
Thing From Another World successfully combines science fiction con-
ventions with horror material. Many other films of its type are subse-
quently made during the 1950s, although few are as distinguished.
1952 Great Britain: Bela Lugosi shows how far his career has fallen
from grace by appearing in the low-budget comedy-horror Old Mother
Riley Meets the Vampire. United States: Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney
return to horror in the unimpressive The Black Castle.
1953 United States: Vincent Price stars in House of Wax, a color
remake of Michael Curtiz’s 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum. More
alien monsters feature in Invaders from Mars and It Came From
Outer Space.
1954 France: Henri-Georges Clouzot’s psychological thriller Les di-
aboliques is released. It will be an inspiration for many later horror
filmmakers. United States: Jack Arnold’s Creature From The Black La-
goon and Gordon Douglas’s Them! are horror-like monster movies.
1955 Great Britain: The science fiction/horror film The Quatermass
Xperiment (The Creeping Unknown) is the first major success for a
small company by the name of Hammer.
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1956 Great Britain: Hammer follows up its success with The Quater-
mass Xperiment by releasing another SF/horror, X The Unknown. Italy:
Riccardo Freda’s I vampiri (The Devil’s Commandment) is the first Ital-
ian horror film. It is not commercially successful. United States: Horror-
themed science fiction production continues with Invasion of the Body
Snatchers and It Conquered the World, while The Bad Seed is an early ex-
ample of the “monstrous child” film. The Undead is Roger Corman’s first
gothic-themed film. Bela Lugosi dies on 16 August.
1957 Great Britain: The Curse of Frankenstein is Hammer’s first
color gothic horror and is directed by Terence Fisher, who will be re-
sponsible for many of the later Hammer horrors. The film stars Peter
Cushing as Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the creature and is a
substantial commercial success. Hammer also releases the alien inva-
sion fantasy Quatermass 2 (Enemy from Space). Cat Girl and Night of
the Demon (Curse of the Demon) are impressive contemporary-set su-
pernatural thrillers. Mexico: La momia Azteca (Attack of the Aztec
Mummy), El Vampiro (The Vampire), and El Ataud del Vampiro (The
Vampire’s Coffin), among others, signal the beginning of a new Mexi-
can horror cycle. United States: SF/horror films include The Monster
that Challenged the World and two films from Roger Corman, Attack of
the Crab Monsters and Not of This Earth. A new emphasis on teenage
horror is apparent in Blood of Dracula, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein,
and I Was a Teenage Werewolf. American serial killer Ed Gein is ar-
rested in Wisconsin; he will subsequently become an inspiration for
such horrors as Psycho (1960), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974),
and The Silence of the Lambs (1991), to name but a few.
1958 Argentina: The television horror show Obras maestras de ter-
ror (Masterworks of Horror) is a popular success and runs until 1960.
Great Britain: Hammer consolidates its position as a horror market
leader with Dracula (Horror of Dracula), which stars Christopher Lee
as the vampire; it also releases The Revenge of Frankenstein. Other
British horrors include Blood of the Vampire, Corridors of Blood, Grip
of the Strangler, and The Trollenberg Terror. United States: Teenage
horrors include the self-reflexive How to Make a Monster along with
Monster on the Campus, The Return of Dracula, and Teenage Monster.
Vincent Price stars in The Fly, and producer-director William Castle
makes his horror debut with Macabre. The SF/horror It! The Terror
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of the Edgar Allan Poe adaptation House of Usher, which stars Vincent
Price and which leads to a cycle of further Poe films. Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho is an influential serial killer drama. By contrast, William Castle’s
13 Ghosts offers more gimmicks and a silly story.
1961 Germany: Die Toten Augen von London (The Dead Eyes of
London) is one of the best of the horror-themed Edgar Wallace films.
Great Britain: Hammer releases what will be its only werewolf film,
The Curse of the Werewolf, and also begins a cycle of Psycho-like
thrillers with Taste of Fear (Scream of Fear). In contrast, Jack Clayton
directs The Innocents, a classy adaptation of Henry James’s ghost story
The Turn of the Screw. Italy: Mario Bava’s Ercole al centro della terra
(Hercules in the Haunted World) is one of several musclemen movies
that incorporate horror imagery. Mexico: Santo contra los zombies
(Santo vs. the Zombies) is the first of many films in which masked
wrestlers take on horror monsters, including vampires, werewolves and
Frankenstein’s monster. United States: Roger Corman’s second Poe
film is Pit and the Pendulum, which stars Vincent Price and Barbara
Steele. William Castle maintains the jokier tradition in American horror
with Homicidal and Mr. Sardonicus.
1962 Germany: The horror-themed Edgar Wallace cycle continues
with Das Rätsel der roten Orchidee (The Secret of the Red Orchid) and
Die Tür mit den 7 Schlössern (The Door with Seven Locks). Great
Britain: The commercial failure of Hammer’s The Phantom of the
Opera temporarily slows down the company’s gothic horror cycle.
From elsewhere, Night of the Eagle (Burn, Witch, Burn!) is a superior
witchcraft film. Italy: Riccardo Freda’s morbid L’orribile segreto del
Dr. Hichcock (The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, The Terrible Secret of Dr.
Hichcock) is one of Barbara Steele’s best films. Meanwhile, Mario
Bava directs what is often considered to be the first giallo-style psy-
chological horror, La ragazza che sapeva troppo (The Girl Who Knew
Too Much, The Evil Eye). Spain: Jesus Franco introduces horror into
Spain with the gory surgery-based drama Gritos en la noche (The Aw-
ful Dr. Orloff), although full-scale Spanish horror production does not
commence until later in the 1960s. United States: Roger Corman adds
The Premature Burial and Tales of Terror to the Poe cycle, while the
idiosyncratic Carnival of Souls is a ghost story with a final plot twist
that will later be re-used by numerous other ghost stories. Bette Davis
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Two Thousand Maniacs, and Robert Aldrich and William Castle more
grand guignol in, respectively, Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte and
Strait-Jacket. Ray Steckler’s strikingly titled cult horror The Incredibly
Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies
is also released.
1965 Great Britain: Hammer releases two of its best horror-themed
psychological thrillers in Fanatic (Die! Die! My Darling!) and The
Nanny. Christopher Lee stars as Fu Manchu in The Face of Fu Manchu,
the first of a series. Amicus’s The Skull is a superior contemporary-set
horror, while Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, the director’s first English-
language film, is a clinical and disturbing study of insanity. On a more
escapist note, Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper for the first time
in A Study in Terror. Italy: Mario Bava’s SF/horror Terrore nello spazio
(Planet of the Vampires) will be yet another influence on Ridley Scott’s
1979 film Alien.
1966 Great Britain: Dracula—Prince of Darkness, The Plague of the
Zombies, and The Reptile are three of Hammer’s best period horrors;
other Hammer releases include Rasputin: The Mad Monk and The
Witches. The Amicus psychological thriller The Psychopath revisits
some of the themes from Psycho. Italy: Mario Bava’s Operazione
paura (Kill, Baby…Kill!) is an impressive ghost story, while the young
British director Michael Reeves makes his debut with La sorella di sa-
tana (Revenge of the Blood Beast, The She Beast). Spain: The televi-
sion horror series Historias para no dormir (Stories to Keep You Awake)
is a popular success and runs until 1968. United States: Dan Curtis’s
daytime television soap Dark Shadows incorporates horror characters;
it runs until 1971. In cinema, Billy the Kid versus Dracula provides one
of the genre’s sillier titles.
1967 Great Britain: It is another impressive year for Hammer pe-
riod horror with Frankenstein Created Woman and the SF/horror
Quatermass and the Pit (Five Million Years to Earth), although The
Mummy’s Shroud is less successful. Roman Polanski’s Dance of the
Vampires (The Fearless Vampire Killers) is a stylish, and in places dis-
turbing, comedy-horror, while Carry on Screaming offers more vulgar
horror-themed laughs. Michael Reeves builds on the promise shown in
his first film with the London-set The Sorcerers, and Torture Garden is
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1972 Great Britain: The cannibalism film Death Line (Raw Meat)
imaginatively combines British and American horror themes. Hammer
brings Dracula to contemporary London in Dracula AD 1972 and offers
a critique of the family in Demons of the Mind, while Amicus comes up
with two quality horror anthologies, Asylum and Tales from the Crypt.
Italy: Mario Bava, now nearly at the end of his career, directs two im-
pressive horrors, Gli orrori del castello di Nuremberg (Baron Blood)
and Lisa e il diavolo (Lisa and the Devil), and Lucio Fulci, who is rel-
atively new to the genre, is responsible for the innovative rural giallo
Non si sevizia un paperino (Don’t Torture a Duckling). Spain: Jacinto
Molina plays a hunchback in one of his best known films, El jorobado
de la morgue (Hunchback of the Morgue), while genre specialist León
Klimovsky directs the atmospheric La orgía nocturna de los vampiros
(Vampire’s Night Orgy). Also released is La novia ensangrentada (The
Blood-Spattered Bride), seen by some critics as a powerful critique of
machismo values. United States: Wes Craven makes his horror debut
with the disturbing rape-revenge drama The Last House on the Left.
More somber horror is provided by The Other and The Possession of
Joel Delaney. Frogs is a relatively serious revenge of nature horror
while Night of the Lepus—about giant rabbits—is a silly one. John
Boorman’s Deliverance is also released; it is not a horror film as such
but it provides a template for later rural horrors. Slightly more light-
hearted are the blaxploitation production Blacula and the zombie film
Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things. Meanwhile, the vampire
story The Night Stalker receives the highest ever ratings for a television
film.
1973 Germany: Ulli Lommel’s Die zärtlichkeit der Wölfe (The Ten-
derness of Wolves) is a disturbing serial killer film that refers back to
Fritz Lang’s M (1931). Great Britain: The period horror cycle is wind-
ing down, although And Now the Screaming Starts! and The Creeping
Flesh are creditable late entries. Amicus offers its two final horror an-
thologies From Beyond the Grave and The Vault of Horror, Hammer
concludes its Dracula cycle with The Satanic Rites of Dracula, and
British horror sends up its established formats in Horror Hospital and
Theater of Blood. New approaches are also emerging. The ghost story
Don’t Look Now, the pagan-themed thriller The Wicker Man and the de-
monic haunted house drama The Legend of Hell House all suggest new
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ways forward for the British version of the genre. Italy: Former Andy
Warhol-collaborator Paul Morrissey camps up the Frankenstein story in
Flesh for Frankenstein. Spain: The eerie psychological thriller La cam-
pana del infierno (The Bell from Hell) and the period horror Pánico en
el Transiberiano (Horror Express) are impressive contributions to Eu-
ropean horror. United States: The main event is the release of the phe-
nomenally successful The Exorcist. Other interesting work is done by
George Romero (The Crazies) and Brian De Palma (Sisters). Blax-
ploitation horror continues with Blackenstein, Ganja & Hess and
Scream, Blacula, Scream, and John Landis makes his directorial debut
with Schlock. Television provides revisionary versions of classic movie
monsters in Dracula and Frankenstein: The True Story. Lon Chaney Jr.
dies on 12 July.
1974 Australia: Peter Weir incorporates American horror themes into
an Australian landscape in The Cars That Ate Paris. Canada: Bob Clark
directs the proto-slasher film Black Christmas. Great Britain: Ham-
mer’s period horror cycle finally comes to an end with Captain Kronos
—Vampire Hunter, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (which is
also Terence Fisher’s final film) and the kung fu horror The Legend of
the Seven Golden Vampires. Pete Walker’s nihilistic House of Whipcord
and Frightmare and José Larraz’s sensual Vampyres offer a type of hor-
ror more in keeping with the times. Italy: Paul Morrissey follows up
Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) with the equally over-the-top Blood for
Dracula. L’anticristo (The Antichrist) and Chi sei (Beyond the Door,
The Devil Within Her) are the first of many attempts to cash in on the
success of The Exorcist (1973). Spain: Non si deve profanare il sonno
dei morti (The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue) is a striking and
gruesome zombie film, shot largely in Britain. United States: Larry
Cohen’s It’s Alive! and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
engage with the family horror theme. Deranged is a gory, thinly fic-
tionalized account of Ed Gein, Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Par-
adise is a more playful treatment of horror material, while Abby and
Sugar Hill are blaxploitation projects. Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein
is an affectionate, and very funny, tribute to classic horror of the 1930s.
1975 Canada: David Cronenberg makes his horror debut with The
Parasite Murders (They Came From Within, Shivers). Great Britain: By
this stage the kind of period horror offered by Legend of the Werewolf
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1976 Great Britain: Hammer releases its last horror film (to date at
least), To the Devil a Daughter. Also released are Norman J. Warren’s
Satan’s Slave and Pete Walker’s Schizo. Italy: Pupi Avati’s La casa
dalle finestre che ridono (The House of the Laughing Windows) is one
of the more unusual giallo films. United States: The key horror films
are Brian De Palma’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie and the apoc-
alyptic thriller The Omen; both are substantial successes. Less spectac-
ular but in their own more modest ways intelligent and worthwhile are
Burnt Offerings, Communion (Alice Sweet Alice), God Told Me To (De-
mon), and Squirm.
CHRONOLOGY • xxvii
Harrington’s Ruby is also a modest but effective ghost story. Day of the
Animals and The Sentinel are more conventional.
1978 Australia: A mini-cycle of Australian horror continues with the
revenge-of-nature drama The Long Weekend and the telekinesis thriller
Patrick. United States: George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead redefines
the cinematic zombie and John Carpenter’s Halloween inaugurates the
slasher cycle (as well as making a star out of Jamie Lee Curtis). There
is a thoughtful remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and good
sequels to both It’s Alive (1974) and The Omen (1976). Joe Dante makes
his horror debut with Piranha. The low-budget rape-revenge drama I
Spit On Your Grave is not much noticed at the time but it will become
notorious later as part of the British Video Nasties scare of the early
1980s.
1979 Canada: David Cronenberg creates a horror version of Kramer
versus Kramer with The Brood. Germany: Werner Herzog remakes the
1922 Nosferatu as Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Nosferatu the
Vampyre). Great Britain: Bob Clark turns the Jack the Ripper story
into a political conspiracy and throws in Sherlock Holmes for good
measure in Murder by Decree. Italy: Lucio Fulci directs Zombi 2 (Zom-
bie Flesheaters), an unauthorized follow-up to George Romero’s Dawn
of the Dead (1978). Numerous gory zombie films will follow. United
States: More revisionary vampires feature in Dracula, which stars
Frank Langella as the Count, Love at First Bite and Tobe Hooper’s tel-
evision production of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. The Amityville Hor-
ror is a successful haunted house story, Alien combines horror with sci-
ence fiction, Phantasm is a cult oddity, and When a Stranger Calls is an
early example of urban legend horror.
1980 Great Britain: Hammer, now under new management, produces
the television horror series Hammer House of Horror. Italy: Graphic
nastiness of the zombie and cannibal kind features in Apocalypse do-
mani (Cannibal Apocalypse), Cannibal Holocaust, and Incubo sulla
città contaminata (Nightmare City). Lucio Fulci’s Paura nella città dei
morti viventi (City of the Living Dead) is just as gory but considerably
more stylish. In Inferno, Dario Argento offers a sequel of sorts to Sus-
piria (1977). Lamberto Bava, son of Mario, makes his directorial debut
with the atmospheric psychological thriller Macabro (Macabre).
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United States: Friday the 13th is critically disliked but very popular
with teenage audiences; it inaugurates one of the major horror fran-
chises of the 1980s. Other slashers include the Jamie Lee Curtis vehi-
cles Prom Night and Terror Train. These, along with Brian De Palma’s
self-consciously Hitchcockian thriller Dressed to Kill, inspire a public
debate about violence against women in film. John Carpenter’s The Fog
is an atmospheric ghost story, while Stanley Kubrick’s monumental The
Shining confuses many on its initial release but has since come to be
considered by many as one of the greatest of all horror films.
1981 Canada: David Cronenberg’s Scanners turns out to be a more
audience-friendly affair than his previous grimmer work in the genre.
Italy: L’aldilà (The Beyond) and Quella villa accanto al cimitero (The
House by the Cemetery) are key films from Lucio Fulci, combining
gore with an intensely dream-like atmosphere. United States: John
Landis’s An American Werewolf in London and Joe Dante’s The Howl-
ing reinvent the cinematic werewolf and together represent a significant
step forward in special effects technology. Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead
joins gory horror with slapstick, while sequels to Friday the 13th (1980)
and Halloween (1978), along with Hell Night, keep the slasher cycle
going. The Final Conflict, the third entry in the Omen cycle, is also re-
leased, as are interesting films from Tobe Hooper (The Funhouse) and
Wes Craven (Deadly Blessing).
1982 Italy: Dario Argento directs Tenebre (Tenebrae), considered by
some to be one of the greatest of all giallo films. United States: John
Carpenter’s impressive The Thing is not a commercial success, although
it later becomes a cult classic. Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist is more popu-
lar. Paul Schrader remakes the 1942 version of Cat People and George
Romero directs Stephen King’s comic-influenced Creepshow, and there
are more sequels to Friday the 13th and Halloween, along with other
slashers, including The House on Sorority Row and The Slumber Party
Massacre. In defiance of market trends, Larry Cohen makes the eccen-
tric Q—the Winged Serpent.
1983 Canada: David Cronenberg directs Videodrome, one of his
more challenging and obscure films. Great Britain: Pete Walker, mas-
ter of grim British horror, directs his last film, the surprisingly gentle
and nostalgic House of the Long Shadows, which features horror icons
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1993 Mexico: Guillermo del Toro makes his directorial debut with
Cronos, an innovative vampire film. United States: Two more Stephen
King adaptations appear, Needful Things and George Romero’s The
Dark Half. Tim Burton produces the horror-themed animation The
Nightmare Before Christmas. The horror-influenced television series
The X Files begins; it runs until 2002 and also generates a cinema film.
Vincent Price dies on 25 October.
1994 Great Britain: Peter Cushing dies on 11 August. Italy: Michele
Soavi directs his best film, the zombie drama Dellamorte dellamore
(Cemetery Man). United States: Big-budget horror includes Neil Jor-
dan’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, a version
of Frankenstein starring Robert De Niro as the Monster, and the Jack
Nicholson werewolf drama Wolf. Ed Wood is Tim Burton’s tribute to the
film director and features an Academy Award-winning performance
from Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi. Wes Craven returns to the Night-
mare on Elm Street cycle with the intensely self-reflexive New Night-
mare. The Crow’s offering of morbid gothic is underlined by the acci-
dental death of its star, Brandon Lee, during filming.
1995 Spain: El día de la bestia (Day of the Beast) is a stylish horror
from a national cinema that has produced little horror since the 1970s.
United States: Dark serial killer films prove popular with the release of
Copycat and Seven. In the Mouth of Madness and Vampire in Brooklyn
are the latest from, respectively, John Carpenter and Wes Craven. Dracula
—Dead and Loving It is a crude Mel Brooks spoof that seeks to recap-
ture the glory of Young Frankenstein (1974), while Species combines
science fiction and horror in Alien-style.
1996 Spain: Alejandro Amenabar’s Tesis, which deals with snuff
movies, is an impressive feature debut. United States: Peter Jackson
comes to Hollywood to make the comedy-horror The Frighteners,
Robert Rodriguez combines crime and horror effectively in From Dusk
Till Dawn, Mary Reilly is an upmarket revision of the Jekyll and Hyde
story, and John Frankenheimer provides an eccentric version of The Is-
land of Dr. Moreau that stars Marlon Brando in the title role. However,
the main horror film of note is Wes Craven’s Scream, which cleverly
combines slasher conventions with generic in-jokes. Sequels and other
teenage horror films wanting to cash in on its success inevitably follow.
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xxxii • CHRONOLOGY
1997 United States: I Know What You Did Last Summer is an effec-
tive Scream-like film, while Wes Craven directs Scream 2. Guillermo
del Toro makes his American debut with Mimic, a giant insect story.
Alien: Resurrection is the final (to date) film in the Alien cycle (al-
though AVP: Alien versus Predator shows up in 2004). The horror-
themed television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer begins; it runs until
2003 and also generates a spin-off series, Angel.
1998 Japan: Hideo Nakata’s Ringu is a breakthrough international
success for Japanese horror; it will lead to sequels and remakes and en-
courage the development of a broader East Asian horror cinema. United
States: A preoccupation with horror’s past becomes apparent. Black
horror is triumphantly revived with the urban vampire drama Blade,
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later is a clever sequel that brings Jamie Lee
Curtis back to the cycle, and Gods and Monsters is a fine biopic deal-
ing with James Whale, director of the 1931 Frankenstein. More eccen-
tric is Gus van Sant’s remake of Psycho. The Last Broadcast, a mock
documentary about a folk legend, is little noticed at the time, although
it does seem to anticipate themes more successfully addressed by the
following year’s Blair Witch Project. Other Scream-like horrors include
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend.
1999 Japan: The development of Japanese horror continues with
Ringu 2 and Takashi Miike’s shocking, torture-based Ôdishon (Audi-
tion). Korea: The release of The Ring Virus, a version of the Ringu
story, along with the evocative ghost story Yeogo goedam II (Memento
Mori) highlight the development of a distinctive North Korean horror
cinema. United States: Two supernatural dramas capture the public at-
tention. The mock documentary The Blair Witch Project makes highly
effective use of internet marketing, while The Sixth Sense offers the
chills of an old-fashioned ghost story topped by a much-discussed plot
twist. Other ghost stories—including remakes of House on Haunted
Hill (1959) and The Haunting (1963)—are less impressive. Arnold
Schwarzenegger takes on the Devil in the millennial End of Days,
Stephen Sommers directs the action-horror The Mummy, Antonia Bird
is responsible for the cannibalism horror-western Ravenous, and Tim
Burton’s Sleepy Hollow is a handsome period horror. Roman Polanski’s
Spanish-French-American production The Ninth Gate offers an alto-
gether more idiosyncratic take on horror themes.
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CHRONOLOGY • xxxiii
2000 France: Promenons-nous dans les bois (Deep in the Woods) and
the serial killer drama Les rivières pourpres (The Crimson Rivers) of-
fer a distinctively French take on horror conventions. Germany: The
surgical horror Anatomie does something similar for Germany, cleverly
relating its narrative to German history. United States: Wes Craven
concludes the Scream trilogy, Scary Movie sends up the Scream films,
and Cherry Falls and Final Destination demonstrate that there is still
life in the teenage horror formula. Robert Zemeckis’s What Lies Be-
neath is an intelligent big budget ghost story, Lost Souls a noisy mil-
lennial thriller, and Ed Gein a disturbing account of the real-life serial
killer who inspired several horror films. The international co-production
Shadow of the Vampire deals with the production of the 1922 Nosferatu
and speculates that the actor who played the vampire was actually a
vampire.
2001 France: Le pacte des loups (The Brotherhood of the Wolf) suc-
cessfully combines horror elements with period drama, while Trouble
Every Day is an artier exploration of the cannibalism theme. Great
Britain: The Second World War supernatural drama The Bunker is an
early sign of a revival of the British horror film. Spain: The Fantastic
Factory company is established to produce English-language horror
films in Spain. Early examples of its products are Dagon and Faust.
Guillermo del Toro directs the ghost story El espinazo del diablo (The
Devil’s Backbone). Tuno negro is a distinctly Spanish version of the
Scream films. United States: Jack the Ripper returns in From Hell,
Hannibal Lecter returns in Hannibal, and Friday the 13th killer Jason is
sent into outer space in Jason X, which, as the title suggests, is the tenth
film in the cycle. Alejandro Amenabar’s international production The
Others is a worthy addition to the fast developing ghost story cycle,
while Jeepers Creepers is an inventive monster movie.
2002 China: The Hong Kong-Singapore production Gin gwai (The
Eye) is another international success for East Asian horror. Great
Britain: The release of First World War horror Deathwatch, werewolf
drama Dog Soldiers, the psychological thriller My Little Eye, the apoc-
alyptic thriller 28 Days Later and the international co-production Resi-
dent Evil confirm the renaissance of the British horror film. Japan:
Hideo Nakata’s Honogurai mizu no soko kara (Dark Water) is another
successful example of East Asian horror. United States: The influence
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xxxiv • CHRONOLOGY
of East Asian horror is felt, both in the American remake The Ring and
in the Japan-style internet horror FeardotCom. Hannibal Lecter returns
for the remake Red Dragon, the comedy-horror Scooby Doo gets a live-
action makeover, and the gruesome low budget Cabin Fever suggests
that a new toughness has entered American horror. By contrast, Bubba
Ho-tep is an enjoyably eccentric affair in which Elvis Presley takes on
a mummy.
2003 France: Alexandre Aja directs Haute tension (High Tension,
Switchblade Romance), a slasher that manages to be stylish, gory and
iconoclastic. Japan: Ju-On: The Grudge is the latest international suc-
cess to come from Japanese horror. United States: Freddy vs. Jason is
the latest in the Friday the 13th and Halloween cycles. Rock musician
Rob Zombie makes his directorial debut with the 1970s-style horror
House of 1000 Corpses; more references to the 1970s crop up in the re-
make of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and the rural horror
Wrong Turn.
2004 France: Calvaire (The Ordeal) is an effective rural horror.
Great Britain: The revival of British horror continues with the London
Underground-based Creep. Korea: The North Korean production
R-Point combines an evocative ghost story with an account of Korean
involvement in the Vietnam war. United States: George Romero’s 1978
production of Dawn of the Dead is remade, and there is a prequel to
The Exorcist in Exorcist: The Beginning and a remake of the Japanese
Ju-on: The Grudge. The horror musical The Phantom of the Opera and
the action blockbuster Van Helsing also revive old horror conventions.
More original is M. Night Shyamalan’s rural horror The Village.
2005 Australia: Wolf Creek is Australia’s disturbing contribution to
the new emphasis on torture in horror cinema. Great Britain: The sub-
terranean horror The Descent and the animated horror The Curse of the
Were-Rabbit, each in its own way, testify to the new vitality of British
horror. United States: The Devil’s Rejects and Hostel are America’s
contribution to the new “nasty” horror. George Romero makes a fourth
zombie film, Land of the Dead, and Tim Burton returns to animated
horror with Corpse Bride. Remakes include Dark Water (from the
Japanese original) and The Fog (from John Carpenter’s original). Doom
is a computer-game adaptation while Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
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CHRONOLOGY • xxxv
The Dictionary
–A–
1
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2 • AJA, ALEXANDRE
Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953), and Abbott and
Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). See also AMERICAN HORROR.
ALIEN • 3
look not just into the American horror film but into mainstream cin-
ema in general.
4 • AMENABAR, ALEJANDRO
AMERICAN HORROR • 5
6 • AMERICAN HORROR
AMERICAN HORROR • 7
8 • AMERICAN HORROR
The closer one gets to the present, the more obviously varied and
fractured American horror production becomes. One can detect
trends and mini-cycles but there is always something else going on
elsewhere, whether this be an isolated but interesting project or some
innovative work that will possibly lead to another mini-cycle of
films. American horror has been like this since the 1930s, and any at-
tempt to periodize or categorize it too neatly risks losing a sense of
the variety that has made it such a distinctive and important sector of
the genre.
10 • AMICUS
AMICUS • 11
ANIMATION • 13
14 • ANKERS, EVELYN
THE ANTICHRIST • 15
16 • APES
(1977). More recently, the evil one—in the form of Michael York,
this time—has sought to bring about the world’s destruction in The
Omega Code (1999) and Meggido: Omega Code 2 (2001), Ben Chap-
lin played a potential Antichrist in waiting in Lost Souls (2000), and
The Omen was remade in 2006.
An early comic version of the Antichrist can be found in the Vin-
cente Minnelli-directed musical Cabin in the Sky (1943), where he
goes under the name of Lucifer Jr.
APES. Apes were stock figures in American horror films from the
1920s through to the 1950s. The giant ape in King Kong (1933, re-
made in 1976 and 2005) is the most remembered, but the more typi-
cal horror ape usually came in the considerably less impressive form
of a man wearing a gorilla suit. The Edgar Allan Poe adaptation
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) contained a murderous ape, and
the popular murder mystery play The Gorilla was filmed three times,
in 1927, 1930 and 1939. A fascination with evolutionary progression
and regression was evident in Captive Wild Woman (1943), in which
an ape was transformed into a beautiful woman by a mad scientist.
Savage gorillas featured in The Monster and the Girl (1941) and
Bride of the Gorilla (1951); Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla
(1952) offered a comic treatment of the theme. In 1961, British hor-
ror cinema came up with a belated addition to the ape horror cycle
with the ludicrous mad scientist film Konga, while Schlock (1973),
John Landis’s directorial debut, made fun of the whole ape business.
Since then, modern horror has made little use of the ape-centered
horror narrative, and on the few occasions that apes have featured,
they have tended to be presented in more realistic terms, with real
apes deployed and not a gorilla suit in sight. A razor-wielding chim-
panzee showed up in Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1985) and homi-
cidal monkeys also starred in Richard Franklin’s Link (1986) and
George Romero’s Monkey Shines (1988).
ARGENTO, ASIA • 17
have become more prevalent in the horror genre, with this reflecting
a greater willingness to question the effectiveness of social authority
and to depict the collapse of social institutions. One area where this
has been evident is in some revenge of nature horrors where nature
threatens to supplant mankind entirely, with the most notable exam-
ples of this Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), the eco-horror
Frogs (1972) and Peter Weir’s The Last Wave (1977). Other apoca-
lyptic horror films have deployed the idea of infection and plague in
their depictions of the overthrow of humanity. For example, George
Romero’s zombie films—including Night of the Living Dead
(1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978)—presented zombiedom as an
incurable and fast-spreading infection, with the risen dead gradually
taking over the world. The Omega Man (1971) did something simi-
lar, while Lamberto Bava’s Demoni (Demons) (1985) did a demon-
centered version of apocalypse by infection. Grim and pseudo-scien-
tific versions of this end-of-the-world scenario were offered by
David Cronenberg with The Parasite Murders (They Came From
Within, Shivers) (1975) and Rabid (1977) and Danny Boyle with 28
Days Later (2002). By contrast, John Carpenter explored the sub-
ject in more mystical terms in the H. P. Lovecraft-influenced Prince
of Darkness (1987) and In the Mouth of Madness (1995), while the
Internet-based Japanese horror Kairo (Pulse) (2001) artfully asso-
ciated the end of the world with social alienation and loneliness. An-
other key type of apocalyptic horror has drawn upon Biblical and
other religious prophecies in its depiction of the human race’s appar-
ently preordained passage to Armageddon. For example, The Omen
(1976) and its sequels presented the rise of the Antichrist with some
conviction, while Holocaust 2000 (1977) and The Seventh Sign
(1988) dealt with related material.
18 • ARGENTO, DARIO
ARGENTO, DARIO • 19
20 • ARKOFF, SAMUEL Z.
ART CINEMA • 21
22 • ARTISTS
associated with upmarket art films. It seems from this that the border
between art and horror is not always as clear as is sometimes sup-
posed and that exchanges across apparent cultural divides can pro-
vide a valuable source of inspiration for all concerned.
ARTISTS. The mad artist has become a stock figure in the horror
genre, although he (or more rarely, she) has often been overshadowed
by his cousin, the mad scientist. Both share a concern to shape real-
ity according to their own self-centered vision, no matter what the
consequences for the people around them. In the case of the artist,
this usually involves murder as a means to an artistic end or as an
artistic strategy in its own right. The classic exemplar of the former
was provided by the character played by Lionel Atwill in Mystery of
the Wax Museum (1933), who constructed his waxworks around the
bodies of his victims, an idea further explored in the 1953 remake
House of Wax, the early British horror Latin Quarter (1946), the
comedy-horror Carry On Screaming (1966), and the recent House of
Wax (2005). The Phantom in numerous Phantom of the Opera films
has often been figured as a mad composer, while Roger Corman’s A
Bucket of Blood (1959), Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Color Me Blood
Red (1965) and Pupi Avati’s La casa dalle finestre che ridono (The
House With Laughing Windows) (1976) offered representations of
artists compelled to murder for inspiration. Lucio Fulci’s L’aldilà
(The Beyond) (1981) and John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Mad-
ness (1995) adopted a different approach in featuring inadvertently
disruptive artists or writers whose visionary work has opened up
gateways to fearful other dimensions.
Other films have explored the idea of killing itself as a kind of art,
with serial killers in particular expressing themselves through styl-
ish stagings of violence and gore, with this most evident in some gi-
allo thrillers as well as in films such as Peeping Tom (1960), The
Silence of the Lambs (1991), Seven (1995), and Scream (1996). Un-
derpinning this is a clear sense of the artist as a monstrously egotisti-
cal and antisocial figure whose art can only be achieved at the ex-
pense of human feeling and emotion.
ATWILL, LIONEL • 23
horrors. The garish red of the blood spilled in The Curse of Franken-
stein (1957) and Dracula (The Horror of Dracula) (1958) shocked
critics and fascinated audiences, but Asher was also capable of pro-
ducing more atmospheric effects. His lighting helped to make the
films appear subtler and more expensive than they actually were.
Other Hammer credits included The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958),
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Man Who Could Cheat
Death (1959), The Mummy (1959), The Brides of Dracula (1960),
and The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960).
24 • AUSTRALIAN HORROR
BAKER, RICK • 25
as Eli Roth’s Hostel (2005) and Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects
(2005).
AVATI, PUPI (1938– ). The work of the Italian writer-director Pupi Avati
has periodically shown a propensity for the gothic and for horror. Early
directorial efforts such as Balsamus l’uomo di Satana (Blood Relations)
(1970) and Thomas e gli indemoniati (Thomas and the Bewitched)
(1970) contained fantastic elements, but it was Avati’s giallo La casa
dalle finestre che ridono (The House With Laughing Windows) (1976)
that established him as a filmmaker with a distinctive vision. This hor-
ror thriller made evocative use of its rural setting and delivered a weird
and dream-like story quite distinct from the more aggressive work of gi-
allo specialists Dario Argento and Mario Bava. Avati’s supernatural
drama Zeder (1983) was comparably offbeat (although mislabeled a
zombie film in some markets) and L’Arcan incantatore (Arcane Sor-
cerer, The Mysterious Enchanter) (1996) was a stylish gothic mystery.
Avati also co-wrote the screenplays for Lucio Fulci’s comedy-horror Il
cavaliere Costante Nicosia demoniaco . . . orrero Dracula in Brianza
(Young Dracula) (1975) and Lamberto Bava’s psychological thriller
Macabro (Macabre) (1980). See also ITALIAN HORROR.
–B–
BAKER, ROY WARD (1916– ). Roy Ward Baker was one of a group
of directors—others included Terence Fisher and John Gilling—
who had worked in a range of genres before becoming British hor-
ror specialists. In Baker’s case, the pre-horror career had been a pres-
tigious one that included a stint in Hollywood as well as the direction
of the Titanic film A Night to Remember (1958). (He was billed as
Roy Baker for this work; the Ward came later to distinguish him from
a sound editor also called Roy Baker.) If Baker felt any disappoint-
ment over his “relegation” to the low-budget horror sector, it did not
show in the films he made for leading British horror companies
Hammer and Amicus. His first for Hammer was the science fic-
tion/horror hybrid Quatermass and the Pit (1967), which was the
third in the Quatermass cycle and one of the last of Hammer’s more
traditional productions before it began to experiment with its horror
formula. Thereafter, Baker’s solidly professional direction helped to
anchor some of the company’s more outré projects, including The An-
niversary (1968), a bizarre and grotesque comedy featuring Bette
Davis at her most histrionic, and The Vampire Lovers (1970), Ham-
mer’s first lesbian vampire film and a fine adaptation of J. Sheridan
LeFanu’s story “Carmilla.” Scars of Dracula (1970) was an unin-
spiring entry in the Dracula cycle, but Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde
(1971), which involved Jekyll transforming into a woman, was a sur-
prisingly inventive example of late Hammer horror. Subsequently,
Baker moved to Amicus where he made two horror anthologies—
Asylum (1972) and Vault of Horror (1973)—and an interesting gothic
period piece, And Now The Screaming Starts (1973). The Legend of
the Seven Golden Vampires (1974), his final film for Hammer and the
company’s last period production, was a kung fu/horror hybrid, and
it helped to confirm Baker’s status as a director of unusual films. One
more horror film, The Monster Club (1980), followed some years
later.
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28 • BALDERSTON, JOHN L.
BARKER, CLIVE • 29
30 • BATES, RALPH
BAVA, LAMBERTO • 31
these was Harry Kümel’s eerie modern-day drama Les lèvres rouges
(Daughters of Darkness) (1971). A vampiric countess clearly based
on Bathory also took on the Spanish horror star Jacinto Molina in
La noche de walpurgis (Shadow of the Werewolf) (1970) and El re-
torno de walpurgis (The Return of Walpurgis, Curse of the Devil)
(1973), and Bathory herself showed up in the Molina film El retorno
del hombre-lobo (Night of the Werewolf) (1980). A more history-
based approach was offered by Hammer’s Countess Dracula (1970),
in which, despite the film’s title, Ingrid Pitt played a non-vampiric
murderous Countess based on Bathory, and by Jorge Grau’s Span-
ish horror Ceremonia sangrienta (Blood Castle) (1973). The Bloody
Countess also featured in Necropolis (1970), Walerian Borowczyk’s
Contes immoraux (Immoral Tales) (1974) and in the modern day
thrillers The Mysterious Death of Nina Chereau (1988), Eternal
(2004), and Tomb of the Werewolf (2004). A Bathory-like countess
appeared in Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm (2005) and, most
bizarrely, Bathory was a computer game-based villain in the
teenage horror film Stay Alive (2006).
32 • BAVA, MARIO
themes and style as much as Bava’s, but the director did generate an
intensely claustrophobic atmosphere. Bava also directed the inferior
sequel Demoni 2: L’incubo ritorna (Demons 2) (1986), and a num-
ber of his later films were sometimes marketed as further sequels, al-
though none of them had anything to do with the Demons films.
Since the mid-1980s, Bava has worked mainly for Italian television,
and his cinematic career has become patchy. Morirai a mezzanotte
(The Midnight Killer) (1986), Le foto di gioia (Delirium) (1987) and
Body Puzzle (1991) were effective giallo films, albeit not particularly
distinctive, while Una notte al cimitero (Graveyard Disturbance)
(1987) was a routine zombie film and La maschera del demonio
(Black Sunday) (1989) a very loose remake of his father’s classic
witchcraft film of 1960. Bava has also directed numerous horror and
fantasy television films and series, although he recently returned to
cinematic horror with The Torturer (2005) and Ghost Son (2006).
BAVA, MARIO • 33
34 • BAXTER, LES
BERNARD, JAMES • 35
36 • BESWICK, MARTINE
(1957). However, his first outstanding score was for Dracula (Horror
of Dracula) (1958). His three-note theme for this was based on the
word Dracula itself, and it would subsequently feature in most of
Hammer’s Dracula films. He was also capable of producing a more
melodic sound, an example being the delicate main theme for Taste the
Blood of Dracula (1970). Bernard rarely composed for anyone other
than Hammer, although he did write some music for the Amicus pro-
duction Torture Garden (1967) and in 1997 recorded a new score for
F. W. Murnau’s classic vampire film Nosferatu (1922). His other
scores include Quatermass 2 (Enemy from Space) (1957), The Hound
of the Baskervilles (1959), The Stranglers of Bombay (1959), The Ter-
ror of the Tongs (1961), The Damned (These are the Damned) (1963),
The Kiss of the Vampire (1963), The Gorgon (1964), She (1965), The
Plague of the Zombies (1966), Dracula—Prince of Darkness (1966),
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), The Devil Rides Out (1968),
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Frankenstein Must Be De-
stroyed (1969), Scars of Dracula (1970), Frankenstein and the Monster
from Hell (1974), The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974),
and Murder Elite (1985).
BLACK HORROR • 37
38 • BLAIR, LINDA
The advent of the American slasher film in the late 1970s tended
to marginalize black characters once again, although there were oc-
casional productions that engaged in interesting ways with issues
arising out of racial difference. Wes Craven’s voodoo thriller The
Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) and his comedy-horror Vampire in
Brooklyn (1995) revisited traditional black horror scenarios from a
modern, revisionary perspective, while his The People under the
Stairs (1991) intelligently explored black social exclusion from
within a horror idiom. Bernard Rose’s equally distinguished Candy-
man (1992) did something similar in its representation of a resur-
rected ex-slave transformed into an urban legend and was successful
enough to generate two sequels, Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh
(1995) and Candyman: Day of the Dead (1999). Def by Temptation
(1990) was an interesting attempt to revive blaxploitation horror, but
Blade (1998), which starred Wesley Snipes as a heroic vampire
hunter who is himself part-vampire, was a more confident and com-
mercially successful treatment of this material; Blade 2 (2002) and
Blade: Trinity (2004) followed.
The racist tenor of much early horror has certainly been dissipated
over the years, although the extent to which blackness has become
normalized in horror production is far from clear, with the majority
of the genre’s heroes and heroines still noticeably white.
40 • BLOCH, ROBERT
BOORMAN, JOHN • 41
BODY HORROR. The term body horror has been used by horror crit-
ics to describe a type of horror film that first emerged during the
1970s, one which offered graphic and sometimes clinical representa-
tions of human bodies that were in some way out of the conscious
control of their owners. In a sense, body horror describes the ultimate
alienation—alienation from one’s own body—but this has often been
coupled with a fascination with the possibility of new identities that
might emerge from this. The term is most associated with the work
of Canadian director David Cronenberg, whose early horror films—
among them The Parasite Murders (They Came from Within, Shivers)
(1975), Rabid (1977), and The Brood (1979)—focused on mutation
and other physical transformations; Videodrome (1983) and The Fly
(1986) were later body horror examples from his remarkable oeuvre.
Other horror films that share a Cronenbergian fascination with fleshy
metamorphoses include Stuart Gordon’s Re-animator (1985), Clive
Barker’s Hellraiser (1987) and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo (1989).
Philip Brophy’s Australian production Body Melt (1993) is another
example and contains a quintessential body horror scene in which a
man is attacked by an excreted placenta.
42 • BORLAND, CARROLL
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes (1977),
I Spit on Your Grave (1978), and more recently, Wrong Turn (2003),
Calvaire (The Ordeal) (2004), and Wolf Creek (2005) owe more
than a passing debt to Boorman’s unflinching portrayal of human
savagery.
BOTTIN, ROB (1959– ). Like fellow makeup artist and mentor Rick
Baker, Rob Bottin’s career-making moment came with a werewolf
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BRADLEY, DOUG • 43
44 • BRITISH HORROR
BRITISH HORROR • 45
46 • BROOKS, MEL
BROWNING, TOD • 47
although the film never shied away from detailing their unconven-
tional bodies. Given the realism that this entailed, it is actually hard
to think of Freaks as a horror film, such is its difference from the
manufactured monstrosities being generated elsewhere in American
cinema at the time. Unsurprisingly, it was a much-banned project and
it remains today a powerful and disturbing piece of work, and ar-
guably represents Browning’s finest achievement as a filmmaker.
Browning’s subsequent films were more conventional. Mark of the
Vampire was another Lugosi vehicle, while The Devil-Doll (1936)
was an oddity about people being shrunk to miniature size. See also
AMERICAN HORROR.
BURTON, TIM (1958– ). The American director Tim Burton has man-
aged throughout his career to preserve an idiosyncratic approach to his
subject matter while still attracting large budgets. His work has often
showed an affection for classic horror and is also marked visually by the
influence of the gothic and of German Expressionism. He began as an
animator with two striking Disney shorts that introduced his key
theme—that of the outsider who defines himself through horror-like be-
havior; in Vincent (1982), a little boy wants to be Vincent Price (and
Price himself provided the narration), while in Frankenweenie (1984)
another little boy brings his dog back to life as a Frankenstein-like
monster. Burton graduated to live-action direction with the comedy
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) and the comedy-horror ghost story
Beetle Juice (1988), the style of both of which displayed cartoon-like
qualities. Batman (1989), his first major production, was more imper-
sonal, although it had a distinctive look—which was part-German Ex-
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BUTTGEREIT, JÖRG • 49
50 • CAMERON, JAMES
–C–
CANNIBALISM • 51
52 • CARLSON, VERONICA
CARPENTER, JOHN • 53
54 • CARRADINE, JOHN
CARRERAS, MICHAEL • 55
56 • CARRIE
CASTLE, WILLIAM • 57
58 • CATS
CENSORSHIP • 59
(1990), while the cat-like mewling of the ghost boy in Ju-On: The
Grudge (2003) is one of contemporary horror’s more unnerving
sounds. The cats in Cat People (1942, remade in 1982) and Cat Girl
(1957) turn out to be big jungle cats, however, rather than domestic
pussies. Rare representations of heroic cats are offered by Cat’s Eye
(1985) and Sleepwalkers (1992), and Tales from the Darkside: The
Movie (1990) features a cat assassin—or hit-cat—doling out justifi-
able revenge for crimes against its species. By contrast, Jones, the
spaceship cat in Alien (1979), is something of a coward.
60 • CHANEY, LON
CHANEY JR., LON (1906–1973). Lon Chaney Jr.’s real first name
was Creighton but he changed it to Lon, after his film star father Lon
Chaney, to help his acting career; some films billed him as Lon
Chaney Jr. while others omitted the Jr. His first major role was as the
hulking simpleton Lenny in Of Mice and Men (1939) and he contin-
ued to perform ably in supporting roles in a range of genres (he was
in High Noon, for example). However, stardom came with his per-
formances in 1940s American horror cinema. He was the only ac-
tor to play all four of Universal’s main monsters—Dracula,
Frankenstein’s monster, the mummy and the Wolf Man, but it was
the role of werewolf Lawrence Talbot that he made his own.
His first horror film was Universal’s Man Made Monster (1941), in
which he was the victim of a mad scientist’s experiment. He subse-
quently developed his ability to generate pathos in The Wolf Man
(1941). This was Universal’s attempt to restart its werewolf cycle after
Werewolf of London (1935). Chaney played the son of the local squire
who gets bitten by what he believes is a wolf and is thereafter doomed
to become a werewolf. The actor managed the transitions from com-
placent self-control to introspection and terror very effectively; his
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later renditions of this character would lack some of the nuances ap-
parent here.
Chaney next took over from Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s mon-
ster in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). Presumably the rationale
behind this piece of casting was that the pathos of the Wolf Man
would in some way be carried over into the monster, but Chaney
looked uncomfortable, with his performance crudely gestural and
with none of the subtleties that Karloff brought to the part. Much the
same could be said of his turn as the mummy in The Mummy’s Tomb
(1942), with Chaney again giving the impression of being ill at ease
in a part where he was completely submerged in heavy makeup (un-
like Karloff or Christopher Lee, both of whom could successfully
emote in such circumstances). At least with the wolf man, he re-
mained in human form most of the time. He was back as Talbot in
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), the first of Universal’s
multi-monster films. He also offered an interesting, if not entirely
successful, performance as Count Dracula in the misleadingly titled
Son of Dracula (1943), a film in which there is no sign that the vam-
pire is anything other than Dracula himself. Chaney played him as a
charmless but physically imposing bully rather than the lounge lizard
the Count became when John Carradine subsequently took over the
part.
Chaney’s later career was less successful. He was the mummy
again in The Mummy’s Ghost (1944) and The Mummy’s Curse (1944)
and Talbot again in House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula
(1945) and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948); he also
starred in a series of weird mysteries based on the radio series Inner
Sanctum—among them the witchcraft drama Weird Woman (1944).
His 1950s horror credits were all minor, including low-budget proj-
ects such as Bride of the Gorilla (1951), The Black Sleep (1956), The
Cyclops (1957), and The Alligator People (1959). He also played
Frankenstein’s monster again on television in 1952 as well as host-
ing the horror anthology series 13 Demon Street (1959–1960),
episodes of which were cut together for the film The Devil’s Mes-
senger (1961). The 1960s were a little better but not much. He re-
turned to the role of the werewolf in the Mexican horror film La
casa del terror (The House of Terror) (1960), parts of which were
later cannibalized for Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1964). More
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CHILDREN • 63
64 • CHINESE HORROR
Dead, the child in The Exorcist was in herself innocent but, like
zombification, demonic possession afforded an iconoclastic opportu-
nity to depict a young person behaving very badly indeed. By con-
trast, The Omen (1976) featured an irredeemably evil child in
Damien, the Antichrist, whose birth signaled the coming end of the
world.
Monstrous babies and dangerous children have also appeared in
The House that Dripped Blood (1970), The Other (1972), Larry Co-
hen’s It’s Alive (1974), David Cronenberg’s The Parasite Murders
(They Came From Within, Shivers) (1975) and The Brood (1979), The
Child (1977), John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), the Stephen
King adaptations Children of the Corn (1984) and Pet Sematary
(1989), as well as the British horror films Nothing But The Night
(1972), I Don’t Want to be Born (The Devil Within Her) (1975), and
The Godsend (1980) and the Spanish horror Quién puede matar a
un niño? (Island of the Damned, Would You Kill a Child?) (1976).
CLARK, BOB • 65
and are consequently better known in the West. They also make
greater use of Western conventions while still retaining an Asian fo-
cus on ghosts and demons as the principal threats. Especially popu-
lar were knockabout kung fu–comedy-horrors such as Gui da gui
(Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind, Spooky Encounters) (1980)
and Ren xia ren (The Dead and the Deadly) (1982), both of which
starred portly martial arts comedian Sammo Hung. The similarly
themed Geung si sin sang (Mr. Vampire) (1985), and its sequels, fea-
tured a hopping cadaver as a source of much slapstick humor. Con-
siderably slicker were the Tsui Hark-produced Chinese Ghost Story
films, beginning with Sinnui yauwan (A Chinese Ghost Story)
(1987). Based on the much filmed writings of Pu Songling (1640–
1715), Sinnui yauwan was a commercially appealing mix of folkloric
material with hi-tech special effects. Underlining the breadth of Hong
Kong production, films of this kind mingled both with the more sub-
tle treatment of ghosts found in Stanley Kwan’s Yin ji kau (Rouge)
(1987) and with Category III “adult only” films that offered grimmer
tales of serial killers—for example Gou yeung yi sang (Dr. Lamb)
(1992)—and cannibalism—for example, Baat sin faan dim ji yan
yuk cha siu baau (The Untold Story) (1993). A comprehensive history
of Chinese horror cinema remains to be written but even a superficial
glance at the films that are available reveals a type of genre product
that merits further attention.
66 • CLAYTON, JACK
COHEN, HERMAN • 67
for new ideas to refresh its horror formula, Clemens wrote and pro-
duced for the company Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), a transsex-
ual rendition of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story in which the doc-
tor is transformed into a woman. He then wrote, produced and
directed another late Hammer horror, Captain Kronos—Vampire
Hunter (1974), an underrated film that combined period horror
conventions with action scenes. He also wrote the Disney-produced
horror The Watcher in the Woods (1980).
CLIVE, COLIN (1900–1937). The British actor Colin Clive was the
original Frankenstein in James Whale’s Universal horror produc-
tions Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). He had
earlier worked with Whale in the theater, and his film performances
are defiantly theatrical with a manic edge. To modern audiences, the
acting styles on display in horror films of the early 1930s can often
seem overwrought, but even by those standards Clive’s screen per-
sona was especially histrionic. Biographical accounts suggest that
Clive was a deeply troubled individual whose anguish was constantly
finding its way onto the screen. His last major genre performance
was as a tormented pianist who has a murderer’s hands grafted onto
him in Mad Love (1935). He died as a result of alcoholism not long
afterwards. His cry of “It’s alive”—from Frankenstein—remains one
of the horror genre’s best known lines.
68 • COHEN, LARRY
his credits included Horrors of the Black Museum (1959), the very
silly giant ape film Konga (1961), the Sherlock Holmes versus Jack
the Ripper story A Study in Terror (1965), and two late Joan Craw-
ford vehicles, Berserk! (1968) and Trog (1970)
Other credits included The Headless Ghost (1959), Black Zoo
(1963), and Craze (1973).
COHEN, LARRY (1938– ). Of all the directors who made major con-
tributions to the development of American horror during the 1970s,
Larry Cohen is probably the least known to the general public. While
filmmakers such as John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and Brian
De Palma have gone on to establish significant name recognition for
themselves, Cohen has continued to work quietly and largely unher-
alded in the low-budget sector. This is a shame because his horror
films at their best are some of the most intelligent and challenging to
be found in the genre.
From the late 1950s onwards, Cohen was mainly a television
writer, with his numerous credits including the pilots for popular
1960s series Branded and The Invaders, although he also wrote sev-
eral screenplays for the cinema. He turned to film direction in the
early 1970s, beginning with ambitious blaxploitation thrillers Bone
(1972), Black Caesar, (1973) and Hell Up in Harlem (1973). It’s
Alive! (1974), his first horror film, was a remarkable revisionary
work that articulated key themes of 1970s horror. The film’s title
refers to a line spoken by Frankenstein in Universal’s 1931 version
of Frankenstein on seeing his creature move for the first time. How-
ever, Cohen’s contemporary version of the Frankenstein story threw
into disarray some of the moral certainties of the earlier work. An or-
dinary American woman gives birth to a monster that rampages
across the city. The father’s reaction to his child is unusual for the
horror genre at this time. Initially rejecting his offspring, he eventu-
ally comes to accept it as his, despite its monstrosity and violence.
It’s Alive! concludes with the child’s death and the news that more
monstrous babies have been born elsewhere. The contemporary set-
ting, the child as monster, the distrust of social institutions and offi-
cial authority, the open ending: these elements can be found else-
where in 1970s American horror, but in It’s Alive Cohen weaves them
with great clarity and conviction into an engaging and ultimately
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COMBS, JEFFREY • 69
70 • COMEDY
COMEDY • 71
72 • COMICS
CONNOR, KEVIN • 73
74 • CONWAY, TOM
CONWAY, TOM (1904–1967). The actor Tom Conway was the Rus-
sian-born brother of George Sanders. During the 1940s he was best
known as The Falcon in a series of crime thrillers (he took over the
role from his brother) but he was also impressive in three of producer
Val Lewton’s horror films. He played the creepy psychiatrist Dr.
Judd in Cat People (1942), whose unprofessional treatment of his pa-
tient led to his own violent death. Next came I Walked with a Zombie
(1943) where his mournfulness contributed to the film’s downbeat
tone. Finally, Lewton resurrected Conway’s Dr. Judd, albeit with a
more benign persona, for the stylish Satanic thriller The Seventh Vic-
tim (1943). Problems with alcohol meant that the latter part of Con-
way’s career was less successful, and he made undignified appear-
ances in low-budget horrors Bride of the Gorilla (1951), The
She-Creature (1956) and Voodoo Woman (1957).
CORMAN, ROGER • 75
76 • CORMAN, ROGER
COSCARELLI, DON • 77
of Charles Dexter Ward.” It was a fine film in its own right but its de-
parture from Poe, along with the comedy treatments offered by ear-
lier Corman adaptations, suggested that the Poe series might be com-
ing to an end. However, Corman’s final two Poe projects proved not
just the best in the series but arguably marked the highpoint of the di-
rector’s whole career.
Both The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia
(1964) were filmed in England. As photographed by Nicolas Roeg,
The Masque of the Red Death’s use of color was particularly impres-
sive, while, unusually for the series, The Tomb of Ligeia made exten-
sive use of location shooting. Both were richly atmospheric, with
fine, nuanced performances from Price, cruel in the former as a des-
pot protecting himself from the plague, obsessed with the memory of
his dead wife in the latter. The Masque of the Red Death has been ac-
cused of pretentiousness, and certainly its references to Ingmar
Bergman’s Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal) (1957) are all-too-
obvious, but both it and Ligeia exhibited a level of both ambition and
achievement that was rare in the horror cinema of this period.
Corman retired from film direction in the early 1970s and has since
concentrated on film production, first for New World and subse-
quently for New Horizons and Concorde. He made a brief comeback
as director with Frankenstein Unbound (1990), an interesting revi-
sionary account of the Frankenstein story, albeit one that lacked the
distinctive style of his best work. He has also made some cameo ap-
pearances in films directed by some of his protégés, including Joe
Dante’s The Howling (1981) and Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of
the Lambs (1991).
Corman’s other directorial horror credits include Tower of London
(1962) and The Terror (1963). See also AMERICAN HORROR.
78 • COSTELLO, LOU
Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994) and Phantasm IV: Oblivion
(1998)—it has had little influence on other horror films. Coscarelli
changed direction again with Bubba Ho-tep (2002), the unlikely story
of which involved Elvis Presley (played by genre regular Bruce
Campbell) fighting a mummy in an old people’s home. Perhaps sur-
prisingly given this scenario, the film managed to be both refresh-
ingly original and in places rather moving. Coscarelli also directed
the fantasy adventure The Beastmaster (1982) and contributed an
episode to the television series Masters of Horror (2005– ).
COURT, HAZEL (1926– ). The horror career of the British actor Hazel
Court demonstrates what a difference a director can make to a screen
persona. Court was a pretty but bland female lead in Vernon Sewell’s
Ghost Ship (1952) and Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein
(1957) and The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) and made sim-
ilar appearances in Devil Girl From Mars (1954) and Dr. Blood’s
Coffin (1961). However, the three horror films she did for American
director Roger Corman—The Premature Burial (1962), The Raven
(1963), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964)—presented her as
an altogether more assertive sexual presence. In The Masque of the
Red Death in particular, she offered a compelling portrayal of jeal-
ousy and corruption. Much of Court’s later career was spent working
on American television.
CRAVEN, WES • 79
(1989). He was second unit director on two more Argento films, Due
occhi diabolici (Two Evil Eyes) (1990) and La sindrome di Stendhal
(The Stendhal Syndrome) (1996) and also directed two documen-
taries about Argento’s films.
80 • CRAVEN, WES
us the capacity for extreme violence. Two young women are raped,
tortured and murdered by a gang of low-lifes. Subsequently the well-
to-do parents of one of the girls discover the crime and carry out an
appalling revenge on the miscreants (involving throat slashing and
death by chainsaw), with the narrative’s escalating, unstoppable vio-
lence leading eventually to the collapse of normality. As Craven him-
self has indicated, it is the kind of film that would have had a partic-
ular resonance in the era of the Vietnam war and the social unrest that
this conflict brought about.
The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Craven’s next film, was thematically
very similar but also slicker and more palatable for a mainstream au-
dience. An example of 1970s family horror, it pitted two families
against each other. One of these families was normal in a middle-
class and slightly complacent sort of way, and the other was made up
of lower-class predatory cannibals. While, unsurprisingly, we ini-
tially identify with the normal family, their gradual surrender to vio-
lence as they take on the cannibals becomes increasingly disturbing,
with the culminating in another open, disturbing conclusion.
At this point, Craven’s career seemed temporarily to lose direction.
Deadly Blessing (1981) was an effective thriller about a religious sect
(the supernatural conclusion of which was removed from some
prints, presumably to make it appear less like a horror film) but
Swamp Thing (1982) was an uninspired comic-book adaptation.
Then came A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). As written and di-
rected by Craven, this was a genuinely innovative variant on the
slasher film that initiated one of the major horror cycles of the 1980s.
It also continued the director’s preoccupation with proletariat assaults
upon a complacent middle class, with the undead janitor Freddy
Krueger revenging himself upon the teenage children of his murder-
ers. As was the case with Craven’s best work in general, it was con-
structed around and played variations on a concept—here the idea
that whatever happens to you in your dreams also happens to you in
waking reality.
In the aftermath of Elm Street, Craven struggled to find interesting
projects. The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1985) and Deadly Friend
(1986) were professionally done but impersonal. The Serpent and the
Rainbow (1988) was an ambitious attempt to update the voodoo film
through an exploration of voodoo’s anthropological roots, although
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CRAVEN, WES • 81
82 • CRAWFORD, JOAN
CRONENBERG, DAVID • 83
ders (1975) for the Canadian market, They Came From Within for the
United States, and Shivers everywhere else. It depicted the spread of
an experimental slug-like organism—described in the film as a cross
between a parasite and a venereal disease—through a modern hous-
ing complex, transforming the inhabitants into ravening sex maniacs
as it went. An updated Frankenstein narrative and an example of bi-
ological or body horror, The Parasite Murders established Cronen-
berg as an exciting and innovative new talent in the genre, although
the fact that the production of this most disturbing of horror films had
been supported by the tax-funded Canadian Film Development Cor-
poration caused some controversy on the film’s release in Canada.
Cronenberg’s next two horror films (he also directed Fast Com-
pany, a racing drama in this period) elaborated on material intro-
duced in The Parasite Murders. Rabid (1977) was another infection
story in which a radical surgical technique transforms a woman into
a plague carrier, while The Brood (1979) focused on a woman with
the ability to externalize her rage in the form of spontaneously gen-
erated monstrous children. The relentlessly grim atmosphere of both
was coupled with a dispassionate examination of bodies caught up in
a process of physiological change and transformation. The telekine-
sis drama Scanners (1981) also contained moments of body horror,
this time associated with the male body, although it was also more ac-
tion-based and less unsettling than the director’s previous horrors.
The controversial Videodrome (1983) was not so much of an audi-
ence-pleaser but it did offer a bold investigation of the interaction be-
tween consciousness and technology in a manner reminiscent of Cro-
nenberg’s earlier avant-garde work.
The most commercial part of Cronenberg’s career began with The
Dead Zone (1983) and ended with The Fly (1986). At the time of The
Dead Zone’s release, this adaptation of a Stephen King novel
seemed untypical of the director’s sophisticated and cosmopolitan
approach, with its rural settings and naturalistic style (although Cro-
nenberg’s 2005 film A History of Violence adopted a comparable ap-
proach). The Fly was more obviously Cronenbergian in its depiction
of a scientist’s slow and messy mutation into a human/fly hybrid, but
at the same time it was Cronenberg at his most straightforward and
accessible.
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84 • CUNNINGHAM, SEAN S.
Since The Fly, the director has moved away from the horror genre
and transformed himself into a critically respected international auteur,
although a concern with the body and a reliance on horror-like imagery
continue to inform his films, including Dead Ringers (1988), Naked
Lunch (1991), Crash (1996), eXistenZ (1999), Spider (2002), and A His-
tory of Violence. Cronenberg has also made some appearances in films.
He was an insane psychiatrist in Clive Barker’s Nightbreed (1990), a
hitman in To Die For (1995), and, less expectedly, also showed up in the
Friday the 13th film Jason X (2001) (although he had earlier directed
an episode for the Friday the 13th television series).
CURTIS, DAN (1928–2006). During the 1960s and 1970s, the Ameri-
can writer-producer-director Dan Curtis made a significant contribu-
tion to the development of horror on television, often by placing hor-
ror elements within familiar televisual formats. For example, his
daytime soap Dark Shadows (1966–1971) contained vampire and
werewolf characters and was successful enough to generate two Cur-
tis-directed cinema films, House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night
of Dark Shadows (1971). He also produced and sometimes directed
television adaptations of classic gothic novels, including The Strange
Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1968), Frankenstein (1973), Drac-
ula (1973), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973), and The Turn of the
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86 • CURTIZ, MICHAEL
CUSHING, PETER • 87
88 • CUSHING, PETER
DANTE, JOE • 89
–D–
DANTE, JOE (1946– ). Joe Dante was a film fan before he was a di-
rector, and his own films are informed by his enthusiasm for and
knowledge of cinema history. Starting out by editing trailers for
Roger Corman, his directorial debut—which was co-directed with
Allan Arkush—was the ultra low budget spoof Hollywood Boulevard
(1976). This was followed by Piranha (1978), which drew upon both
Jaws (1975) and 1950s monster movies for inspiration in its depic-
tion of killer piranha attacking the United States but which displayed
a liveliness and level of invention that set it apart from other more
grim horrors of the period. The werewolf drama The Howling (1981)
was even better. Although overshadowed by John Landis’s bigger-
budgeted An American Werewolf in London (1981), Dante’s film had
a distinctive cinephile character all of its own. Fond, if ironic, refer-
ences to horror’s past mingled with some suspenseful sequences and
impressive werewolf transformation effects provided by Rob Bottin.
This fascination with American popular-cultural history continued
with his direction of a segment for Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).
More successful was Gremlins (1984), a Steven Spielberg-produced
small-town drama with a manic edge. The anarchic antics of the
gremlins displayed the influence of the cartoons of Chuck Jones, a
key influence on Dante, and the film, although a family drama, of-
fered more disturbing scenes than one might have expected. After an
excursion into science fiction family drama with Explorers (1985),
he returned to comedy-horror with the underrated The `Burbs (1989).
This Tom Hanks vehicle introduced horror iconography into an ap-
parently peaceful setting in a Gremlins-like manner but did not man-
age the transitions between the comedy and the horror as skillfully as
Gremlins had. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) upped the manic
energy of the first film, and also included an appearance by horror
icon Christopher Lee, but it too struggled to recapture the perfectly
judged tone of its predecessor. Matinee (1993) was a return to form,
however. The setting of the Cuban Missile crisis was juxtaposed with
the gimmicks devised by a flamboyant William Castle-like movie
promoter to sell his genre product. Nostalgia for a type of cinema
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90 • DAVIS, BETTE
long since passed was combined with a telling sense of the ways in
which films can transform real social fears into an entertaining expe-
rience. Some characteristically knowing references to old horror
films also showed up in Dante’s fantasy adventure Small Soldiers
(1998).
Dante has also contributed episodes to fantasy/horror television
series The Twilight Zone (1985–1989), Amazing Stories (1985–
1987), Eerie, Indiana (1991–1992), Night Visions (2001), and Mas-
ters of Horror (2005– ). See also AMERICAN HORROR.
DE PALMA, BRIAN • 91
92 • DE PALMA, BRIAN
Palma is probably the most formally inventive and yet also the most
enigmatic. This is a director whose work has sometimes been labeled
“feminist” by critics but whose films have also been accused of mi-
sogyny. De Palma’s taciturn public persona—he is notoriously unre-
vealing in interviews—has not always helped to clarify what his aims
are in making the films he does. What is clear is that throughout
much of the 1970s and into the 1980s, De Palma’s work focused on
horror or horror-related themes. One reason for this could be that hor-
ror was fashionable in the market at the time. However, the intelli-
gence with which the director engaged with this material suggests
that it was appealing to him, at least at this stage of his career.
De Palma’s early films, which included Greetings (1968) and Hi
Mom! (1970), were experimental, countercultural pieces that played
games with film form while also offering socially critical elements.
While the formal games continued in the later horror films and
thrillers, attempts to engage with contemporary society were less no-
ticeable. However, an intermittent, albeit sometimes cryptic, explo-
ration of sexual politics was apparent. Sisters (1973), his first truly
mainstream project, was an extraordinarily stylish psychological
thriller that in its treatment of voyeurism and its Bernard Her-
rmann score showed the influence, like other De Palma films, of Al-
fred Hitchcock. Some of the film’s disturbing dream-like imagery
secured its status as a horror-like project and, like much of 1970s
American horror, it depicted male authority as both monstrous and
ineffectual. By contrast, Phantom of the Paradise (1974) was a dark
comedy-horror reworking of The Phantom of the Opera story, with
pop-musical interludes that resurrected some of the countercultural
playfulness of De Palma’s earlier work at a time when that type of
cinematic game was not popular. The film was clever and beautifully
made but it struggled to find an audience. The overblown psycholog-
ical thriller Obsession (1976) was a return to a Hitchcockian world,
although what was fresh in Sisters was starting to look like pastiche.
Carrie (1976) followed. This was one of the biggest commercial
successes of De Palma’s career and one of the best adaptations of a
Stephen King novel. Its high school and prom settings and its
teenage characterizations anticipated the slasher films that would
follow a few years later. However, what was most striking about the
film was its presentation of the “monster.” The telekinetic Carrie
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DE PALMA, BRIAN • 93
94 • DEKKER, FRED
DEMME, JONATHAN • 95
96 • DEODATO, RUGGERO
DIFFRING, ANTON • 97
98 • DISEASE
DISEMBODIED HANDS • 99
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been repeatedly
adapted for stage, screen and television. However, as has also been the
case with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
these adaptations have tended to be loose and selective. In large part,
this has something to do with the structure of Stevenson’s novel, which,
like Frankenstein and Dracula, is comprised of a series of episodes told
in the first person by different characters. An episodic collage of this
kind is ill-suited to direct translation into film or, for that matter, other
dramatic media. From early stage adaptations onwards, the emphasis
has been laid instead on the spectacle of the civilized Jekyll’s transfor-
mation into the animalistic and sensual Hyde, and sexual themes only
implicit in the original novel have also become increasingly fore-
grounded. It was particularly resonant in this respect that the major 1888
London stage production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde coincided with the
Jack the Ripper killings, with Stevenson’s conceptualization of male
duality clearly informing the way in which the Ripper’s activities were
discussed, both at the time and since. In fact, the idea of male sexuality
as a Hyde-like uncontrollable and dangerous force has proved one of
the more fascinating and potentially most pernicious aspects of the
Jekyll/Hyde cultural legacy.
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There were numerous silent film adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, including Der Januskopf (1920), a now lost film directed by
German master F. W. Murnau. The best-known silent version, how-
ever, was the 1920 American production directed by John S. Robert-
son. This starred John Barrymore, whose bravura performance of the
transformation scene—without the aid of special effects or special
makeup until near the end of the transformation—demonstrated the
possibilities the role of Jekyll/Hyde offered for a grandstanding style
of acting. Fredric March relied more on effects and makeup in his
rendition of the role in the 1931 version directed by Rouben Mamou-
lian but nevertheless won an Academy Award for his efforts. Mamou-
lian’s film took advantage of the relatively relaxed censorship of the
early 1930s to explore with a surprising degree of openness the so-
cio-sexual repression that Hyde sought to evade. By contrast, the
1941 version starring Spencer Tracy and directed by Victor Fleming
was more decorous, although it still retained a stately power.
Later versions of Jekyll/Hyde divorced the character even more
decisively from his original literary context. Jean Renoir’s television
film Le testament du Docteur Cordelier (The Testament of Dr. Corde-
lier) (1959) was a quietly serious treatment of the subject. In com-
parison, Hammer adopted a gimmicky approach for The Two Faces
of Dr. Jekyll (1960) by making Hyde a more physically attractive fig-
ure than the hirsute Jekyll and entrapping him in a gaudily melodra-
matic plot that had nothing to do with Stevenson’s novel. In the early
1970s, Hammer took this inventiveness yet further through having
Jekyll transformed into a woman in Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde
(1971), which, despite its weird premise, turned out to be one of the
company’s best later films. Even more bizarre was the Spanish hor-
ror Dr. Jekyll y el hombre lobo (Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf) (1971)
in which a Dr. Jekyll transforms a werewolf into Mr. Hyde. 1970s
blaxploitation horror offered Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976), while Wa-
lerian Borowczyk’s Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (Dr. Jekyll and his
women) (1981) and the Anthony Perkins’ vehicle Edge of Sanity
(1989) helped to keep the character alive, if only in exploitative
form. Mary Reilly (1996), which recounted the Jekyll story as told
by Jekyll’s maid, was a more serious treatment of the subject that
returned to Stevenson’s original narrative but from a revisionary
perspective. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), by
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102 • DOCUMENTARY
DOGS. Horror’s treatment of man’s best friend has been less nuanced
than its treatment of cats. Usually they are presented as the epitome
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DOLLS. Horror often renders the inanimate as animate, and the genre’s
representation of dolls is a good example of this. Threatening chil-
dren’s dolls show up in Dolls (1987), Poltergeist (1982) and most of
all in Child’s Play (1988) and its sequels, where the doll in question
is possessed by the spirit of a serial killer. Murderous puppets are the
stars of Puppet Master (1989) and its sequels, animated murderous
toys feature in Asylum (1972), while ventriloquist dolls that might or
might not be alive appear in Dead of Night (1945) and Magic (1978).
An affection for dolls has also been used by filmmakers to identify
adult characters who are in various ways still dangerously caught up
in childhood fears and anxieties, for example in the psychological
thrillers Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) and The Psychopath (1965)
and the giallo Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) (1975).
DRACULA • 105
being sued by Bram Stoker’s widow. In any event, the film’s vision
of a bald, grotesque vampiric parasite has not proved very influential
on later representations of either Dracula or the vampire in general
(although Nosferatu-like characteristics were displayed by the main
vampire villain in Tobe Hooper’s 1979 television film Salem’s Lot,
as well as featuring in Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake of Murnau’s
film).
The version of Dracula that established the norm against which
later Draculas defined themselves was the 1931 Universal produc-
tion directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the evil
Count. Here Dracula was presented in an altogether more attractive
and civilized form than he was in Nosferatu, for Lugosi’s vampire
was at home in polite social circles, comfortable in a tuxedo, and also
had a seductive power over women. The film was adapted from a
successful Broadway play that itself had been adapted—by John L.
Balderston—from an English stage version written by actor-man-
ager Hamilton Deane. Despite a picturesque opening sequence in
Transylvania (present in Stoker’s original novel but removed from
the stage plays for budgetary reasons), the film never really tran-
scended its theatrical source and it has not dated well. By contrast,
the Spanish-language version of Dracula shot by Universal at the
same time as the Browning film and starring Carlos Villarias as Drac-
ula displayed considerably more visual flair but lacked the charis-
matically exotic Lugosi, whose Hungarian-accented performance
was key to his film’s considerable commercial success and its con-
tinuing cult status.
Despite this success, sequels to Dracula were slow to follow.
The Count himself was briefly glimpsed as a corpse in Universal’s
first sequel to Dracula, Dracula’s Daughter (1936), but it was not
until the 1940s that he was fully resurrected for the stylish but mis-
leadingly titled Son of Dracula (1943), in which Dracula—not, so
far as one can tell, his son—was played by Lon Chaney Jr., an al-
together more American actor than Lugosi at a time when the for-
eign exoticism popular in the 1930s had gone out of fashion. The
film itself was set in contemporary America, and while the specta-
cle it offered of Dracula driving around in a motor car might seem
odd, this did maintain the emphasis on the contemporary in Uni-
versal’s previous Dracula films; in an early screenplay for the 1931
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106 • DRACULA
DRACULA • 107
–E–
on Elm Street (1984), Krueger was a genuinely nasty and cruel fig-
ure haunting the dreams of various hapless teenagers. However, in
the seven sequels that followed, Englund played him as a prankster,
exuding manic energy and offering a series of wisecracks as he
slaughtered his teenage victims. Perversely, it was Englund/Krueger
who became the hero of these films rather than the anodyne protago-
nists who represented the forces of good. Englund, in the guise of
Krueger, also hosted the television series Freddy’s Nightmares
(1988–1990).
Englund’s other genre credits include Eaten Alive (Death Trap)
(1977), Dead & Buried (1981), Galaxy of Terror (1981), C.H.U.D.
II—Bud the Chud (1989), The Phantom of the Opera (1989), Dance
Macabre (1991), Night Terrors (1993), The Mangler (1995), The
Vampyre Wars (1996), The Killer Tongue (1996), Wishmaster (1997),
Urban Legend (1998), Strangeland (1998), Python (2000), and 2001
Maniacs (2005). He also directed the horror film 976-Evil (1989).
EXPRESSIONISM • 111
perhaps too restrained for its own good. If nothing else, both prequels
underlined how effective Blatty and Friedkin had been in balancing
ambitious subject matter with the demands of popular entertainment.
112 • EYES
EYES. In many ways the eye is the principal human organ for horror
cinema. Directors will frequently use close-ups of the eyes of vic-
tims, wide and helpless, and monster, narrowed and aggressive, to ac-
centuate the genre’s sado-masochistic thrills. In addition, injuries to
eyes have contributed to some of the more assaultive moments in
horror, invoking as they do an audience’s sense of vulnerability about
this softest and most exposed of organs. The eye being cut open by a
straight razor at the beginning of the surrealist film Un chien andalou
(1928) is an early non-horror example of the emotive power of the
eye injury, and horror filmmakers have been reproducing that mo-
ment ever since. Eyes are slashed, stabbed or mutilated in, among
others, Horrors of the Black Museum (1959), La maschera del demo-
nio (The Mask of Satan, Black Sunday, The Revenge of the Vampire)
(1960), The Birds (1963), Witchfinder General (1968), Hands of the
Ripper (1971), Satan’s Slave (1976), Zombi 2 (Zombie, Zombie Flesh
Eaters) (1979), The Fog (1980), L’aldilà (The Beyond) (1981), Dead
and Buried (1981), Opera (Terror at the Opera) (1987) and Ôdishon
(Audition) (1999).
–F–
FANS • 113
in the genre of the monster being closer to home than before, with
this most clearly manifested through its familial nature. The murder-
ous child in The Bad Seed (1956) provided a hint at what was to
come, but it was Psycho (1960) that crystallized this theme through
its representation of an apparently dutiful son who turned out to be a
transvestite serial killer. More murderous children showed up in,
amongst others, Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Exorcist
(1973), It’s Alive (1974), The Omen (1976), and Halloween (1978),
while dangerous parents (or occasionally step-parents) featured, for
example, in British horrors Hands of the Ripper (1971), Countess
Dracula (1971), Demons of the Mind (1972), The Creeping Flesh
(1973), and Frightmare (1974), and American horrors Carrie
(1976), The Shining (1980), The Stepfather (1987), Parents (1989),
Society (1989), and The People Under the Stairs (1991). Monstrous
families have been a particular feature of rural horror films such as
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, remade in 2003), The Hills
Have Eyes (1977, remade in 2006) and House of 1000 Corpses
(2003), where they also often represent a degraded version of the
working class. Dysfunctional families of a gentler, usually more mid-
dle class, kind can also be found in abundance from the 1970s on-
wards, with weak parents and rebellious children a recurrent feature
in slasher films and other forms of teenage horror.
back into cinema. The advent of the internet offered new opportuni-
ties for horror fans, and a cursory search today will quickly find nu-
merous horror-based sites where fans record and reflect upon their
enthusiasms and debate new releases. Such enterprises underline the
extent to which horror fans are often active and creative viewers who
respond in critical ways to the material about which they care so
much. An awareness of fan activity of this kind is a necessary anti-
dote against those approaches to horror that assume that the horror
experience is essentially undemanding and repetitive and that it re-
quires little of its audience by way of intelligent reaction.
FARROW, MIA (1945– ). Mia Farrow knows how to suffer. She suf-
fered magnificently in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968),
where her character’s physical frailty and neurotic intensity were in-
dispensable to the film’s disturbing representation of pregnancy. She
suffered again as a blind woman terrorized by a serial killer in the
British-set Blind Terror (See No Evil) (1971) and as a grieving mother
haunted by a dead child in the ghost story Full Circle (1977). Finally,
in a canny piece of casting, it was her turn to dish out some suffering
as the evil nanny in the remake of The Omen (2006).
video box cover made the film one of the most notorious of British
“video nasties” during the early 1980s. Ms 45 (1981) is an equally
unforgiving rape-revenge story. Body Snatchers (1993), an effective
third version of the alien invasion fantasy Invasion of the Body
Snatchers story, abandoned Ferrara’s customary urban setting for a
military base out in the countryside. The modern vampire film The
Addiction (1995) returned to more familiar territory, with a weird and
unsettling mix of urban bloodletting and dense philosophizing that
some found pretentious and others compelling. See also AMERICAN
HORROR.
FINAL GIRL. The term Final Girl was coined by academic Carol J.
Clover to describe the female hero of the slasher film. Prior to the ad-
vent of the slasher, it was very rare to find a female protagonist in a
horror film who did not need rescuing by a male. The Final Girl was
different, however. She was usually distinguished from her teenage
compatriots through her watchfulness and her aggression, and she of-
ten had some masculine qualities as well—either a male-sounding
name or abilities or types of knowledge conventionally associated
with men. Most of all, she could not rely on a male hero to save her
but was routinely placed in a situation where she had to save herself.
A key Final Girl was Laurie Strode (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) in
John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), but her equivalent can be
found in most slashers of the late 1970s and early 1980s; she can also
arguably be found in Alien (1979), a science fiction/horror film that
owed more than a little to the slasher in its representation of Ripley
(played by Sigourney Weaver). As the 1980s progressed, Final Girls
became ever more aggressive and violent, especially in the Night-
mare on Elm Street films, where they sometimes displayed martial
arts abilities, and in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) where
it was the female protagonist who ultimately got to wield the chain-
saw. The fact that it is now commonplace in American horror films
to have a central female character more than capable of looking after
herself suggests that the figure of the Final Girl has become thor-
oughly institutionalized, a convention that we all take for granted. It
is worth remembering that it was not always like this.
monster and, although let down by some poor special effects, con-
tained some haunting sequences, while Dracula—Prince of Darkness
(1966), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), and Frankenstein Must
Be Destroyed (1969) were all handsomely mounted and stylish addi-
tions to Hammer’s Dracula and Frankenstein cycles. Best of all from
this later stage in Fisher’s career was another Hammer project, The
Devil Rides Out (1968), an adaptation of a Dennis Wheatley novel
that benefited from Richard Matheson’s excellent screenplay and a
career-best performance from Christopher Lee. Here Fisher took a
conventional battle between absolute good and absolute evil and cho-
reographed it into a series of symmetrical visual patterns and com-
positions. Good might win through in the end, as it always does with
Fisher, but one was left with a sense of the ways in which good and
evil balanced each other out and remained inextricably linked.
Fisher’s other genre credits include The Revenge of Frankenstein
(1958), The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), The Stranglers of
Bombay (1959), The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), and Franken-
stein and the Monster from Hell (1974).
his films are very bad indeed. Franco’s position in the horror genre is
far from clear. He has constantly returned to the genre throughout his
career but he is an idiosyncratic figure who has rarely fitted into
broader generic patterns or trends. In addition, much of his working
method has been based on improvisation rather than planned in any de-
tail. This can result in an experimental genre-bending approach but it
can also lead to scenes of extraordinary tedium, and most Franco films
manage to combine the two in varying proportions.
It was in the early part of his directing career that Franco came
closest to being a conventional filmmaker. His Spanish film Gritos en
la noche (The Awful Dr. Orloff) (1962) was a stylish example of the
surgical horror made popular a few years before by, among others,
Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957). The inevitable se-
quel, El secreto del Dr. Orloff (The Secret of Dr. Orloff, The Mis-
tresses of Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Jekyll’s Mistresses) (1964), offered more of
the same while Miss Muerte (The Diabolical Dr. Z) (1966) was a su-
perior revenge melodrama featuring death by poisoned fingernails.
Then came Necronomicon (Succubus) (1968), an obscurely plotted
dream-like drama which seemed to have something to do with sado-
masochistic fantasies and which contained some striking and beauti-
ful scenes but which did not make any obvious sense, at least not in
terms of the horror genre. Necronomicon has often been classified as
horror although this tends to be an approximate designation given the
oddness of the film.
Of Franco’s subsequent work, The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968),
The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969), El Conde Dracula (Count Dracula)
(1970), Il trono di fuoco (Night of the Blood Monster, The Bloody
Judge ) (1970), Drácula contra Frankenstein (Dracula vs. Franken-
stein) (1972), and Jack the Ripper (1976) were stolid treatments of
familiar genre fare. By contrast, Paroxismus (Venus in Furs) (1969),
Vampyros lesbos (Lesbian vampires) (1971), and Sie tötete in Ekstase
(She Killed in Ecstasy) (1971) operated more in the experimental
manner of Necronomicon, while Female Vampire (1973), which
starred Franco regular Lina Romay, was an impressive example of
erotic horror. Other films—and there are many others as Franco went
into overdrive during the 1970s and 1980s, directing four or five
films a year—are considerably more negligible. However, Faceless
(1988), which returned Franco to some of the material he had first
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FRANKENSTEIN • 123
124 • FRANKENSTEIN
19th and into the 20th century, with Peggy Webling’s 1930 stage ver-
sion providing the basis for the famous 1931 Universal film adapta-
tion. These all tended to emphasize spectacle and action over the con-
voluted narrative structure and philosophical monologues of the
novel, perhaps necessarily so given the differing demands of theater
and literature. Frankenstein (1910) and Life Without Soul (1915), two
American pre-sound film versions of the tale were similarly struc-
tured around the scenes of the creature’s creation and destruction.
The 1931 Universal version of Frankenstein, the studio’s follow-
up to its successful version of Dracula (1931) was originally to be di-
rected by Robert Florey with Bela Lugosi as Frankenstein’s cre-
ation. For reasons that are still not entirely clear—although some
reports indicate that Lugosi balked at playing a part without
dialogue—Lugosi and Florey left the project and were replaced by
British director James Whale and an unknown British actor by the
name of Boris Karloff. The resulting film was stylish, confident and
considerably more sustained than the uneven Dracula. Importantly, it
formed the character of Frankenstein into the mad scientist, who
would become a stock figure in 1930s and 1940s horror cinema. It
also established an image of the monster that would supplant all pre-
vious theatrical, and indeed literary, versions and become the norm
against which later representations of the monster would be judged.
This was the famous square-headed, bolt-necked creation designed
by makeup artist Jack Pierce. Mute and murderous (thanks to its ab-
normal brain, an innovation particularly disliked by Shelley purists)
but also victimized and sympathetic: this monster was a mass of con-
tradictions, and arguably it was this quality that rendered it such a
fascinating figure.
Bride of Frankenstein (1935) was Whale’s extravagant follow-up.
The film still offered spectacular scenes of creation and destruction
and it also brought back Karloff’s apparently indestructible monster
(who here briefly acquired some rudimentary verbal abilities). At the
same time, Bride of Frankenstein’s tongue remained firmly in its
cheek as it exhibited a type of humor that, to contemporary audiences
at least, can seem decidedly camp. Playfulness of this kind would
generally be absent from later Universal sequels, although it would
resurface in other film versions. Such differences in tone are arguably
as important to an understanding of the progress of Frankenstein and
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FRANKENSTEIN • 125
126 • FRANKENSTEIN
which, like the 1931 version, only drew in a limited way on the orig-
inal novel. This color production, which was directed by Terence
Fisher, starred Peter Cushing as Frankenstein and a then unknown
actor called Christopher Lee as a savage and animalistic Creature
entirely lacking the pathos apparent in Karloff’s earlier perform-
ances. Hammer’s Frankenstein was far from being a mad scientist.
Although capable of great cruelty and ruthlessness, he was also
supremely cool and rational, an appropriate embodiment of science
in a nuclear age. Unlike the Universal films, the Hammer sequels fo-
cused on the scientist himself rather than his creations, who changed
from one film to another. The emphasis was always on Frankenstein’s
schemes. These were often bold and ambitious, involving activities
such as brain or soul transplants, but which usually ended up com-
promised or thwarted by his questionable methods and by the short-
sightedness of the society within which he had to work. Fisher’s The
Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) was followed by Freddie Francis’s
The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), with Fisher returning to the cycle
with Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) and Frankenstein Must Be
Destroyed (1969). Cushing was replaced by Ralph Bates in The Hor-
ror of Frankenstein (1970), Hammer’s unsuccessful attempt to pro-
duce a more youthful version of the Frankenstein story, but it was
business as usual for Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974),
the final film in the Hammer cycle, with Cushing starring and Fisher
directing.
Two American Frankenstein films were released shortly after the
success of The Curse of Frankenstein. I Was a Teenage Frankenstein
(1957), which was part of a late 1950s cycle of teenage horror,
transplanted the Frankenstein story to a contemporary university set-
ting, while the main noteworthy feature of Frankenstein—1970
(1958) was that it starred Karloff as the scientist rather than as the
Monster. Neither of these seriously challenged Hammer’s domi-
nance, however, and it was not until the early 1970s, when Hammer’s
cycle was visibly running down, that a significant number of alter-
nate Frankenstein films appeared. Some of these were negligible,
among them La figlia di Frankenstein (Lady Frankenstein) (1971),
Dracula versus Frankenstein (1971) and the blaxploitation film
Blackenstein (1973). Others did offer an interesting reinterpretation
of the Frankenstein story, among them Frankenstein: The True Story
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FRANKENSTEIN • 127
FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980). There are eleven Friday the 13th films to
date, and two of them have the word Final in their titles. However,
such has been the commercial resilience of this particular horror cy-
cle that it has survived all attempts to kill it off. Friday the 13th
(1980), which was directed by Sean S. Cunningham, appeared in
the wake of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and was generally
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mad Renfield, Frye contorted his body and played every line with a
manic intensity. Even within the context of American horror films of
the early 1930s, which often featured extreme performances—for ex-
ample, Colin Clive as Frankenstein—Frye’s expressive and highly
physical renditions of insanity stood out. He reprised his cackling
madman role in The Vampire Bat (1933), Bride of Frankenstein
(1935), and The Crime of Dr. Crespi (1935), although there was also
a rare straight performance, albeit in a small uncredited role, in
Whale’s The Invisible Man (1933). By the time he returned to horror
in the 1940s, this type of acting was out of fashion, and his brief ap-
pearances in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and Frankenstein
Meets the Wolf Man (1943) were suitably restrained. However, the
poverty row shocker Dead Men Walk (1943) saw him back in hunch-
back mode for the last time.
Fulci began directing in 1959, and for the first part of his career
specialized mainly in broad comedy. In the late 1960s, he switched to
the then popular giallo thriller with Una sull’altra (One on Top of the
Other) (1969), Una lucertola con la pelle di donna (A Lizard in a
Woman’s Skin) (1971), and Non si sevizia un paperino (Don’t Torture
a Duckling) (1972). Although this change in career direction coin-
cided with the suicide of Fulci’s wife, it is by no means clear that this
was anything other than a commercially minded filmmaker latching
onto a new market trend. In any event, Fulci was clearly comfortable
with the convoluted plotting, emphasis on deviant sexualities, and the
foregrounding of extreme style that characterized the giallo. He was
also willing to innovate within the format. This was most clearly
demonstrated by Non si sevizia un paperino which, unusually for a
giallo, had a rural setting. Here Fulci offered a thoughtful exploration
of the conflict between traditional and modern Italian social mores,
took a swipe at the Catholic Church (the killer turns out to be a priest)
and also provided one of his keynote set pieces with a graphic, un-
sparing sequence in which a woman is beaten to death with heavy
chains. As one might expect, the sequence is repulsively violent but
it is also—through its inventive staging and editing—disturbingly
beautiful. It is a provocative moment in what is probably Fulci’s best
and most challenging film. Later Fulci projects would often be ar-
resting but would also lack the discipline and structure of this partic-
ular giallo.
Fulci returned to farce with the comedy-horror Il cavaliere
Costante Nicosia demoniaco . . . orrero Dracula in Brianza (1975)—
which literally translates as The Demonic Womanizer Costante
Nicosia—or Dracula in Brianza, although the film’s international ti-
tle was the more manageable Young Dracula—and also directed the
effective supernatural thriller Sette note in nero (The Psychic) (1977).
However, it was Zombi 2 (1979) that determined the shape of the lat-
ter part of his career. George Romero’s zombie spectacular Dawn of
the Dead (1978) had been marketed in Italy as Zombi, and Zombi 2
was so titled to cash in on its success, although outside of Italy it was
known as either Zombie or Zombie Flesheaters. The film combined
eerie sequences with narrative longeurs and crude gore effects, no-
tably an unpleasant scene in which a woman has a large wooden
splinter pushed into one of her eyes.
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–G–
GEIN, ED • 137
book series. Le pacte des loups (The Brotherhood of the Wolf) (2001)
turned out to be his biggest commercial success to date. It offered an
unusual but exciting combination of French period drama, martial
arts fights, and horror imagery in its depiction of a monster terroriz-
ing pre-revolutionary France. Gans’ next project was Silent Hill
(2006), an English-language adaptation of a computer game that
featured ghosts in the manner of Japanese horror, but which drew
some of its iconography from Italian horror, and especially from the
work of Lucio Fulci. See also FRENCH HORROR.
GERMAN HORROR. The noted film historian Lotte Eisner once sug-
gested that the German soul instinctively preferred twilight. Whether
or not this is actually the case, German cinema of the post-World War I
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140 • GHOSTS
GIALLO • 141
142 • GIALLO
that far exceeds any possible narrative motivation. The fact that some
of the key giallo directors, notably Mario Bava and Dario Argento,
also directed supernatural horrors further underlines the closeness of
this type of film to the horror genre.
The giallo film is usually seen as beginning with two Bava films,
La ragazza che sapeva troppo (The Girl Who Knew Too Much, The
Evil Eye) (1962) and Sei donne per l’assassino (Blood and Black
Lace) (1964). However, the boom in giallo production did not take
place until the 1970s, a decade in which, according to some accounts,
over one hundred such films were made. Many of these were inter-
national co-productions involving Germany, France or Spain that fea-
tured stars little known outside of continental Europe—including
from Uruguay George Hilton (real name Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara),
from France Edwige Fenech and from Spain Susan Scott (real name
Nieves Navarro). Thematically, they were a disparate group of films
but certain features recurred. Urban settings predominated, although
there were a few distinguished rural gialli, among them Lucio Fulci’s
Non si sevizia un paperino (Don’t Torture a Duckling) (1972) and
Pupi Avati’s La casa dalle finestre che ridono (The House with
Laughing Windows) (1976). There was also a predilection—possibly
influenced by Argento’s work—for featuring black-gloved killers and
having ornate titles that were often shortened for international distri-
bution. For example, Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo
di Jennifer? (1972)—which translates as “Why are those strange
drops of blood on Jennifer’s body?”—became the more mundane The
Case of the Bloody Iris, while I corpi presentano tracce di violenza
carnale (1973), which means “The bodies show signs of sexual vio-
lence,” became Torso. Music was also important, with obtrusive
scores by the likes of Ennio Morricone, Riz Ortolani and the rock
group Goblin helping to augment the films’ visual spectacle.
Giallo production as a significant feature of the Italian film indus-
try faded away during the 1980s, although some directors have con-
tinued to make them, notably Argento with films such as Opera (Ter-
ror at the Opera) (1987) and Nonhosonno (Sleepless) (2001). The
1970s giallo has sometimes been as anticipating or influencing the
American slasher film of the late 1970s, although the slasher’s pref-
erence for rural or suburban settings and teenage characters tends to
separate it out from the more cosmopolitan and adult-centered giallo.
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Directors associated with the giallo, other than those listed above,
include Lamberto Bava, Franco Ferrini, Aldo Lado, Umberto
Lenzi, Antonio Margheriti, Sergio Martino, and Michele Soavi.
See also ITALIAN HORROR.
GOBLIN. The Italian rock group Goblin has been responsible for some
distinctive horror music, especially for director Dario Argento. The
group was founded in the 1970s by Claudio Simonetti and Massimo
Morante, although the overall lineup has changed several times over
the years. The group’s fondness for repetitive themes conjoined with
weird sounds was apparent in their debut score for Argento’s giallo
Profondo rosso (Deep Red) (1975), where it perfectly illustrated the
fixated world of an obsessed serial killer, and in their nerve-jangling
music (written under the name The Goblins) for Argento’s witch-
craft film Suspiria (1977), where it very effectively conveyed a sense
of being trapped in a world full of magic. Billed either as Goblin or
under the names of individual members of the group, they went on to
produce music for Argento’s Tenebre (Tenebrae) (1982), Phenomena
(1985), La Chiesa (The Church) (1989), and Nonhosonno (Sleepless)
(2001). Other Goblin horror scores include Buio Omega (Beyond the
Darkness) (1979), Contamination (1980), and Night of the Zombies
(1981), and the group also provided alternative scores for the Italian
releases of George Romero’s Martin (1977) and Dawn of the Dead
(1978) as well as the Australian horror Patrick (1978).
Batch (1990), Deep Rising (1998), The Mummy (1999), and The
Haunting (1999).
When sections of his Omen score showed up in the 2006 remake,
it felt like an old friend returning.
THE GOLEM. The figure of the Golem, who is fashioned from clay
and then magically brought to life, came originally from Jewish folk-
lore. So far as his cinematic existence was concerned, he first ap-
peared in the German production Der Golem (1915). Paul Wegener
co-directed this now lost film (along with Henrik Galeen) and also
starred as the Golem. Wegener returned to the role in the comedy Der
Golem und die Tänzerin (The Golem and the Dancing Girl) (1917),
although his character was here only pretending to be the monster.
Considerably more serious was Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam
(The Golem: How He Came Into The World) (1920), with Wegener
again starring and also co-directing, this time with Carl Boese. This
version has come to be seen as a classic example of Expressionism,
and its depiction of an oversized, lumbering monster also seems to
have been an influence on James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931).
Julien Duvivier directed a French version, Le Golem, in 1936,
Císaruv pekar a pekaruv císar (The Emperor’s Baker and the Golem)
(1951) was a Czech comic version, and the Golem also showed up in
the British horror film It (1966).
GORE • 147
148 • GORE
GOTHIC • 149
GOTHIC. The term gothic has several meanings, although these all
tend to involve notions of wildness, excess and transgression. Gothic
can denote a particular architectural style. It is also a period in liter-
ary history, usually defined as running from the 1760s through to the
1820s (although some literary historians see it as beginning earlier
and ending later), a period in which the trappings of later horror
films—notably castles, dungeons and sinister aristocrats—are first
established. Mary Shelley’s famous 1818 novel Frankenstein is a
gothic novel in this sense. However, Frankenstein can potentially be
thought of as gothic in a generic sense as well inasmuch as it seems
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–H–
HALLER, DANIEL (1926– ). During the late 1950s and first half of the
1960s, Daniel Haller was an art director and/or production designer
working mainly for Roger Corman. Early horror credits included the
Corman-directed A Bucket of Blood (1959), The Little Shop of Horrors
(1960), and The Wasp Woman (1960) and the Corman-produced Night
of the Blood Beast (1958) and Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). Cor-
man’s bigger-budgeted adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s writings af-
forded Haller more of an opportunity to come up with some striking de-
signs, which accordingly he did for House of Usher (1960), Pit and the
Pendulum (1961), The Premature Burial (1962), Tales of Terror (1962),
The Raven (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963), and The Masque of the
Red Death (1964). He also designed Corman’s Tower of London (1962),
X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes (1963), and The Terror (1963), as well as
Reginald LeBorg’s Diary of a Madman (1963).
Haller switched to film direction in the mid-1960s. Die, Monster,
Die! (1965), his debut, was a stylish adaptation of a story by H. P.
Lovecraft. He later returned to the genre with a more uneven Love-
craft film, The Dunwich Horror (1970). Thereafter he worked mainly
for television.
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HALLOWEEN • 153
HAMMER • 155
During the first half of the 1950s, Hammer had half-heartedly dab-
bled in science fiction, with Four Sided Triangle (1953) and Space-
ways (1953). However, the substantial success enjoyed by its science
fiction/horror hybrid The Quatermass Xperiment (The Creeping Un-
known) (1955) seems to have taken the company by surprise.
Adapted, like so many Hammer projects, from a pre-existing
source—in this case Nigel Kneale’s groundbreaking television series
for the British Broadcasting Corporation—the film offered higher
production values than usual and was slickly directed by Val Guest.
Hammer would subsequently make two Quatermass sequels, as well
as another SF/horror, X—the Unknown (1956).
The idea for a color remake of the Frankenstein story actually
came from the American writer-producer Milton Subotsky (who
later would set up his own British horror company, Amicus), al-
though Subotsky took no active part in the production of The Curse
of Frankenstein (1957). As directed by Terence Fisher, who would
become Hammer’s main horror director, the resulting film was
graphic, shocking and quite unlike anything seen before either in
British cinema or in horror cinema. Its huge international success en-
couraged Hammer to develop more color period horrors, starting
with Dracula (Horror of Dracula) (1958), a film that confirmed
Peter Cushing’s stardom after his performance in The Curse of
Frankenstein and made an international star out of Christopher Lee.
Other producers, in Britain, Italy and Spain, also sought to cash in on
Hammer’s success, to the extent that Hammer can be seen as partly
responsible for the boom in European horror production that took
place from the late 1950s onwards.
For the next few years, Hammer worked hard to consolidate its
horror formula, which usually involved charismatic male authority
figures, buxom women and scenarios charged with sensuality and vi-
olence. Its rapid serial production was aided by the fact that much of
the Hammer team—which included, alongside Fisher, writer Jimmy
Sangster, cinematographers Jack Asher and Arthur Grant, pro-
duction designer Bernard Robinson, editor James Needs and com-
poser James Bernard—was already established before the com-
pany’s turn to horror. In this period, Hammer produced its first
Frankenstein and Dracula sequels with The Revenge of Frankenstein
(1958) and The Brides of Dracula (1960) (although Dracula himself
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156 • HAMMER
did not appear in this). It also revived the werewolf in The Curse of
the Werewolf (1961) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in The Two Faces
of Dr. Jekyll (1960), as well as offering new versions of The Mummy
(1959) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) and the mad scien-
tist drama The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959). As if this were
not enough, it also initiated a series of psychological thrillers, be-
ginning with Seth Holt’s Taste of Fear (Scream of Fear) (1961).
The box-office disappointment of The Phantom of the Opera
(1962) brought this frenetic period to an end. For the remainder of the
1960s, Hammer continued to churn out the horrors, and some of its
films were inventive and accomplished—for example Don Sharp’s
The Kiss of the Vampire (1962), Fisher’s The Gorgon (1964), John
Gilling’s The Plague of the Zombies (1966) and his The Reptile
(1966), and Fisher’s The Devil Rides Out (1968). The Dracula,
Frankenstein and Mummy films that appeared were more hit and
miss, although good work was still being done here, especially by
Fisher. Much the same could be said of Hammer’s psychological
thrillers, which mixed the routine with the worthwhile (with Holt’s
1965 film The Nanny a particularly outstanding piece of work in this
area). The company also diversified in this period, successfully with
an exotic adventure She (1965) and the dinosaur film One Million
Years B.C. (1966), and disastrously with the science fiction/western
Moon Zero Two (1969). In 1968 Hammer produced the television
horror series Journey to the Unknown and also received the Queen’s
Award for Industry.
By the 1970s, Hammer’s period horror format was starting to look
very tired, and the company’s attempts to regenerate itself through in-
creasing the sex, violence and general sensationalism in its films
were not uniformly successful. The lesbian vampire film The Vampire
Lovers (1970) did well at the box office and generated two sequels,
Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Twins of Evil (1971). Other innovative
projects such as Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) and Captain Kro-
nos—Vampire Hunter (1972) and, most of all, the kung fu/horror hy-
brid The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974) smacked of
desperation and did not catch the public’s imagination. Good work, if
not necessarily commercially successful work, was being done in this
period, mainly by the younger directors who had been moving into
British horror since the late 1960s. Three films from Peter Sasdy,
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Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) (the last good Hammer Dracula
film), Countess Dracula (1971), and Hands of the Ripper (1971),
along with Robert Young’s Vampire Circus (1972) and Peter Sykes’
Demons of the Mind (1972), offered incisive critiques of those au-
thority figures who had been so prominent in the initial cycle of
Hammer production back in the late 1950s. Hammer’s final horror
film, Sykes’ Satanic thriller To the Devil a Daughter (1976), contin-
ued this theme, as well as attempting to harness itself to the success
of the American horror film The Exorcist (1973). Unfortunately, it
was not enough, and Hammer ceased horror production.
Under a different management regime, Hammer subsequently pro-
duced two more television series, Hammer House of Horror (1980)
and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984).
the full resources of the orchestra, which made his strings-only score
for Psycho all the more surprising; the composer later claimed that it
was black and white music for a black and white film. He also wrote
the orchestral score for the dark psychological thriller Cape Fear
(1962)—which was reused for Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake—and
was sound consultant for Hitchcock’s music-less The Birds (1963). For
much of the 1960s, Herrmann’s type of film music was perceived as
old-fashioned and he was not much in demand, for American films at
least. Instead he worked for François Truffaut on two films and also
wrote the music for the British psychological thriller Twisted Nerve
(1968). During the 1970s, a new generation of filmmakers, who were
more appreciative of the expressive potential of Herrmann’s music,
hired him for their films. Brian De Palma used him for Sisters (1973)
and Obsession (1976), and Larry Cohen managed to get a particularly
discordant score for his “monstrous baby on the loose” drama It’s
Alive! (1974). Herrmann’s final score was for Scorsese’s Taxi Driver
(1976), which, in its shocking violence, was also a kind of horror film.
riod horror Cry of the Banshee (1970), both of which had fragmented
narratives and displayed what for the time was a fashionable identi-
fication with youth and a disregard for authority figures. Murders in
the Rue Morgue (1971) was another AIP production, although shot in
Spain and subject to some re-editing by producers as a result of
Hessler’s increasingly experimental approach to narrative structure.
Hessler next made the thriller Embassy (1972) and the fantasy ad-
venture The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) before returning to the
United States, where he specialized in television direction.
HINDS, ANTHONY (1922– ). Anthony Hinds was one of the main pro-
ducers and writers for Hammer Films. The son of the company’s co-
founder Willliam Hinds, he was a key figure in the formation of the dis-
tinctive Hammer horror formula, which combined a sensuous style with
a fairly rigid moral framework. He produced many Hammer horrors, in-
cluding The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (Horror of
Dracula) (1958), and also wrote screenplays under the name “John El-
der” for, among others, The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), Kiss of the
Vampire (1962) and The Evil of Frankenstein (1964). He worked less
often as producer after the mid-1960s but continued his writing with
Hammer’s Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) and Ty-
burn’s The Ghoul (1974) and Legend of the Werewolf (1975).
horrors, namely Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963). Yet he remains
an influential figure within the horror genre. In part this has to do
with his contribution to the development of the psychological
thriller, a format that often has horror-like qualities. The Lodger
(1927) is an early example of a serial killer film, and Hitchcock
would elaborate further on the figure of the serial killer in Shadow of
a Doubt (1943), Frenzy (1972), and, not least, in Psycho where the
killer was based loosely on real-life murderer Ed Gein. Even by
Hitchcock’s innovative standards, Psycho was a daring film, in its
stark black-and-white appearance, its screeching musical score (pro-
vided by Bernard Herrmann), its relative openness about the repre-
sentation of deviant sexuality, and its ruthless killing off of its hero-
ine long before the film’s conclusion. In many ways, it inaugurated
the modern American horror film, although its full influence was
not felt for several years. Hitchcock’s follow-up, The Birds, was a
fine example of open-ended apocalyptic horror, with the attacking
birds pointedly left undefeated at the film’s conclusion. Hitchcock
himself suggested that The Birds offered an attack on the compla-
cency of its characters, and this idea of the complacent getting their
come-uppance has subsequently become an important feature of
modern horror.
Hitchcock’s long-running television show Alfred Hitchcock Pre-
sents (1955–1962) mixed crime stories with horror stories, suggest-
ing that Hitchcock’s persona encompassed both genres.
HOMOSEXUALITY • 165
HOOPER, TOBE (1943– ). For a film with a reputation for being wild
and uncontrolled, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), turns out
to be a remarkably disciplined piece of work. In large part this is due
to the input of its director, Tobe Hooper (who also co-scripted and co-
produced the film). His handling of the slow, measured transition
from mildly disturbing scenes to the climactic terrorization of the
film’s Final Girl was confident and effective, his camerawork unob-
trusively stylish, and he also managed to inject humor into the most
appalling scenes in a manner that accentuated the terror rather than
dispelling it. It is a testament to his skill that the film appeared far
more violent and gory than it actually was, and it is now deservedly
considered to be a major work of cinematic horror.
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From the mid-1980s onwards, Hooper also directed some films for
television—notably a segment of the horror anthology Body Bags
(1993) and I’m Dangerous Tonight (1990)—and contributed to some
television series, including Amazing Stories (1985–1987), Freddy’s
Nightmares (1988–1990), Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996), Dark
Skies (1996–1997), Perversions of Science (1997), The Others
(2000), Night Visions (2001), Taken (2002), and, appropriately for
someone with his status in the horror genre, Masters of Horror
(2005– ). He also co-produced the 2003 remake of his own The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
haunted house film. The Watcher in the Woods (1980), also filmed in
Britain, was an unlikely foray by the Disney company into horror.
The need to retain the family audience led to an uneasy and much
reshot end-product, albeit one that was still interesting. By contrast,
The Incubus (1981)—which took as its subject demonic rape and
murder in an American town—was strictly for adults only.
Hough’s other genre credits include Howling IV: The Original
Nightmare (1988), American Gothic (1988) and Bad Karma (2002).
He also contributed to the British television series Hammer House of
Mystery and Suspense (1984).
–I–
172 • INSECTS
box office marked the end of the Indian horror boom. The association
of horror with productions of low cultural status, which had largely
been established by the Ramsays, has meant that subsequent attempts
to move the genre upmarket or to broaden its appeal have not done
well—for example, the possession drama Raat (1992), which ex-
cluded songs and dances. Neither has Indian cinema managed to pro-
duce an internationally palatable mixture of Western and non-Western
horror conventions in the manner, say, of some recent Japanese hor-
ror films. For the time being at least, it seems that the Indian exper-
iment with horror is over.
INSECTS. The horror genre has long been in the habit of using insects
both for general atmospheric purposes and as monsters in their own
right. Spiders in particular have scuttled through many a sinister castle
or dungeon from the Universal Dracula (1931) onwards, while the
Italian horror La maschera del demonio (The Mask of Satan, Revenge
of the Vampire, Black Sunday) (1960) offered the unnerving spectacle
of scorpions crawling out of the eye sockets of a dead witch. The Amer-
ican science fiction/horror monster movies of the 1950s introduced the
practice of enlarging insects (or in a few cases making humans small so
that the insects appear large), with this often connecting with nuclear
anxieties and an associated sense that nature was out of control. Giant
ants featured in Them! (1954), giant spiders in Tarantula (1955), The In-
credible Shrinking Man (1957), and Earth vs. The Spider (The Spider)
(1958), giant locusts in Beginning of the End (1957), a giant preying
mantis in The Deadly Mantis (1957) and a range of magnified insects in
The Black Scorpion (1957). Since the 1950s, giant insects have made
only occasional appearances, notably in the 1970s with The Giant Spi-
der Invasion (1975) and Empire of the Ants (1977). Many of these films
were let down by some unconvincing model work, but more recently
state of the art special effects have produced some convincing giant spi-
ders in Eight Legged Freaks (2002) and, most of all, in horror-like se-
quences in fantasy films Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
(2002) and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the
King (2003). Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong also contained its
fair share of large ferocious insects, as did Paul Verhoeven’s earlier
Starship Troopers (1997), while Guillermo del Toro’s Mimic (1997)
featured giant insects that can imitate human beings.
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itself with Hammer. At the same time, there was often a stylistic
bravura to these films and an ability to convey extreme emotional
states in what might be described as an operatic manner. The 1960s
also saw some weird genre hybrids, including horror/peplum combi-
nations such as Bava’s Ercole al centro della terra (Hercules and the
Haunted World) (1961) and Roma contra Roma (War of the Zombies)
(1963) (peplum films were period adventure epics, often with Greco-
Roman settings and featuring legendary heroes such as Hercules) and
Bava’s science fiction/horror hybrid Terrore nello spazio (Planet of
the Vampires) (1965).
By the 1970s, Italian period horror had faded away, and it was the
contemporary giallo thriller that was in vogue. This distinctly Italian
format had been present during the 1960s, with Bava yet again a sig-
nificant figure as the director of several early giallo films. During the
1970s, other directors also specialized in this area, most notable
among them the brilliant Dario Argento, who also directed super-
natural films such as Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). Other cy-
cles were more obviously a response to non-Italian sources. For ex-
ample, there was a small cycle of films that drew upon the American
horror film The Exorcist (1973) for inspiration, among them
L’anticristo (The Antichrist) (1974), Chi sei? (The Devil within Her)
(1974), and L’ossessa (The Sexorcist) (1974). Later in the 1970s, Lu-
cio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (Zombie, Zombie Flesheaters) (1979) offered it-
self as an unauthorized sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the
Dead (1978), which had been marketed in Italy with the title Zombi,
and other Italian zombie films quickly followed. As imitative as these
films sought to be, their content and style were often markedly dif-
ferent from the original sources, with a greater emphasis on spectacle
and gore and also an evident willingness on the part of the filmmak-
ers to deploy unconventional and sometimes downright confusing
narrative structures. There was also a cycle of very graphic canni-
balism films, the most notorious of which was Ruggero Deodato’s
Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Although cannibalism had been a theme
in 1970s American horror, the Italian versions were not imitative of
American sources in the manner of the zombie films. Instead the
pseudo-anthropological approach they often adopted allied them
more with the sensationalist documentaries—known as Mondo
films after the first such production, Mondo cane (A Dog’s Life)
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–J–
JACK THE RIPPER. Jack the Ripper’s murky historical origins have
helped to establish him both as a disturbing cultural icon and as the
serial killer par excellence. No one knows who murdered a series of
prostitutes in London in 1888 (although there has been and continues
to be much debate as to the Ripper’s identity) and there is no defini-
tive agreement as to how many were killed (although the consensus
appears to be five victims). It is also not clear where the name “Jack
the Ripper” came from, although some historians have suggested that
it was devised by an enterprising journalist rather than by the mur-
derer himself (or herself, if you believe some of the theories). In any
event, the mystery of the Ripper’s identity has encouraged both spec-
ulation and exploitation, with artists of all kinds returning repeatedly
to the scenes of the Ripper’s crimes and extracting a range of stories
from them. In many of the ensuing representations, the city itself has
acquired a Ripper-like hue as a location that is fascinating but dan-
gerous (especially dangerous for women).
Early cinematic appearances for the Ripper or Ripper-like killers
included two German films, Paul Leni’s Das Wachsfigurenkabinett
(Waxworks) (1924)—in which the killer was billed as “Springheel
Jack” but was presented more as a Ripper figure—and G. W. Pabst’s
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Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box) (1929), in which it was the
Ripper who killed the film’s unfortunate heroine. Alfred Hitch-
cock’s British production The Lodger (1927) was an adaptation of
Marie Belloc Lowndes’s Ripper novel, although in Hitchcock’s ver-
sion the mysterious lodger, played by Ivor Novello, turned out to be
innocent rather than the novel’s killer. The Lodger was remade three
times: The Lodger (1932), directed by Maurice Elvey, featured Nov-
ello again as the unjustly accused innocent, while both John Brahm’s
The Lodger (1944) and Hugo Fregonese’s Man in the Attic (1954) re-
stored the lodger’s serial killer status, with Laird Cregar and Jack
Palance respectively playing the Ripper. Hammer’s Room to Let
(1950) also dealt with similar material.
1960s British horror cinema came up with two Ripper films, both
of which rejected the psychologizing of the killer found in the vari-
ous versions of The Lodger and instead offered atmospheric who-
dunnits that drew upon some of the traditional suspects for the
killings (e.g., mad doctors, aristocrats). In Jack the Ripper (1958), an
American policeman helped to track down the killer, who was re-
vealed to be a doctor avenging the death of his son, while A Study in
Terror (1965) pitted Sherlock Holmes against the Ripper, revealed
this time as an aristocrat. In the 1970s, Hammer added to the Ripper
canon Roy Ward Baker’s Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), in
which the title character turned out to be Jack the Ripper as well. This
was not as ridiculous a plot twist as might be imagined; at the time of
the original killings, newspapers had made references to Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde and an actor playing the role of Jekyll on stage in Lon-
don had apparently become a Ripper suspect, albeit briefly. (The
1989 Anthony Perkins’ film Edge of Sanity would also make a con-
nection between Jekyll and the Ripper.) More successful was Peter
Sasdy’s Hammer film Hands of the Ripper (1971), which dealt with
the Ripper’s daughter seeking to escape from her father’s influence
and which was a rare example of a horror film engaging, if only ten-
tatively, with the sexual politics of the Ripper story.
Jesus Franco’s German production Jack the Ripper (1976) lacked
this kind of ambition, but it was stylish in places and also remarkably
gory. Bob Clark’s Murder by Decree (1979) was another Holmes
versus the Ripper narrative, although in a characteristically 1970s
anti-establishment maneuver, the killings were shown as part of a
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tured as an issue in any of the films cited above. Instead the empha-
sis has been either on the tortuous psychology of the killer or on the
idea of the Ripper as the epitome of evil. The increasingly tiresome
attempts to identify him have also become something of a distraction.
–K–
Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949). However, his finest
1940s work was done for horror producer Val Lewton, with dis-
turbing studies of obsession and cruelty in The Body Snatcher
(1945), Isle of the Dead (1945), and Bedlam (1946).
During the 1950s and early 1960s, the melodramatic style of hor-
ror with which Karloff had become associated went out of fashion
and he worked less in the genre, although his status as horror icon led
to his presenting two horror-themed television shows, The Veil
(1958) and Thriller (1960–1962). The last few years of his life did
see a revival in his fortunes, however. Although suffering from ill
health, he managed a spirited comedy turn in director Roger Cor-
man’s reworking of The Raven (1963), played a particularly sinister
vampire in Mario Bava’s Il tre volti della paura (Black Sabbath)
(1963), and went on to produce two of his best performances since
the 1930s in Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers (1967) and Pete Bog-
danovich’s Targets (1968). In The Sorcerers he returned yet again to
the role of the misunderstood scientist, while in Targets he played an
ageing horror star confronted by the modern horror of a motiveless
sniper. Both Reeves and Bogdanovich used Karloff’s all-too-obvious
physical frailty to comment elegaically on the passing of an old hor-
ror cinema in a harsh modern world; Karloff conducted himself with
great dignity throughout.
Boris Karloff died on 2 February 1969 in Sussex, England. Some
Mexican horror films in which he appeared were released in the two
years following his death. His other horror or horror-related credits
are Behind the Mask (1932), Juggernaut (1936), The Man Who
Changed His Mind (1936), Tower of London (1939), Black
Friday (1940), The Climax (1944), The Strange Door (1951), The
Black Castle (1952), Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde (1953), Voodoo Island (1957), Grip of the Strangler (1958),
Frankenstein—1970 (1958), Corridors of Blood (1958), The Terror
(1963), The Comedy of Terrors (1964), Die, Monster, Die! (1965),
Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), Serenata macabra (House of
Evil) (1968), La camera del terror (The Fear Chamber) (1968),
Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968), El coleccionista de cadavere (The
Corpse Collector, Cauldron of Blood) (1970), La muertre viviente
(Isle of the Snake People) (1971), and La invasión siniestra (The In-
credible Invasion) (1971).
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that took place in the 1970s. In Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and its
sequel The Return of Count Yorga (1971), the aristocratic vampire—
played by Robert Quarry—moved comfortably among the citizens of
modern America, and both films had the open endings that at the time
were becoming something of a generic convention. Kelljan also di-
rected Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973), a similarly themed vampire
story that was the sequel to the blaxploitation hit, Blacula (1972).
KIER, UDO (1944– ). The German actor Udo Kier’s credits have in-
cluded work for distinguished directors such as Rainer Werner Fass-
binder, Werner Herzog, Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier and Wim Wen-
ders. However, he has also appeared in numerous horror films,
usually in sinister, soft-spoken parts. He had a strong supporting role
in the controversial witch hunter drama Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält
(Mark of the Devil) (1970) but came to genre prominence with his
performances as Frankenstein and Dracula in Paul Morrissey’s
Euro-camp extravaganzas Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood
for Dracula (1974). He further established his horror credentials by
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playing Jack the Ripper and Doctor Jekyll in two Walerian Borow-
czyk films, Lulu (1980) and Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (Dr. Jekyll
and his women (1981). Kier’s other European horror credits include
a leading role in the British psychological thriller Exposé (1976), a
cameo in Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) and appearances in Das
Deutsche Kettensägen Massaker (literally The German Chainsaw
Massacre but sold overseas as Blackest Heart) (1991) and Shadow of
the Vampire (2000). From the late 1990s onwards, he has also ap-
peared with increasing frequency in American films, usually in vil-
lainous roles. He showed up in the vampire movie Blade (1998), the
Satanic thriller End of Days (1999), the apocalyptic drama Revelation
(2001) and the ghost story FeardotCom (2002), as well as in lower-
budgeted productions such as Headspace (2005) and BloodRayne
(2005). Perhaps his most striking genre performance was done for
Danish television, however. He was the principal villain in Lars von
Trier’s horror-themed miniseries Riget (The Kingdom) (1994) and
also played a deformed baby in its sequel Riget 2 (The Kingdom 2)
(1997).
as a Rob Lowe vehicle in 2004. Other miniseries of this kind have in-
cluded It (1990), The Tommyknockers (1993), The Langoliers (1995,
adapted from a novella), and King’s own adaptations of The Stand
(1994), The Shining (1997), and Desperation (2006). King has also
written original television scripts. Perhaps the best of these was the
miniseries Storm of the Century (1999), a disturbing piece in which,
unusually both for King and for American television, evil triumphed
unequivocally. Other credits include episodes for the series Tales
from the Darkside (1984–1988) and The X Files (1993–2002) and the
miniseries Golden Years (1991) and Rose Red (2002), as well as
King’s reworking of Lars von Trier’s Danish series Riget (Kingdom)
(1994) into the miniseries Kingdom Hospital (2004). King’s short
stories have been adapted by others as the television films Sometimes
They Come Back (1991), Quicksilver Highway (1997), and Trucks
(1997) and as episodes in the television series The Twilight Zone
(1985–1989), Monsters (1988–1990), The Outer Limits (1995–2002),
and the miniseries Nightmares and Dreamscapes (2006). His novel
The Dead Zone, already filmed by Cronenberg, inspired the televi-
sion series The Dead Zone (2002– ), and Carrie was filmed again as
a television film in 2002 and also turned into a musical.
As if this were not enough, King also wrote and directed Maximum
Overdrive (1986), an apocalyptic horror film in which machines
turn on mankind. It was not very good but the fact that he found time
to do it was noteworthy in itself. He has also made numerous cameo
appearances in films and television programs, the most significant of
which was his performance in Romero’s Creepshow.
(1960), Die Toten Augen von London (Dead Eyes of London) (1961),
Das Rätsel der roten Orchidee (The Puzzle of the Red Orchid) (1962),
and Die Tür mit den 7 Schlössern (The Door with Seven Locks)
(1962). He also played the insane Renfield in Jesus Franco’s lethar-
gic El Conde Dracula (Count Dracula) (1970). His other genre cred-
its are minor; they include La Bestia uccide a sangue freddo (The
Beast Kills in Cold Blood, Slaughter Hotel) (1971), a performance as
Edgar Allan Poe in Nella stretta morsa del ragno (In the Grip of the
Spider) (1971), La morte ha sorriso all’assassino (Death Smiles on a
Murderer) (1973), La mano che nutre la morte (The Hand That Feeds
the Dead) (1974), Le amanti del mostro (Lover of the monster)
(1974), Jack the Ripper (1976), Creature (1985), Crawlspace (1986),
and the bizarre Nosferatu in Venice (1988). To see Kinski at his ex-
travagant best, look to his Herzog films.
–L–
LANDIS, JOHN (1950– ). The American director John Landis has spe-
cialized mainly in comedy—his hits include National Lampoon’s
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on his mother’s side from Italian nobility. It was therefore fitting that
he achieved worldwide fame through his portrayal of an aristocrat,
albeit an evil and vampiric one. His early acting career was not par-
ticularly distinguished. He appeared in minor roles and to little effect
in over 30 British films from the late 1940s onwards, and when his
big break finally came, it had more to do with his height—he is
6'5''—than with his acting ability. Hammer needed a tall man to play
the creature in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), its first color hor-
ror film, and Lee was given the part. The Hammer filmmakers were
not permitted to use Universal’s distinctive monster design so opted
instead for makeup that made Frankenstein’s creation resemble, in
Lee’s own words, a road accident victim. Lee played the creature as
savage and animalistic, eschewing the pathos offered by Boris
Karloff in his 1930s portrayal of the role, and the film was a consid-
erable international success. It was Lee’s next project for Hammer
that made him a star. Peter Cushing received top billing for Dracula
(Horror of Dracula) (1958), but it was Lee’s rendition of Count
Dracula as a sensual, charismatic figure that caught the public’s
imagination. Lee himself remained wary of Dracula, however. He
played the part six more times for Hammer in films of varying qual-
ity and also starred as the Count in Jesus Franco’s Spanish produc-
tion El Conde Dracula (Count Dracula) (1970), but at the same time
he constantly sought to broaden his range as an actor. For Hammer,
he donned monstrous makeup again for the physically demanding
role of Kharis in The Mummy (1959) and, by way of a contrast, was
the young Henry Baskerville in the Sherlock Holmes adventure The
Hound of the Baskervilles (1959). Later he would become the only
actor to play both Sherlock Holmes—in Sherlock Holmes und das
Halsband des Todes (Sherlock Holmes and the Necklace of Death)
(1962)—and his brother Mycroft—in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life
of Sherlock Holmes (1970). He was Fu Manchu five times, an aged
professor in The Gorgon (1964) and, in one of Lee’s favorite per-
formances, Rasputin in Hammer’s Rasputin—The Mad Monk (1966).
Unlike Peter Cushing, his good friend and frequent co-star, Lee of-
ten worked abroad, especially in Italy where he made, amongst oth-
ers, two films for cult genre director Mario Bava, Ercole al centro
della terra (Hercules in the Haunted World) (1961) and La frusta et
il corpo (The Whip and the Body) (1963).
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204 • LOVECRAFT, H. P.
man’s The Haunted Palace (1963), which was based on “The Strange
Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” was actually marketed as an Edgar
Allan Poe adaptation. It was followed by Die, Monster, Die! (1965),
The Shuttered Room (1967), Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968), and
The Dunwich Horror (1970), the latter two of which used psyche-
delic imagery as a way of conveying Lovecraft’s otherworldly
themes.
The next wave of Lovecraft adaptations began in the mid-1980s
with Re-animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986), both directed by
Stuart Gordon, which introduced gore and humor into stories that
had originally been entirely lacking in such elements. Subsequent
adaptations have tended to be low-budget monster movies often re-
leased direct onto video or DVD, although a few have proved more
substantial, including Gordon’s Castle Freak (1995) and Dagon
(2001) and the bizarre anthology Lovecracked (2006). Further loose
adaptations have included The Unnamable (1988), Dan O’Bannon’s
The Resurrected (1992), Necronomicon (1994), and Bleeders (1997).
Lovecraft himself was played by Jeffrey Combs in Necronomicon
and by Nick Basile in Lovecracked.
Other films that seem to have a Lovecraftian quality in their vi-
sionary depiction of the old Gods breaking through into our world in-
clude Lucio Fulci’s Paura nella città dei morti viventi (City of the
Living Dead) (1980) and L’aldilà (The Beyond) (1981), John Car-
penter’s Prince of Darkness (1987), and In the Mouth of Madness
(1994), and perhaps even Ivan Reitman’s comedy Ghostbusters
(1984).
also made several films featuring Francis, the talking mule. See also
AMERICAN HORROR.
By the late 1930s, the exoticism associated with Lugosi, who never
lost his thick Hungarian accent, was out of fashion. When Universal
resurrected Dracula in the 1940s, the role was recast in the more ob-
viously American form of Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine, and
Lugosi himself was increasingly relegated to low-budget work or to
small character parts in bigger films, aside from a star turn as the
vampiric Count Tesla in Columbia’s Return of the Vampire (1944).
Some of his supporting roles were impressively done; his Ygor in Son
of Frankenstein (1939) and The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) was a
genuinely touching creation, and he provided effective local color in
The Wolf Man (1941), and the Val Lewton-produced The Body
Snatcher (1945). He was also willing to parody himself in comedy-
horrors such as The Gorilla (1939), You’ll Find Out (1940), Spooks
Run Wild (1941) and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948),
in which Lugosi appeared on screen as Dracula for the second and
final time in his career. He was less comfortable as Frankenstein’s
monster (a part he had turned down in the early 1930s) in Franken-
stein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), and the ultra-low-budget tattiness
of The Corpse Vanishes (1942), one of several films he made for the
poverty-row studio Monogram, only served to underline how far Lu-
gosi had fallen from his earlier stardom. An addiction to drugs led to
further decline during the 1950s, and Lugosi ended his career mak-
ing films for cult director Ed Wood. His final screen role was a brief
appearance in Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), which was
not released until three years after Lugosi’s death and which has since
been voted “worst film of all time.” As a final macabre touch, Lugosi
was buried wearing a Dracula-style cloak.
The depressing sadness of Lugosi’s latter years—eloquently por-
trayed in Tim Burton’s biopic Ed Wood (1994), with Martin Landau
delivering an Oscar-winning performance as Lugosi—has sometimes
eclipsed his achievements as an actor. In particular, his portrayal of
Dracula might be much parodied but it still possesses a kind of
power, and one can find echoes of it in more recent versions of the
Count, notably performances by Frank Langella in Dracula (1979)
and Gary Oldman in Dracula (1992).
Lugosi’s other horror credits include The Mystery of the Mary Ce-
leste (1935), The Invisible Ray (1936), The Dark Eyes of London
(1940), Black Friday (1940), The Devil Bat (1940), The Black Cat
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–M–
THE MAD SCIENTIST. The mad scientist was a stock figure in 1930s
and 1940s horror cinema, most notably in the form of Frankenstein
and Dr. Jekyll (although earlier cinematic versions of this figure can
be found—for example, in Rex Ingram’s The Magician in 1926 or
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in 1927). The “madness” involved here
tended not to be psychological, although deranged behavior was of-
ten in evidence (in the 1933 production of The Invisible Man, for in-
stance). Instead it related to the intensely antisocial nature of the sci-
entist’s activities. Either his objectives were not socially useful—for
example, turning apes or other animals into humans in Island of
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MADNESS • 209
MADNESS. Insanity has been a key theme in the horror genre from the
1960s onwards. Before then, representations of madness showed up
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210 • MAKEUP
MAKEUP. The fact that horror is the only area of cinema in which
makeup artists have acquired the kudos usually associated with stars
and directors underlines the centrality of makeup effects to the genre.
Proto-horror star Lon Chaney was renowned for creating his own
makeup transformations in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
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and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), but subsequently it was full-
time makeup artists who assumed responsibility for the creation of
monsters. Jack Pierce created Frankenstein’s monster as well as
werewolves and vampires at Universal during the 1930s and 1940s,
and in so doing he helped to define the essence of the horror films
produced at that studio. Later, Phil Leakey and Roy Ashton be-
stowed a visceral physicality on Hammer’s monsters in a way that
set the films apart from their competitors. In the 1970s, Dick Smith
transformed a sweet little girl into a foul-mouthed abject spectacle in
The Exorcist (1973), while, among others, Rick Baker, Rob Bottin,
Tom Savini, and Stan Winston have acquired cult followings for
their ability to produce unnerving bodily transformations, metamor-
phoses and disarticulations.
Some of the techniques used by horror makeup artists have
changed over the years. However, the continued prominence of such
figures within the genre reminds us of how horror’s monstrous ef-
fects have always been centered on the human body itself. If makeup
specialists are to be thought of as artists, it is this body that provides
their main canvas.
Hill (1999) was glossier and more stylish, with Malone successfully
combining humor and horror in this remake of a William Castle
film. The supernatural thriller FeardotCom (2002) was more uneven,
however. Owing something to Japanese horror in its combination of
ghosts with modern technologies—in this case the internet—it con-
tained effective sequences but struggled to maintain a coherent nar-
rative. Malone has also contributed to the television horror series
Freddy’s Nightmares (1988–1990), Tales from the Crypt (1989–
1996), The Others (2000), and Masters of Horror (2005– ). See also
AMERICAN HORROR.
MEXICAN HORROR. During the 1930s, Mexico was one of the few
countries other than the United States to develop its own cycle of hor-
ror production, albeit a small one. These films, like later Mexican
horrors, often idiosyncratically mixed traditional Mexican elements
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sic. His first horror score, for the Barbara Steele film Gli amanti
d’oltretomba (Nightmare Castle) (1965), was, by Morricone’s stan-
dards, unobtrusive. The music he wrote for the giallo thrillers that be-
came popular during the 1970s was more striking, combining beauti-
ful melodies with harsh, dissonant sounds in order to illustrate the
giallo’s exploration of dangerous modernity. The distinctiveness of
Dario Argento’s first three films—L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo
(The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Gallery Murders) (1970), Il
gatto a nove code (Cat O’Nine Tails) (1971), and 4 mosche di velluto
grigio (Four Flies on Grey Velvet) (1971)—was significantly en-
hanced by Morricone’s music; the composer would work again with
Argento 25 years later on La sindrome di Stendhal (The Stendhal
Syndrome) (1996) and Il fantasma dell’opera (The Phantom of the
Opera) (1998). Other giallo films that benefited from Morricone’s in-
put included Le foto proibite di una signora per bene (Forbidden
Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion) (1970), Gli occhi freddi della
paura (Cold Eyes of Fear) (1971), Una lucertola con la pelle di
donna (A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin) (1971), La tarantola dal ventre
nero (Black Belly of the Tarantula) (1971), Giornata nera per l’ari-
ete (The Fifth Cord) (1971), Malastrana (Short Night of the Glass
Dolls) (1971), Chi l’ha vista morire? (Who Saw Her Die?) (1972),
Mio caro assassino (My Dear Killer) (1972), Cosa avete fatto a
Solange? (What Have You Done to Solange?) (1972), Spasmo (1974),
and Macchie solari (Autopsy) (1975). Versatile as well as prolific,
Morricone could also do supernatural horror, often using choral
sounds to illustrate the presence of unearthly forces in films such as
L’anticristo (The Antichrist) (1974), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977),
and Holocaust 2000 (1977). By contrast, his music for John Car-
penter’s The Thing (1982) was unexpectedly minimalist but all the
more effective because of that. Morricone’s other horror credits in-
clude the obscure Blood Link (1982) and the Jack Nicholson were-
wolf drama Wolf (1994).
this guise in the film’s opening sequence) and its focusing on the
theme of reincarnation.
Universal did not return to the mummy until the 1940s when it pro-
duced The Mummy’s Hand (1940), The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The
Mummy’s Ghost (1944), and The Mummy’s Curse (1944). These dis-
pensed with the subleties of the 1932 version, instead offering a
shambling, slow-moving mummy—played by Tom Tyler in the first
film and by Lon Chaney Jr. in the rest—out to avenge some slight
to Egyptian gods. The films displayed a rudimentary level of inven-
tion and contained some effective moments, but their repetitive qual-
ity limited the cycle’s development.
Much the same can be said of the British company Hammer’s first
three mummy films. Terence Fisher’s The Mummy (1959), which
featured Christopher Lee in the title role, was a stately retelling of
the by then familiar mummy narrative, but the follow-ups Curse of
the Mummy’s Tomb (1964) and The Mummy’s Shroud (1967) reduced
the mummy to a not particularly threatening automaton. By contrast,
Hammer’s Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971), as directed by
Seth Holt, was an innovative adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Jewel of
the Seven Stars that dispensed almost entirely with the cloth-wrapped
monster, focusing instead on the theme of possession. It remains one
of the most distinguished of all mummy films.
Mexican horror offered its own variant with a series of Aztec
mummy films, beginning with La momia azteca (The Aztec Mummy)
(1957) and including La momia azteca contra el robot humano (Aztec
Mummy vs. the Human Robot) (1958), Las luchadoras contra la mo-
mia (Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy) (1964) and La ven-
ganza de la momia (Santo and the Vengeance of the Mummy) (1970),
while Jacinto Molina played the mummy in a Spanish horror pro-
duction also called La venganza de la momia (The Mummy’s Re-
venge) (1973). Later mummy films were sporadic and isolated af-
fairs; they included The Awakening (1980), which was another
adaptation of Jewel of the Seven Stars, The Tomb (1986), the com-
edy-horror The Monster Squad (1987), Tales from the Darkside: The
Movie (1990), and Tale of the Mummy (Talos the Mummy) (1998). By
the end of the 1990s, one might have been forgiven for thinking that
the mummy had had its day as a movie monster. However, Stephen
Sommers’ big-budget horror-action extravaganza The Mummy
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228 • MURNAU, F. W.
realms conjured up by, for example, Humphrey Searle’s score for The
Haunting (1963) or Goldsmith’s score for The Omen (1976), or the
off-screen space occupied by the killer that Carpenter’s music for
Halloween (1978) so effectively denotes. Apparently innocent music
can also accentuate brooding atmospherics when juxtaposed with
sinister images, with the charming children choruses used to intro-
duce The Amityville Horror (1979) and Poltergeist (1982) good ex-
amples of this. In addition, music itself has the power to shock, with
the nerve-jangling dissonance of Herrmann’s all-string score for Psy-
cho (1960) or Wayne Bell’s experimental music for The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre (1974) integral to those films’ iconoclastic
character. From the 1970s onwards, horror filmmakers have also
regularly deployed loud crashes of music to emphasize their startle
effects.
Orchestral music has proved to be the mainstay of horror compo-
sition, although composers have also explored possibilities offered
by choral, electronic and experimental music. Since the 1980s, rock
music of various kinds has become a regular feature in horror films,
ranging from the Nightmare on Elm Street films to Dario Argento’s
Phenomena (1985), with this presumably designed to appeal to the
predominantly teenage audience for this type of cinema. Some rock
musicians have gone on to compose especially for horror films. An
early example of this was Goblin, which during the 1970s and 1980s
was responsible for distinctive scores for several Argento films.
Since then, Marilyn Manson has worked on the score for Resident
Evil (2002), while Rob Zombie not only wrote the music for House
of 1000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil’s Rejects (2005) but scripted
and directed them as well.
–N–
NAKATA, HIDEO (1961– ). The director Hideo Nakata has been one of
the major figures overseeing the translation of Japanese horror themes
into Westernized formats. Like many Japanese filmmakers, Nakata has
specialized in ghost stories, but he has developed innovative ways of lo-
cating these stories within a recognizable modern world. Joyû-rei
(Don’t Look Up) (1996) was such a ghost story, although it was little
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seen outside of Japan. Nakata’s next film made his name internationally,
however. Ringu (Ring) (1998) dealt with a cursed videotape which, if
viewed, led to a ghastly death for the viewer. The Japanese tradition of
the vengeful female ghost was here intertwined with modern technol-
ogy in a manner that made the technology itself appear ghostly and
alienating. Nakata’s approach was to establish a mundane reality, which
in the course of the film was gradually, and at first almost impercepti-
bly, invaded by the supernatural. At the same time, the director did not
shy away from shock moments—notably the climactic appearance of
the ghost—and Ringu also contained some conventions that would have
been familiar to Western audiences. For example, the distorted photo-
graphs of those doomed to die were comparable with the photographs
of doom in the Satanic thriller The Omen (1976).
After making the thriller Kaosu (Chaos) (1999), Nakata returned to
the Ringu series with the sequel Ringu 2 (1999). The narrative this time
was slighter and less suspenseful. The ghostly setpieces were still im-
pressive, however, although they lacked the shock impact of the previ-
ous film and operated in a more abstract way. Honogurai mizu no soko
kara (Dark Water) (2002), which like Ringu was adapted from a novel
by Koji Suzuki, benefited from a tighter narrative structure. As he had
done with Ringu, Nakata focused on a fatherless family unit, with in
both cases the strained relationship between mother and child repre-
senting a wider sense of social dislocation. Again the film’s build-up
was slow, patiently establishing a sense of place and character, but the
climax—in which the mother makes a most awful sacrifice—was pow-
erful and bleak, while the coda managed to be both moving and quietly
chilling.
Given that both Ringu and Honogurai mizu no soko kara were suc-
cessfully remade as American films—as The Ring (2002) and Dark
Water (2005), respectively—it is perhaps not surprising that Nakata
was himself invited to the United States and that his American debut
should be The Ring Two (2005). This stylish sequel was not a remake
of his own Ringu 2, but it did share that film’s extensive water im-
agery and also demonstrated that Nakata could function well within
the American horror idiom.
tery. He was born in Vienna either in 1907, 1911 or 1922, and the pre-
cise cause of the facial scars that suited him to menacing roles re-
mains unclear. Nalder worked mainly in French cinema in the 1940s
and 1950s, although he did gain some international recognition for his
performance as a villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew
Too Much (1956). His horror debut came with Dario Argento’s
L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird with the Crystal
Plumage, The Gallery Murders) (1970), where, true to type, he
played a sinister assassin. More nasty roles followed in the contro-
versial German horror films Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält (Mark of
the Devil) (1970) and Hexen geschändet und zu Tode gequält (Mark
of the Devil 2) (1973) and in the tamer Dracula’s Dog (Zoltan,
Hound of Dracula) (1978) and the comedy-horror The Devil and
Max Devlin (1981). However, his most memorable horror perform-
ance was as a Max Schreck-like vampire in Tobe Hooper’s televi-
sion adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (1979).
–O–
OGILVY, IAN (1943– ). The actor Ian Ogilvy was an intense pres-
ence in British horror cinema of the late 1960s, largely through an
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THE OMEN (1976). The 1970s American horror film The Omen
(1976), which was directed by Richard Donner, has long been over-
shadowed by the taboo-breaking The Exorcist (1973) and The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre (1974), perhaps because it is so polished and
well-crafted in comparison with the rawer appeal of these other films,
perhaps because it is set in Europe rather than America. However, it
is arguably just as important to an understanding of the genre in this
period. It is a key example of apocalyptic horror and, even by the
cynical standards of 1970s horror, unusually bleak, with the forces of
good left comprehensively defeated. Its deployment of Biblical
prophecies, which was unusual within a horror genre that rarely en-
gaged explicitly with Christianity, underlined the extent to which this
defeat was preordained and unavoidable. Not even an established star
like Gregory Peck was able to save the day. Also striking was the
film’s portrayal of a child as the monster; this was not an uncommon
theme in 1970s horror but here it was done with real conviction.
While the girl in The Exorcist was only possessed and could be res-
cued, Damien in The Omen was the Antichrist, fathered by the Devil
and born of a jackal, and therefore intrinsically and irredeemably
evil.
The film’s other key innovation was the spectacular death se-
quences it offered, including one of horror cinema’s most awe-
inspiring decapitations. On the one hand, these deaths—which were
usually accompanied by Jerry Goldsmith’s evocative choral
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ORMSBY, ALAN (1944– ). Not only did Alan Ormsby do the garish
makeup effects for Bob Clark’s zombie film Children Shouldn’t
Play with Dead Things (1972), he also contributed to the film’s
screenplay and starred as the obnoxious theater director who ill-
advisedly raises the dead. Subsequently he wrote and did the makeup
effects for Clark’s Dead of Night (Night Walk, Deathdream) (1974),
a more socially critical zombie film in which an undead war veteran
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–P–
tive with the Faust story, with references to The Picture of Dorian Gray
thrown in for good measure. It was perhaps too self-consciously clever
for its own good, although it remains one of the more unusual Phantom
films. By contrast, Dwight H. Little’s The Phantom of the Opera
(1989) and Dario Argento’s Il fantasma dell’opera (The Phantom of
the Opera) (1998) were both straightforward attempts to claim the story
for the full-blooded horror approach. The Little version featured Night-
mare on Elm Street star Robert Englund as a wisecracking, intensely
violent Phantom in a story that took very little from the Leroux original.
Unfortunately, Argento’s film was one of his lesser efforts. He seems
uncomfortable with the period setting, although the idea of the Phantom
as someone who was not actually scarred but just full of self-loathing
was at least innovative.
However, it was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical stage ver-
sion that caught the public’s imagination and went on to become one
of the most successful musicals of all time. Here the horror elements
became decorative rather than central, and the original novel’s tragic
romance was returned to the foreground. In 2004, Joel Schumacher
directed The Phantom of the Opera, an adaptation of Webber’s musi-
cal that underlined the extent to which the story of the Phantom had
been secured for the family audience.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), although it has not had the impact
on horror cinema of Stevenson’s work. There were several silent film
adaptations of Wilde’s story, including Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Portret
Doryana Greya (1915) and Az Élet királya (1918), a Hungarian ver-
sion featuring Bela Lugosi in a supporting role. However, the main
screen version was Albert Lewin’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
(1945), a tastefully mounted black-and-white American adaptation
which starred Hurd Hatfield in the title role and which burst into
color whenever Gray’s portrait was shown. By contrast, Dorian Gray
(1970), which starred Helmut Berger and had a contemporary setting,
was considerably sleazier. Dan Curtis produced a television version
in 1973, while another television production, The Sins of Dorian
Gray (1983), turned Dorian Gray into a female character. Other ver-
sions appeared in 2004 and 2006.
POINT OF VIEW. In cinema, point of view shots are those shots des-
ignated as offering what a character within the film in question is ac-
tually seeing. Such shots are usually preceded or followed by shots
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of that character in the act of looking, with this confirming that what
we have just seen or are about to see is through the character’s eyes.
Point of view shots of this kind are present in a wide range of films,
including horror. However, the horror genre also has a more special-
ized use for point of view.
The widely held belief in film criticism that the point of view
technique helps to establish an audience’s identification with the
character who is looking is thrown into some disarray when con-
fronted with horror’s practice of assigning point of view shots to
its monsters or killers. This particular deployment of point of
view first became apparent during the 1950s, when many science
fiction/horror movies featured the point of view of the alien or
monster as it advanced upon its (usually female) victim. More con-
troversial was the reliance of the American slasher film of the late
1970s and early 1980s on showing the killer’s point of view as he
stalked and assaulted his (again usually female) victim. On their
initial release, some critics claimed that these films were inviting
audiences—and by implication predominantly male audiences—to
identify with the killer’s sadism, with the slashers thus rendered an
expression of misogyny.
Other critics have since questioned whether the point of view tech-
nique in itself can lead to character identification, especially in hor-
ror where the villains are often so repellent and ugly. As if to under-
line the obstacles placed in the way of any simple identification, the
point of view of monsters in horror films is itself often made strange
or alienating. In 1950s films, distorting lenses were sometimes used
to denote the alien identity of the monster, while the slasher’s point
of view shots frequently deployed an obtrusive shaky camera. The
fact that the slasher rarely showed the killer until the end of the film
also potentially destabilized any straightforward audience identifica-
tion with such a figure. The extent to which horror spectators are
sometimes invited to enjoy acts of sadistic violence, regardless of
who is perpetrating them, remains debatable. However, an influential
strand in horror criticism argues that horror offers as much a
masochistic experience as it does a sadistic one. In this instance, the
killer’s point of view provides a good vantage point on the victim,
who, in her or his fear and terror, can become the main figure of iden-
tification.
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248 • POSSESSION
from Italy L’anticristo (The Antichrist) (1974), Chi sei (Beyond the
Door, The Devil Within Her) (1974), and from Spain La endemoni-
ada (Demon Witch Child, The Possessed) (1975) and Exorcismo (Ex-
orcism) (1975). The Exorcist itself generated several sequels, while
Curtis Harrington’s Ruby (1977) and Robert Wise’s Audrey Rose
(1977) dealt in a quieter, less gory way with stories involving pos-
session by ghosts. Since this flurry of activity, possession has re-
ceded as a horror theme. Demonic possession has featured in Prince
of Darkness (1987), Fallen (1998), The Exorcism of Emily Rose
(2005), and Requiem (2006), while more comic versions have been
offered by Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films and Ghostbusters (1984).
A significant generic sub-category has been formed by science
fiction/horror hybrids in which humans are possessed by aliens. Such
films have included Invaders from Mars (1953), Quatermass 2 (En-
emy from Space) (1957), Quatermass and the Pit (Five Million Years
to Earth) (1967), The Faculty (1998), and The Astronaut’s Wife
(1999).
stein (1948). His first major role in a horror film was as the scarred
sculptor in House of Wax (1953), but neither this nor a similar part in
The Mad Magician (1954), nor even an appearance as the Devil in The
Story of Mankind (1957), led to his being typecast as a horror actor, and
Price continued to work in a variety of genres. In fact, it was not until
the late 1950s that Price became firmly associated with the genre, be-
ginning with The Fly (1958) and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959) and
two films for producer-director William Castle, House on Haunted Hill
(1959) and The Tingler (1959). Price’s performance style, which to
modern eyes can seem theatrical, arch and sometimes slightly camp,
was particularly suited to Castle’s jokey, gimmick-ridden horror films,
and it also translated well into a series of films the actor then made with
director Roger Corman, films that would finally secure his status as a
horror star.
Price’s overwrought performance as the neurotic Roderick Usher
in House of Usher (1960), Corman’s adaptation of the Edgar Allan
Poe story, perfectly expressed that film’s sense of morbid masculine
psychology. Subsequent starring roles in further Corman-Poe
projects—including Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror
(1962, in which Price played three roles), The Raven (1963), The
Haunted Palace (1963, actually an H. P. Lovecraft adaptation with a
few references to Poe thrown in for good measure), The Masque of
the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)—afforded
Price opportunities to refine and develop this persona, modulating it
into outright madness in Pit and the Pendulum and into sadistic vil-
lainy in The Masque of the Red Death while playing it for laughs in
the comedy-horror The Raven. Other Price roles during the first half
of the 1960s—for example, his turns in Confessions of an Opium
Eater (1962), Tower of London (1962, a remake of the film in which
Price himself had appeared in the late 1930s), Diary of a Madman
(1963), Twice-Told Tales (1963), and The Comedy of Terrors (1963)—
were comparably mannered and occasionally self-parodic. It was not
until the late 1960s that Price assayed a more serious role as the
witchfinder Matthew Hopkins in director Michael Reeves’ British
production Witchfinder General (1968). Apparently there was some
tension on set between the young director and his star about how the
role was to be played, with Reeves preferring a more realistic per-
formance than Price was accustomed to delivering. Despite Price’s
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252 • PSYCHO
reservations, the resulting film is one of his finest and displays his
qualities as an actor more than any of his later films would. In these,
he tended to revert to the theatrical acting style with which he was
clearly more comfortable. His best role of this type was one for which
such an approach was wholly appropriate, namely the murderous ac-
tor Edward Lionheart in the witty British horror Theater of Blood
(1973). He was also impressive, albeit under heavy makeup, as the
similarly over-the-top Dr. Phibes in the stylish The Abominable Dr.
Phibes (1971) and its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972).
Price’s later horror films were undistinguished, although he did find
a new youthful audience through his narration of director Tim Burton’s
animated short Vincent (1982), a brief cameo appearance in Burton’s
Edward Scissorhands (1990) and, most of all, through providing a
voice-over for the Michael Jackson hit song “Thriller” in 1983.
Price’s other credits included The Bat (1959), Master of the World
(1961), The Last Man on Earth (1964), The City Under the Sea
(1965), Scream and Scream Again (1969), The Oblong Box (1969),
Cry of the Banshee (1970), Madhouse (1974), The Monster Club
(1980), House of the Long Shadows (1983), Bloodbath at the House
of Death (1984), The Offspring (From a Whisper to a Scream) (1987),
and Dead Heat (1988).
For all of Psycho’s success, a sequel was a long time coming, per-
haps because Hitchcock’s canonical status as “The Master of Sus-
pense” was so intimidating to later filmmakers. When it did finally
appear, Psycho 2 (1983), which was directed by Richard Franklin,
was a much better film than many critics had predicted. It depicted
Norman Bates—still played by Perkins—being released from an asy-
lum and returning to the now notorious Bates Motel. The narrative
was full of inventive touches and twists but it also offered a sympa-
thetic portrayal of Bates as someone ill-suited to life outside of a
mental institution. Hitchcock’s Psycho had also presented this char-
acter with a degree of sympathy, but Psycho 2 transformed him into
a sensitive, misunderstood hero whose violence became acts of de-
fense against people who were out to get him. Psycho 3 (1986) con-
tained more of the same, although the direction, this time by Perkins
himself, was assured and had some effective Hitchcockian moments.
The next two Psycho films were both made for television. Richard
Rothstein’s Bates Motel (1987) was a pilot for a never-made series
which, as its title indicated, took place in the Bates Motel but did not
feature Norman Bates. This was rectified for Mick Garris’s Psycho
IV: The Beginning (1990), a kind of prequel in which Perkins/Bates
reminisces about his early days. Odder still was a 1998 remake of the
original Psycho that was directed by Gus Van Sant and which fea-
tured Vince Vaughan as Norman Bates and Anne Heche as the shower
murder victim Marion Crane. Remaking a “classic” is always fraught
with danger, and Van Sant’s film—which is not the shot-for-shot
copy that some have claimed it to be—was not well received by crit-
ics. It also seems to have marked the end, for the time being at least,
of the serial killer Norman Bates.
between the genres of crime and horror. The extent to which any
thriller is one thing or another depends on a number of factors. If
there is an emphasis on especially morbid or sick psychologies, or if
there is a lot of violence or gore in the narrative, or if the intended ef-
fect on the audience involves a significant dimension of fear or
shock, then the film in question is more likely to be considered as a
horror film. The marketing of particular films, and the ways in which
they are received by audiences, can also have an effect on generic
designations, and sometimes there might not be a consensus about
where a film belongs. For example, the serial killer drama The Si-
lence of the Lambs (1991) was initially marketed more as a dark
thriller than as a horror (presumably to differentiate it from the
teenage horror films that were popular at the time). However, hor-
ror fans have frequently claimed the film as horror on their websites
and in their fanzines.
It was the commercial success of two films in particular that ar-
guably helped to push horror towards the psychological, namely
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s French thriller Les diaboliques (1954) and
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Both generated an intensely
morbid and claustrophobic atmosphere and both also contained
supreme moments of shock-horror, namely the apparent resurrection
of a corpse in Les diaboliques and the shower murder in Psycho. Al-
though Les diaboliques is rarely thought of as a horror film in its own
right, American producer-director William Castle was inspired by it
to create his own series of psychological thrillers that were insistently
marketed as horror, including Macabre (1958) and the later Psycho-
influenced Homicidal (1961). Similarly, the British Hammer com-
pany inaugurated its own series of psychological thrillers that usually
had Psycho-like titles and twisty Diaboliques-style plot and which
were designed to complement its period horrors (and which often fea-
tured on double bills with those period horrors); these included A
Taste of Fear (Scream of Fear) (1961), Maniac (1963), Paranoiac
(1963), Hysteria (1965), and Fanatic (Die! Die! My Darling!) (1965).
The Italian giallo horror-thrillers also put great emphasis on the psy-
chological in their convoluted and violent invocations of disturbed
minds. Even some 1960s period horrors, notably the adaptations of
Edgar Allan Poe’s writings by Roger Corman, focused more on ex-
treme psychological states than they did on traditional horror mon-
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genre that had made him a star, albeit usually in its more upmarket
version. He was a psychic in the British production The Clairvoyant
(1934), John Jasper in Universal’s gothic adaptation of Charles
Dickens’ Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), and Lon Chaney Jr.’s fa-
ther in The Wolf Man (1941). He also played the Phantom in Arthur
Lubin’s tasteful Phantom of the Opera (1943) and the Devil in the
gangster-horror hybrid Angel on My Shoulder (1946). Towards
the end of his career, Rains was directed by Italian horror specalist
Antonio Margheriti in the low-budget alien invasion fantasy Il pi-
aneta degli uomini spenti (Battle of the Worlds) (1961).
Hype (1980), but Venom (1981), Spasms (1983), The House of Usher
(1988) and The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) did not make great de-
mands of him.
while the hero’s violated and tortured wife screams in the back-
ground. There is no sense of justice here but instead an intense por-
trayal of the destructiveness of violence for both the victim and the
victimizer.
Largely ignored by critics while alive, Reeves is now recognized
as a key figure in the development of British horror in the late
1960s. He introduced a more questioning approach to social author-
ity than had been apparent before in the British horror cycle, while
his best work is also imaginative, stylish and alive to all the possibil-
ities of cinema.
REMAKES • 261
REMAKES. The development of the horror genre has been more re-
liant on sequels than it has been on remakes (so long as one discounts
the various film adaptations of Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which are more returns to literary originals than
they are remakes of previous films). Some silent horrors of the 1920s
were remade as sound films in the 1930s—notably The Unholy Three
(1925) under the same title in 1930, London after Midnight (1927) as
Mark of the Vampire (1935) (with both directed by Tod Browning,
who also directed the original version of The Unholy Three), the hor-
ror spoof The Cat and the Canary (1927) as Le voluntad del muerto
(a Hollywood-produced Spanish-language version also known as The
Cat Creeps) (1930), and The Cat and the Canary (1939) (and remade
again in 1978), and The Gorilla (1927), another horror spoof, remade
in 1930 and 1939 with the same title both times. There was also a
small cluster of apparent remakes in the early 1960s, although these
turned out to have very little to do with their illustrious originals so
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262 • REMAKES
Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (Ring) (1998) as The Ring (2002) and Hon-
ogurai mizu no soko kara (Dark Water) (2002) as Dark Water (2005),
and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge (2003) as The Grudge
(2004) have appropriated them for Western use, although this process
is complicated by the involvement of the original filmmakers in the
remakes—with Shimizu directing the remake of his own original and
Nakata directing the American sequel The Ring 2 (2005).
RICE, ANNE (1941– ). The American novelist Anne Rice has made a
major contribution to the cultural reshaping of vampires into heroic
and sensitive figures through The Vampire Chronicles, her bestselling
series of novels that began publication in 1976. Neil Jordan’s Inter-
view with the Vampire (1994) was adapted by Rice herself from the
first novel in the series. Unsurprisingly, it was faithful to Rice’s orig-
inal, and even the provocative casting of Tom Cruise as one of the
vampires worked to the film’s benefit. Queen of the Damned (2002),
which was directed by Michael Rymer and combined plot elements
from the second and third books in The Vampire Chronicles, was
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264 • RINGU
lively but much less faithful to the dreamy and sensual atmosphere
conjured up by Rice’s fiction.
sion but arguably diminished the story’s shock effects. However, the
film was a substantial commercial success, and The Ring Two (2005)
followed. This was not a remake of Ringu 2 but it did share the same
director, with Hideo Nakata making his American debut, and was a
similar triumph of style over substance.
After all this activity, one might have expected that the story of the
ghost Sadako would have been thoroughly exhausted, especially
given her reliance on the now nearly defunct technology of video-
tape. However, Koji Suzuki has written Loop (1998), a third novel in
the Ring series, and at the time of writing this entry the American pro-
duction The Ring Three has just been announced. In true horror style,
it seems that this particular monster could be making a surprise
comeback.
horrors for which Hammer became famous, among them The Curse
of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (Horror of Dracula) (1958), Curse
of the Werewolf (1961), and The Devil Rides Out (1968). Operating
on minimal resources, he designed castles, dungeons, and sitting
rooms that had a solidity about them, with this quality becoming one
of Hammer’s defining visual characteristics. For reasons of economy,
he also reused props and sets, carefully disguising this from the ca-
sual viewer (although dedicated Hammer fans would later take great
pleasure from constantly encountering familiar bits and pieces of set
design).
stage from a much more ambitious project, the film remained a fasci-
nating examination of militarism at a time when other horror films
were resolutely avoiding any kind of serious issues.
The psychological thriller Monkey Shines (1988), a collaboration
with Dario Argento on the co-directed Due occhi diabolici (Two Evil
Eyes) (1990) and The Dark Half (1993) were all slick but anonymous
affairs, and one got a sense that during this part of his career Romero
was treading water. However, Land of the Dead (2005), his fourth
and to date final zombie film, was as full of ideas as the previous
three instalments. The focus this time was on class division, with the
zombies represented as an underclass excluded from the attractive
parts of the city by the wealthy. If nothing else, its energy and inven-
tion suggested that, for all Romero’s attempts to develop in new di-
rections, it is the zombie that has brought out the best in him as a
filmmaker.
He also acted as executive producer for the television series Tales
from the Darkside (1984–1988). See also AMERICAN HORROR.
where the wife begins to suspect that her neighbors are Satanists. She
dreams that she has been raped by a beastly creature and, after falling
pregnant, fears that the Satanists have designs on her unborn baby.
On giving birth, she discovers that the baby is—or so the Satanists
claim—the son of the Devil, and the narrative concludes ambigu-
ously with her apparent agreement to act as mother to the child
regardless of its parentage. Put another way, this is a film where evil
secures a comprehensive victory.
As directed by Roman Polanski, the film is certainly disturbing
but it is also more playful than the above account of the narrative sug-
gests. Apparently Polanski did not take the supernatural elements in
the original novel too seriously (his other supernatural films The Ten-
ant and The Ninth Gate are similarly tongue-in-cheek), and he has
carefully structured Rosemary’s Baby so that the Satanic conspiracy
might in reality be the delusion of a group of sad old people rather
than an accomplished supernatural fact. As for the appearance of the
Devil, it does take place in a dream, and production stills show that,
for some of the shots at least, this figure was played by John Cas-
savetes, the actor who portrayed Rosemary’s husband. While Night of
the Living Dead purveyed a low-budget gritty realism that made its
horrors all too believable, the high-budget gloss of Rosemary’s Baby
offered a cooler approach perfectly suited to the slow-burn narrative.
The film’s main theme—of an older generation corrupting and de-
stroying the young—would become important in 1970s American
horror, and its dark and disturbing ending would also become a
model for horrors to come.
The television film Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby
(1976) was an unnecessary sequel that added nothing to its illustri-
ous predecessor.
slightly more nuanced than its predecessor. All of Roth’s films have
gloried in their own disreputability, but there is clearly a fast devel-
oping directorial talent evident in them.
cover the beast within yourself (so long as you weren’t killed and
eaten first).
Some 1980s American slashers also contained elements of rural hor-
ror, with arrogant teenagers getting their come-uppance from rural se-
rial killers in the likes of the Friday the 13th films or The Burning
(1981) or Just Before Dawn (1981), amongst others. More recently, a
number of films have sought to recapture the edginess of 1970s Amer-
ican horror through revisiting the rural horror format as developed by
Hooper and Craven. Most obviously, this includes the remakes The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and The Hills Have Eyes (2006), but
there is also Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever (2002), Wrong Turn (2003), Rob
Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses (2003), and House of Wax (2005). Su-
pernatural versions of rural horror include Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead
films and The Skeleton Key (2005), while The Last Broadcast (1998),
The Blair Witch Project (1999), and the period drama An American
Haunting (2005), as well as numerous episodes of the television series
The X Files (1993–2002) and Supernatural (2005– ), have explored
American folklore within rural settings.
Rural horror is not restricted to American cinema. British cinema,
for example, has produced some rural horror films, including Ham-
mer’s The Witches (1966), the period horror Blood on Satan’s Claw
(Satan’s Skin) (1971), Tower of Evil (1972), Robin Hardy’s The
Wicker Man (1973), and Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers (2002) and
The Descent (2005). From France, there has been Calvaire (The Or-
deal) (2004), from Australia Wolf Creek (2005), and from Spain the
Blind Dead films and, amongst others, León Klimovsky’s La orgía
nocturna de los vampiros (The Vampires Night Orgy) (1973) and
Stuart Gordon’s Dagon (2001). A small number of American films
have also depicted town-dwellers coming to grief at the hands of for-
eign countryfolk, with these including Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs
(1971), John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London (1981), and
Eli Roth’s Hostel (2005).
The pervasiveness of the rural horror format suggests a widespread
and deep distrust of the agrarian and the pre-modern, although
this has often been coupled with doubts about the efficacy of the
forces of rational modernity, as helpless townies continue to suffer at
the hands of those poorer and considerably less sophisticated than
themselves.
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RUSSELL, RAY (1924–1999). During the first half of the 1960s, the
screenwriter Ray Russell worked for horror specialists William Cas-
tle and Roger Corman, with his two most memorable credits in-
volving spectacular images of male mutilation. For Castle, he wrote
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films directed by Bava during the second half of the 1980s. Other
Sacchetti horror credits are Spettri (Specters) (1987), Quella villa in
fondo al parco (Ratman, Terror House) (1988), Killer Crocodile
(1989), and Killer Crocodile II (1990). He continues to write for cin-
ema and for television, although not on horror projects.
SANTO • 277
logical thriller made at a time when the formula was looking very
worn. Sangster also wrote and produced one of Hammer’s oddest
films, the Bette Davis vehicle The Anniversary (1968) and co-wrote
and produced the Curtis Harrington horror Whoever Slew Auntie
Roo? (1971). Throughout the 1970s, he wrote mainly for American
television, including contributions to the horror series Kolchak—the
Night Stalker (1974–1975) and the television horror films Scream,
Pretty Peggy (1973) and Good Against Evil (1977). He also worked
on the screenplays for the British horror film The Legacy (1978) and
John Huston’s psychological thriller Phobia (1980).
helped to introduce a graphic realism to the horror genre with his ex-
ceptionally gory and visceral makeup effects. Early credits included
Deranged (1974), Bob Clark’s Dead of Night (The Night Walk,
Deathdream) (1974), and George Romero’s modern-day vampire
story Martin (1977), but his first major work was on Romero’s
groundbreaking zombie epic Dawn of the Dead (1978). Walking
corpses, spectacular wounds, blood spatter and the eating of human
flesh: all were presented in unsparing detail, and the film conse-
quently acquired notoriety as a cutting-edge gore film. Savini fol-
lowed this with work on the slasher films Friday the 13th (1980) and
The Burning (1981) and the controversial serial killer film Maniac
(1980), where he expertly conjured up stabbings, slashings, mutila-
tions, and shootings. In so doing, he began to acquire a cult follow-
ing among horror fans, becoming for them as much a star as any of
the actors appearing in his films. He continued to work with Romero
on projects such as Day of the Dead (1985) and Monkey Shines
(1988) and on the Romero-Dario Argento collaboration Due occhi
diabolici (Two Evil Eyes) (1990), as well as providing gore effects for
Argento’s Trauma (1993), amongst many others.
Savini has also proved himself a capable character actor, appearing
in small roles in numerous films, including Martin, Dawn of the Dead
(and its 2004 remake), and From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). He has writ-
ten a book about his craft, Grand Illusions, and in 1990 directed an ef-
fective remake of Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.
Kong. Schoedsack’s last horror credit was the mad scientist film
Dr. Cyclops (1940), although he subsequently returned to the
world of apes with the adventure story Mighty Joe Young (1949).
See also AMERICAN HORROR.
282 • SELF-REFLEXIVITY
SEQUELS • 283
284 • SEQUELS
production, and “sequelitis” had set in with The Wolf Man (1941) and
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) leading to a joint sequel, Franken-
stein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), followed by House of Frankenstein
(1944) and House of Dracula (1945). Universal also produced in
quick succession three sequels to The Mummy’s Hand (1940)—The
Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), and The
Mummy’s Curse (1944). (To complicate matters, The Mummy’s Hand
was neither a sequel to nor a remake of Universal’s 1932 production
The Mummy but instead a brand new story, albeit one that recycled
footage from the older film.) There was also a Universal series of In-
visible Man films, and another Dracula film, Son of Dracula (1943),
with Dracula featuring as well in House of Frankenstein and House
of Dracula. Even the considerably more upmarket Val Lewton at
RKO made a sequel to his Cat People (1942) with The Curse of the
Cat People (1944).
The Universal sequels set a pattern. They were based on monsters
rather than on heroes, and, as sequel followed sequel, they gradually
formed into series or cycles. However, the relationship between the
films could vary considerably. Some sequels followed on directly
from preceding films, although there were often odd gaps in the
chronology. Other sequels were more loosely connected—or in some
instances barely connected at all—to what had gone before. Some
might argue that such films were not actually sequels, but horror cin-
ema from Universal onwards has constantly blurred the distinction
between sequel and series production. For example, the trajectory of
Frankenstein’s monster through 1930s and 1940s Universal horror
maintained a fairly consistent chronology, but, by contrast, Dracula
wandered in and out of his films with little sense of progression from
one to the other.
It is worth pointing out that while certain types of scenes recurred
in these sequels—a laboratory scene in Frankenstein sequels, for ex-
ample, or a transformation scene in the Wolf Man films—the films
were also noticeably different from each other, constantly revising
and refreshing stock narrative situations and placing surprising new
twists alongside some of the more established conventions. Much the
same could be said for the next major set of horror sequels, which
came from the British company Hammer between the late 1950s and
1970s. Its Frankenstein and Dracula films (with seven titles in each)
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who goes into a house where a man earlier murdered his family dies.
However, Shimizu complicates matters through adopting convoluted,
non-chronological narrative structures and also demonstrates a con-
siderable talent for conjuring terrifying moments out of the most
mundane domestic settings. The dysfunctionality of the family unit—
apparent in the origin of the haunting itself—is as much a theme for
Shimizu as it is for Nakata, suggesting that such a subject has a
broader social relevance for Japan.
Shimizu first visited his haunted house in two low-budget produc-
tions, the direct-to-video Ju-On (2000) and the part-sequel, part-
remake Ju-On 2 (2000). He was back for more in Ju-On: The Grudge
(2003), the first of the series to achieve international success, and Ju-
On: The Grudge 2 (2003) followed almost immediately. In 2004,
Shimizu directed The Grudge, a Sam Raimi-produced American re-
make of Ju-On: The Grudge. Instead of relocating its story to Amer-
ica, this took the bold step of bringing American characters—among
them Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar—to Japan
and generated some interesting culture shocks out of the ensuing
drama. The fearful frissons were still effective in themselves, al-
though anyone familiar with earlier entries in the series might have
been experiencing a certain déjà vu by now. However, the 2006 re-
lease of The Grudge 2—an original story rather than a remake of Ju-
On: The Grudge 2—suggested that this series was far from over, and
in 2006 Shimizu also announced that he was planning Ju-On: The
Grudge 3.
His other horror credits include Tomie: Re-birth (2001), Marebito
(2004), and Rinne (2005).
with two Boris Karloff vehicles, Black Friday (1940) and The Ape
(1940), and the comedy The Invisible Woman (1940). His screenplay
for The Wolf Man (1941) revised Universal’s concept of the were-
wolf by emphasizing the victim status of the lycanthrope, a theme he
developed further in the sequel Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
(1943). He also provided the story for his brother Robert Siodmak’s
Son of Dracula (1943) and, away from Universal, wrote the superior
voodoo film I Walked with a Zombie (1943) for producer Val Lew-
ton and director Jacques Tourneur. In addition, he wrote Invisible
Agent (1942) and The Climax (1944), as well as producing the story
for House of Frankenstein (1944). His last unequivocally impressive
horror screenplay was Robert Florey’s disembodied hand thriller
The Beast with Five Fingers (1946).
In the 1950s, Siodmak directed some less than impressive low-
budget monster movies, including Bride of the Gorilla (1951), The
Magnetic Monster (1953), and Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956)
and contributed to the screenplays for Creature with the Atom Brain
(1955) and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). He also wrote and
directed episodes for the obscure television horror series 13 Demon
Street (1959–1960)—which featured Wolf Man star Lon Chaney
Jr.—as well as directing the abortive pilot for the never-made series
Tales of Frankenstein (1958), which was designed to cash in on the
success of Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957). His final
significant genre credit was for Terence Fisher’s German production
Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes (Sherlock Holmes and
the Necklace of Death) (1962).
Siodmak’s 1942 novel Donovan’s Brain—which dealt with a dis-
embodied brain exerting a malign influence on the people around it—
has been filmed several times, as The Lady and the Monster (1944),
as Donovan’s Brain (1953), as a television production also entitled
Donovan’s Brain (1955), and as Freddie Francis’s Vengeance (The
Brain) (1962), although Siodmak was not involved in any of these.
SOMMER, ELKE (1940– ). From the late 1950s onwards, the German
actor Elke Sommer appeared regularly in films made in France, Ger-
many and Italy with occasional excursions to Great Britain and the
United States. One of her early credits, the Italian musical Urlatori
alla sbarra (Howlers of the Dock) (1960), was directed by Lucio
Fulci, later an Italian horror specialist, but perhaps her best known
role was as the female lead in the Pink Panther film A Shot in the
Dark (1964) (which, incidentally, was co-written by William Peter
Blatty, who would later write The Exorcist). She is included here be-
cause of the two horror films she made with Italian director Mario
Bava. In Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga (Baron Blood) (1972),
she was a decorative European presence who, perhaps because she
was older than the usual horror ingénue, added some weight to the
material. In the more important Lisa e il diavolo (Lisa and the Devil)
(1972), considered by many to be Bava’s masterpiece, she was sym-
pathetic as the tormented Lisa but also projected a cold reserve that
was an indispensable feature of the film’s dream-like narrative. The
nuances of her performance were largely lost in The House of Exor-
cism, a recut version of the film that sought to exploit the success of
The Exorcist (1973). Thankfully, Bava’s original version, and Som-
mer’s performance in it, has since been restored.
(1966), Un angelo per satana (An Angel for Satan) (1966), and Curse
of the Crimson Altar (1968). See also ITALIAN HORROR.
inspired the television series of the same name, and also featured
in The Puppet Masters (1994), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), and An
American Haunting (2005). On television, he was a vampire’s
acolyte in Salem’s Lot (2004) and Captain Walton in the miniseries
Frankenstein (2004).
–T–
310 • TELEVISION
underline a point that the horror genre has been making since the
1950s, namely that bad things happen to you when you are young.
TELEVISION • 311
sions into the genre—for example horror monster Jack the Ripper
featured in the science fiction shows Star Trek (1966–1969) and
Babylon Five (1994–1998)—but very few developed a sustained in-
vestment in horror. In fact, this seemed generally the fate of horror on
television, constantly to be framed by more televisual formats and
conventions but rarely embraced fully for what it was.
Anthology shows have continued to be a key format for horror on
television, with, among others, Night Gallery (1970–1973), Dark-
room (1981–1982), Tales from the Darkside (1984–1988), Amazing
Stories (1985–1987), Freddy’s Nightmares (1988–1990), and Tales
from the Crypt (1989–1996). The series Millennium (1996–1999),
Poltergeist: The Legacy (1996–1999), Brimstone (1998–1999), and
The Others (2000) were more reliant on cinematic conventions and
consequently darker and more disturbing, while miniseries adapta-
tions of Stephen King’s novels—among them Salem’s Lot (1979)
and The Stand (1994)—have formed a horror television sub-genre all
of their own. However, the television market for horror during the
1990s became increasingly focused on a teenage demographic. This
was evident in the success of shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(1997–2003), Charmed (1998–2006), Angel (1999–2004), and Super-
natural (2005– ), all of which offered a cheerful mix of attractive
young leads acting out traditional horror scenarios against a back-
ground of modern rock music. It seemed that some of horror’s con-
ventions had finally become a normalized part of television enter-
tainment and were no longer relegated to late-night adult-only
timeslots. More recently, horror series produced for cable—notably
Carnivale (2003–2005) and the Masters of Horror anthology show
(2005– )—have benefited from a more relaxed attitude to censorship
and have generated images and stories as hard-edged as anything
available in horror cinema.
Other countries have also developed their own televisual horror
traditions. During the late 1950s and 1960s, both Argentina and Spain
had their own popular horror anthology shows with, respectively,
Obras maestras de terror (Masterworks of Horror) (1958–1960) and
Historias para no dormir (Stories to Keep You Awake) (1966–1968),
while novelist Koji Suzuki’s much-adapted novel Ringu was first
adapted for Japanese television as Ringu: Kanzen-Ban (1995). Per-
haps most notable in this respect is Great Britain, where Nigel
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314 • TORTURE
The Devil’s Rejects (2005), James Wan’s Saw (2004) and its three se-
quels, Eli Roth’s Hostel (2005) and Hostel Part 2 (2007), and Greg
McLean’s Australian horror Wolf Creek (2005) have unflinchingly
portrayed scenes of protracted and appalling suffering. While these
scenes clearly involve sadism on the part of the torturers, the extent
to which they also invoke sadism from the films’ audiences—the
main source of concern for critics—remains unclear. One might ar-
gue that such films tend to elicit as much a masochistic response as
they do a sadistic one, with audiences encouraged to identify with the
terrorized victims rather than with the repellent torturers. This does
not necessarily render these films positive in any way but it does sug-
gest that if, as some critics have maintained, they are “sick,” then
their sickness is complex, challenging and worthy of a more open-
minded discussion than it has so far received.
(1995). Dorian (2001), Towers’ most recent genre credit, was yet an-
other adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
–U–
318 • UNIVERSAL
UNIVERSAL • 319
–V–
VAMPIRES • 321
The rise of the slasher film in the late 1970s temporarily mar-
ginalized traditional horror monsters such as the vampire, although
Fright Night (1985), Fright Night—Part 2 (1988), and The Lost
Boys (1987), along with Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) and the
television series it generated, reintroduced vampires into the world
of teenage horror. Other vampire films began to explore vam-
pirism as a kind of lifestyle choice that, in certain respects at least,
had some attractive features. Key to this were the vampire novels of
Anne Rice, adapted for the screen as Interview with the Vampire
(1994) and Queen of the Damned (2002) and the television series
Angel (1999–2004), which featured a vampire as its hero. Kathryn
Bigelow offered Near Dark (1987), an innovative horror-western
about an outlaw vampire family, while the idea of vampires having
an alternative but viable society was developed by Blade (1998),
Blade 2 (2002), Blade: Trinity (2004), Underworld (2003), and Un-
derworld: Evolution (2006).
The film vampire might once have been a strange, exotic creature,
but he or she is now much more familiar—still threatening, perhaps,
but also capable of near-normality. The barrier between the monster
and us has, in this instance at least, become decidedly permeable.
VON SYDOW, MAX (1929– ). The distinguished Swedish actor Max von
Sydow has received critical plaudits for the films he made with director
Ingmar Bergman. Some of these dealt with horror-like material—no-
tably Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal) (1957), Ansiktet (The Ma-
gician, The Face) (1958), and Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf) (1968)—
while the rape revenge drama Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) (1960)
was remade by Wes Craven as the American horror film The Last
House on the Left (1972). However, it was von Sydow’s performance as
Father Merrin in The Exorcist (1973) that represents his major contri-
bution to the horror genre. He was only in his mid-forties at the time of
production but successfully conveyed both the physical frailty and the
moral strength of this aged character. In the midst of the narrative’s in-
creasingly lurid and shocking events, he provided some much-needed
gravitas. He reprised the role in Exorcist II—The Heretic (1977) and
later switched sides to play the devilish Leland Gaunt in the Stephen
King adaptation Needful Things (1993). He was also a police inspector
in Dario Argento’s giallo thriller Nonhosonno (Sleepless) (2001).
VOODOO. Horror cinema has shown little interest in the historical ori-
gins of the voodoo religion. Instead voodoo in horror is usually as-
sociated with zombies, although after Night of the Living Dead
(1968), this association has become less evident, in zombie films at
least. Those non-zombie horrors that represent voodoo or voodoo-
like practices as a threat emanating from black or minority ethnic
communities inevitably flirt with racism, although they can also pro-
vide compelling portrayals of white complacency. Such ambiguous
films include Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1964), The Possession
of Joel Delaney (1972), The Believers (1987), Angel Heart (1987),
and The Skeleton Key (2005). Some of the trappings of voodoo—for
example, voodoo dolls—show up in, among others, Night of the Ea-
gle (Burn, Witch, Burn!) (1962), The Witches (1966), The House that
Dripped Blood (1970), and Child’s Play (1988), although this tends
to be more in the context of stories of witchcraft and magic.
–W–
threatens to uncover his crimes. These are all relentlessly gory and
grim narratives, and good rarely prevails in them. One of the attrac-
tive heroines of House of Whipcord is eventually hanged, while in the
conclusions of Frightmare and House of Mortal Sin, the murderers
are left free and triumphant.
The nihilism apparent here is comparable with that found in some
1970s American horror films and can similarly be seen as a re-
sponse to the social unrest that characterized this period. At the same
time, Walker’s films seem very British, in their sense of place, their
precise attention to social and class divisions and etiquette, and in a
dry sense of humor that occasionally surfaces amidst all the horror.
The psychological thrillers Schizo (1976) and The Comeback
(1978) were more conventional and lacked the intense focus of
Walker’s earlier work (although the presence of middle-of-the-road
crooner Jack Jones in The Comeback gives it a certain curiosity
value). House of the Long Shadows (1983), Walker’s final film, was
different from anything he had done before. A loose adaptation of the
hoary 1913 novel Seven Keys to Baldpate, this haunted house mys-
tery exuded nostalgia for an older type of horror cinema. The pres-
ence in it of august horror stars Peter Cushing, John Carradine,
Christopher Lee, and Vincent Price helped with the marketing, but
the film never found an audience, perhaps because it was so out of
step with a horror cinema that in the early 1980s was becoming in-
creasingly focused on teenagers.
In the mid-1980s, Walker withdrew from the film industry and be-
came a successful property developer.
WALLACE, TOMMY LEE (1949– ). The early part of Tommy Lee Wal-
lace’s career in cinema involved his working for John Carpenter. He
was art director on Carpenter’s Dark Star (1974) and Assault on
Precinct 13 (1976) and then became production designer and editor for
the director’s Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980). It was perhaps not
surprising then that his directorial debut was the Carpenter-produced
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), for which he also received a
screenplay credit (as a result of Nigel Kneale, the original writer, hav-
ing his own name removed from the credits); in the same year he also
wrote the screenplay for another sequel, Amityville II: The Possession
(1982). More sequels followed, with Wallace writing and directing two
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328 • WAXWORKS
WEREWOLVES • 329
330 • WEREWOLVES
WEREWOLVES • 331
332 • WESTERNS
WESTERNS. It is well known that the horror genre shares themes and
imagery with both the science fiction and crime genres. Its connec-
tion with the western is more surprising, given that the western is
usually seen as a robustly outdoors-based format in comparison with
horror’s claustrophobic nature. However, a number of horror films
have operated as degraded westerns, exploring places or historical
moments where the pioneering ideals embodied in the western have
become introverted to the point of insanity. One thinks here of Stan-
ley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) and Antonia Bird’s Ravenous
(1999), both of which reference the real-life Donner Party incident
from the 1840s, in which a party of American settlers resorted to can-
nibalism. Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987) also used western
conventions in its depiction of the modern-day exploits of a vampire
band of outlaws. More conventional, if bizarre, generic hybridity was
provided by Billy the Kid versus Dracula (1966) and Jesse James
meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966). Vampires also showed up in
Curse of the Undead (1959) and Sundown: the Vampire in Retreat
(1991), while Grim Prairie Tales (1990) was a western-based horror
anthology. Operating from within the western idiom, some of Clint
Eastwood’s films have contained supernatural or gothic elements,
notably Beguiled (1971), High Plains Drifter (1973), and Pale Rider
(1985).
fashionable and largely out of print, Hammer did adapt three of his
novels for the big screen. The Lost Continent (1968) was a bizarre ad-
venture story. The Devil Rides Out (1968) remains one of the genre’s
best Satanic thrillers, however. As directed by Terence Fisher and
scripted by Richard Matheson, it was faithful to Wheatley’s plot but
removed his somewhat bombastic dialogue and reactionary attitudes.
To the Devil a Daughter (1976), adapted by Christopher Wicking
for director Peter Sykes, was interesting in its own right but only
took a few ideas from Wheatley’s original story.
338 • WITCHCRAFT
an old-fashioned film in the good sense of that term. See also AMER-
ICAN HORROR.
WRAY, FAY (1907–2004). Fay Wray was the first of horror cinema’s
“Scream Queens.” Her most spectacular screams are to be found in
Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s King Kong (1933),
but she also screamed effectively in The Most Dangerous Game (The
Hounds of Zaroff) (1932), which was directed by Irving Pichel and
Schoedsack, and in two films for director Michael Curtiz, Doctor X
(1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), as well as in The
Vampire Bat (1933); she also featured in the voodoo film Black
Moon (1934). However, as is the case generally with Scream Queens,
she was far from being a passive victim. In all of her horror films,
Wray might have been victimized by men, and ultimately saved by
men as well, but she was also inquisitive, articulate, charismatic and
on occasion more than capable of fighting back herself, for example
in Mystery of the Wax Museum where she manages to smash in the
wax mask of her assailant. She did not reside in the horror genre for
long. There was a final performance in the British supernatural
thriller The Clairvoyant (1934), and then she was off into the more
wholesome world provided by comedies, musicals and crime
thrillers. Yet she still remains an enduring genre icon.
–Y–
the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street horror cycles. He
went on to design the murderous doll Chucky for Child’s Play
(1988). Other horror makeup credits have included Retribution
(1987), The Hidden (1987), The Seventh Sign (1988), The Phantom
of the Opera (1989), Man’s Best Friend (1993), Dr. Jekyll and Ms.
Hyde (1995), Bordello of Blood (1996), Rumpelstiltskin (1996), and
The Astronaut’s Wife (1996). Yagher directed Hellraiser: Bloodline
(1996) but disowned the final version and was billed as “Alan
Smithee,” the name customarily adopted in such circumstances. He
also received a credit for the screen story of Tim Burton’s Sleepy
Hollow (1999), a project that at one point he was slated to direct, and
worked on the Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) television series.
More recently, he has focused on makeup effects for non-horror proj-
ects such as Mission Impossible II (2000) and Aeon Flux (2005).
in the United States on a range of low budget genre films, often in as-
sociation with director Stuart Gordon. Among others, he produced
Re-animator (1984) and From Beyond (1985), Gordon’s gory com-
edy/horror adaptations of stories by H. P. Lovecraft, as well as Dolls
(1987), another Gordon horror, Warlock (1989), Infested (1993), and
the Lovecraftian horror anthology Necromonicon (1994). During this
period, he also started directing. His auspicious debut was the body
horror film Society (1989), which combined an astonishing level of
gore with elements of social critique and some none too subtle humor.
This was followed by Bride of Re-animator (1990), Return of the Liv-
ing Dead III (1993), a contribution to Necronomicon, The Dentist
(1996), Progeny (1998), and The Dentist 2 (1998), with many of these
offering a similar mix of extreme body-related imagery softened by hu-
mor. He also found time to co-write and co-produce the family fantasy
entertainment Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989).
In 1999, Yuzna relocated to Spain, where he helped to set up Fan-
tastic Factory, a Spanish company producing English-language hor-
ror films, some of which were directed by Yuzna himself. These in-
cluded Faust (2001), Beyond Re-animator (2003), Rottweiler (2004),
and Beneath Still Waters (2005). None of these have matched the in-
ventiveness or achievement of the best of Yuzna’s American work.
However, Yuzna has also produced some of the most outstanding
Fantastic Factory films, namely Stuart Gordon’s stylish Lovecraft
adaptation Dagon (2001), Darkness (2002), and the werewolf drama
Romasanta (2004). See also AMERICAN HORROR; SPANISH
HORROR.
–Z–
ZOMBIE, ROB (1965– ). Rob Zombie’s rock music has graced many
films, including Urban Legend (1998), Bride of Chucky (1998), and
End of Days (1999). He made the transition from musician to direc-
tor with House of 1000 Corpses (2003), a gory example of rural hor-
ror that, while uneven in tone, demonstrated Zombie’s affection for
the genre (as does the fact that he changed his name to Rob Zombie
from Robert Cummings). His direction of The Devil’s Rejects (2005),
a sequel to House of 1000 Corpses, was more assured and conse-
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ZOMBIES • 345
ZOMBIES. The disturbing notion that the dead might return and
threaten us has underpinned a range of horror monsters, including
vampires, the mummy and ghosts. The zombie represents the most
brutish form of this; physically repellent and usually mindless, it of-
fers a spectacle of death unmitigated by the attractiveness or
charisma possessed by some other monsters.
The idea of the zombie is derived from voodoo-related religious
practices, especially those associated with Haiti. It was W. H.
Seabrook’s best-selling pop-anthropology study The Magic Island
(1929) that introduced voodoo and the zombie to a wider public, and
Victor Halperin’s White Zombie (1932) was the first film to exploit
the book’s success. White Zombie presented a scenario in which
white characters abroad encounter strange native customs and are ei-
ther overwhelmed by these or—in the case of the film’s villain
(played by Bela Lugosi)—exploit them for nefarious ends. The zom-
bies themselves were in essence slaves, with their climactic assault
upon their white master functioning as a coded social rebellion. The
racial dimension of this was never far from the surface, but the for-
eign location helped to disavow any connection with contemporary
reality. Other American zombie films of the 1930s and 1940s fol-
lowed a similar pattern in their emphasis on a white-centered touris-
tic or colonial experience of non-American cultures. The level of
achievement ranged from the crude—for example, Halperin’s boring
Revolt of the Zombies (1936), Jean Yarbrough’s King of the Zom-
bies (1941) and Revenge of the Zombies (1943)—to the sophisticated
and innovative, notably the Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur produc-
tion I Walked with a Zombie (1943). Despite the quality of Tourneur’s
film, the zombie remained a minor horror monster throughout this
period, relegated in the main to the lower end of the genre.
The 1960s saw a limited upward movement in the zombie’s status.
This was first hinted at in Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies
(1966), in which zombies were figured again as voodoo-created slave
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346 • ZOMBIES
labor, but where they were also presented as more visceral and ag-
gressive than they had ever been before. However, it was George
Romero’s seminal American horror film Night of the Living Dead
(1968) that redefined and modernized the zombie, jettisoning its con-
nection with voodoo and foreign lands and relocating it within con-
temporary American society. Romero also made his zombies canni-
balistic, and he spared no detail in depicting their consumption of
human flesh. The director went on to make three sequels to Night
and, amidst the taboo-breaking gore, explored with great intelligence
the social significance of the zombie and the way in which it could
be used to comment critically on the state of our world. From
Romero’s perspective, the zombie became an expression of normal-
ity itself, of who we were or could become.
Many of the zombie films produced in the wake of Romero’s suc-
cess were less ambitious in scope. During the 1970s, British film-
makers returned to zombiedom with the remarkably silly Psychoma-
nia (1972), in which bikers returned from the dead, and one of the
episodes in the Amicus anthology Tales from the Crypt (1972). In
the United States, Bob Clark offered Children Shouldn’t Play with
Dead Things (1973), and the blaxploitation horror Sugar Hill (1974)
engaged in a crude way with the racial politics of voodoo and the
zombie. Spanish filmmaker Jorge Grau directed the grim and
graphic Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti (The Living Dead at
the Manchester Morgue) (1974), while the stylish Spanish Blind
Dead cycle, also from the 1970s, featured the Knights Templar rising
from their graves in modern Spain.
From the late 1970s onwards, a series of Italian zombie films—in-
cluding Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (Zombie, Zombie Flesheaters) (1979)
and Umberto Lenzi’s Incubo sulla città contaminata (Nightmare
City) (1980)—took the gore and cannibalism onto a yet more
graphic level, but they also reduced elements of social critique to a
point where they were sometimes hard to detect at all. Other treat-
ments of the zombie since have included Wes Craven’s The Serpent
and the Rainbow (1988), which returned the zombie to its Haitian
voodoo context, the Stephen King adaptation Pet Sematary (1989),
and Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte dellamore (Cemetery Man) (1994),
an altogether more poetic, although still gory, rendition of a zombie
story. Comedy zombies showed up in Dan O’Bannon’s The Return
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Bibliography
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
The critical literature dealing with the horror film is as varied as the genre itself.
Approaches have ranged from the appreciative and devoted to the coolly ana-
lytical and the downright hostile. Critics have sought to explain the peculiar
pleasures of horror—and indeed this is one of the few popular genres where
pleasure has become a crucial issue—and have also explored specific horror cy-
cles and different horror styles, locating both in historical and national contexts.
349
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350 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
They have probed beneath the surface of apparently straightforward horror nar-
ratives to uncover all sorts of unsettling subtexts and transgressive values, and
they have also offered up paeans of praise to the distinctive and disturbing vi-
sions of particular horror artists.
This critical activity has been characterized by a fluidity that makes it diffi-
cult to divide it up into neat categories. However, certain trends are evident, and
this was already clear in some of the key early texts of horror criticism. “Early”
here means the 1960s and 1970s. The horror film has existed as a distinct
generic category since the early 1930s, but there was little sustained critical
writing on it for a long time. There were certainly investigations and celebra-
tions by journalists and by fans—not least Forrest J. Ackerman whose maga-
zine Famous Monsters of Filmland introduced the genre to younger fans from
the late 1950s onwards—but these existed as fragments rather than as some-
thing more organized or purposeful. There had also been some writing on var-
ious aspects of what would later come to be thought of as horror’s pre-history—
notably on German Expressionist cinema—but these tended to ignore or
downplay the contribution of these films to horror cinema.
It was the absence of any substantial historical survey of horror cinema that
made Carlos Clarens’ 1967 book An Illustrated History of the Horror Film
(later republished as Horror Movies: An Illustrated Survey) so important. Its
obvious intelligence and seriousness helped to elevate the horror genre to a
kind of cultural reputability which, for many other critics, it singularly lacked.
Equally serious was A Heritage of Horror: The English Gothic Cinema
1946–1972, David Pirie’s fine 1973 study of a particular national style of hor-
ror, which convincingly placed British horror within both its social and its cul-
tural context. Finally, the writings on the genre by British-born, Canadian-
based critic Robin Wood that appeared in the 1977 collection The American
Nightmare explored horror cinema in ideological terms. For Wood, the genre
provided a cultural space in which relationships between normative and oppo-
sitional values were played out, with this having the potential for both politi-
cally progressive and conservative inflections.
The focus of much subsequent historical writing on horror has been on Eng-
lish-speaking horror, especially in its American and British variants. More re-
cently, however, an interest in national cinemas has broadened out to include
not just national horror traditions from a wide range of other countries but also
the constantly shifting relations between these. One outcome of this “interna-
tionalized” approach has been the gradual fragmentation of an earlier synoptic
model of horror history that saw the genre’s development in terms of a linear
movement from one neatly defined cycle of production to another. The more re-
cent work presents instead a complex but arguably more credible picture of
both national endeavor and transnational interaction.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 351
352 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
In the face of such variety, this bibliography is designed to help the reader find
the type of critical literature for which he or she is looking. If you prefer Ameri-
can horror, or have a taste for the British or Italian version, or indeed have yet more
exotic tastes, go to the National Horror Cinemas section, where you might find that
horror is even more international than you thought it was. If you believe instead
that the most valuable thing about horror cinema is its directors (and you are cer-
tainly not alone in believing that), then head for the section on Personnel where
you will find books on such genre luminaries as Dario Argento, John Carpenter,
Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Terence Fisher, and James Whale, along with
publications on some filmmakers that you have probably never heard of before,
and not just directors either. If vampires, werewolves, and zombies are more your
thing (and again you are not alone), then the section dealing with thematic studies
of horror will be the one for you, and while there you might find items that are
both unexpected but also interesting—for example, Joan Hawkins’ fascinating
study Cutting Edge: Art-horror and the Horrific avant-garde or Isabel Cristina
Pinedo’s stimulating Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror
Film Viewing. Reference books are also listed for those of you who require the re-
assurance of solid facts, and there is also a listing of anthologies that bring together
the wide range of critical writings that has been generated in response to the hor-
ror film. You could end up reading material here that fascinates you, baffles you,
and annoys you (and perhaps all three at once). Your ideas about horror could be
challenged and upturned, and your whole view of the genre could be changed for-
ever. Or you could return to the horror films you love secure in the knowledge that
they are in fact the best of the lot.
If nothing else, the sheer variety of books and articles listed here suggests a
horror genre that is a long way from being formulaic. Critics, historians, and
theorists operating from radically different perspectives have all found things
in horror that merit discussion and argument. There might not be much of a
consensus about what horror actually is or what it does, but there is a shared
sense of its capacity for provocation and fascination. Given this, it is perhaps
appropriate that this bibliography is so open-ended. There is more than one way
into it and more than one way through it. Needless to say, what route you
choose is up to you. But beware. As is the case with most horror films, there
may be a few surprises along the way.
GENERAL STUDIES
Clarens, Carlos. An Illustrated History of the Horror Film. New York: Putnam,
1967.
Gifford, Denis. A Pictorial History of Horror Movies. London: Hamlyn, 1973.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 353
ANTHOLOGIES OF CRITICISM
THEMATIC STUDIES
354 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baird, Robert. “The Startle Effect: Implications for Spectator Cognition and
Media Theory.” Film Quarterly 53, no. 3 (2000): 12–24.
Barker, Martin, Ernest Mathijs, and Xavier Mendik. “Menstrual Monsters: The
Reception of the Ginger Snaps Cult Horror Franchise.” Film International 4,
no. 3 (2006): 68–77.
Benshoff, Harry. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.
Black, Andy. “Crawling Chaos: H. P. Lovecraft in Cinema.” 109–122 in Necro-
nomicon, Book One, edited by Andy Black. London: Creation Books, 1996.
Boss, Pete. “Vile Bodies and Bad Medicine.” Screen 27, no. 1 (1986): 14–24.
Briefel, Aviva. “Monster Pains: Masochism, Menstruation, and Identification in
the Horror Film.” Film Quarterly 58, no. 3 (2005): 16–27.
Brophy, Philip. “Horrality—the Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films.”
Screen 27, no. 1 (1986): 2–13.
Bunnell, Charlene. “The Gothic: A Literary Genre’s Transition to Film.”
79–100 in Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, edited by Barry K.
Grant. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984.
Carroll, Noel. The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart. London:
Routledge, 1990.
Chaudhuri, S. “Visit of the body snatchers: alien invasion themes in vampire
narratives.” Camera Obscura 40/41 (1997): 180–99.
Cherry, Bridget. “Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female viewers of the horror
film.” 187–203 in Identifying Hollywood’s Audiences: Cultural Identity and
the Movies, edited by Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby. London: British
Film Institute, 1999.
Crane, Jonathan Lake. Terror and Everyday Life: Singular Moments in the His-
tory of the Horror Film. London: Sage, 1994.
Creed, Barbara. “Dark Desires: Male Masochism in the Horror Film.” 118–133
in Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, ed-
ited by Steve Cohan and Ina Rae Hark. London: Routledge, 1993.
———. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London:
Routledge, 1993.
———. Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny. Melbourne: Mel-
bourne University Press, 2005.
Dadoun, Roger. “Fetishism and the Horror Film.” 39–62 in Fantasy and the
Cinema, edited by James Donald. London: British Film Institute, 1989.
Derry, Charles. Dark Dreams: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror
Film. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1977.
Dickstein, Morris. “The Aesthetics of Fright.” 65–78 in Planks of Reason: Es-
says on the Horror Film, edited by Barry K. Grant. Metuchen, N.J.: Scare-
crow Press, 1984.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 355
Donald, James. “The Fantastic, the Sublime and the Popular: Or, What’s at
Stake in Vampire Films?” 233–252 in Fantasy and the Cinema, edited by
James Donald. London: British Film Institute, 1989.
Dyson, Jeremy. Bright Darkness: The Lost Art of the Supernatural Horror
Film. London: Cassell, 1997.
Evans, Walter. “Monster Movies: A Sexual Theory.” 53–64 in Planks of Rea-
son: Essays on the Horror Film, edited by Barry K. Grant. Metuchen, N.J.:
Scarecrow Press, 1984.
Frayling, Christopher. Mad, Bad and Dangerous?: The Scientist and the Cin-
ema. London: Reaktion, 2006.
Freeland, Cynthia. “Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films.” 195–214 in Post-
Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, edited by David Bordwell and Noel
Carroll. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
———. The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 2000.
———. “Realist Horror.” 126–142 in Philosophy and Film, edited by Cynthia
Freeland and Thomas Wartenberg. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Friedman, Lester D. “‘Canyons of Nightmare’: The Jewish Horror Film.”
126–152 in Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, edited by Barry K.
Grant. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984.
Gifford, Denis. Movie Monsters. London: Studio Vista, 1969.
Giles, Dennis. “Conditions of Pleasure in Horror Cinema.” 38–52 in Planks of
Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, edited by Barry K. Grant. Metuchen,
N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984.
Glut, Donald F. Classic Movie Monsters. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1978.
———. The Dracula Book. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975.
———. The Frankenstein Legend. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1973.
Guerrero, Ed. “AIDS as Monster in Science Fiction and Horror Cinema.” Jour-
nal of Popular Film and Television 18, no. 3 (1990): 86–93.
Hantke, Steffen, ed. Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear. Jackson: Uni-
versity Press of Mississippi, 2004.
Hawkins, Joan. Cutting Edge: Art-horror and the Horrific avant-garde. Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Hogan, David. Dark Romance: Sexuality in the Horror Film. Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland, 1986.
Hutchings, Peter. “Masculinity and the Horror Film.” 84–94 in You Tarzan:
Masculinity, Movies and Men, edited by Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumim.
London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1993.
———. “Tearing Your Soul Apart: Horror’s New Monsters.” 89–103 in Modern
Gothic: A Reader, edited by Vic Sage and Allan Lloyd-Smith. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1996.
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356 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jancovich, Mark. “‘A Real Shocker’: Authenticity, Genre, and the Struggle for
Distinction.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 14, no. 1
(2000): 23–35.
Kermode, Mark. “I was a teenage horror fan: or ‘How I Learned to Stop Wor-
rying and Love Linda Blair.’” 57–66 in Ill Effects: The Media/Violence De-
bate, edited by Martin Barker and Julian Petley. London: Routledge, 1997.
Kinder, Marsha, and Beverle Houston. “Seeing is Believing: The Exorcist and
Don’t Look Now.” Cinema 34 (1974): 22–33.
Krzywinska, Tanya. A Skin For Dancing In: Possession, Witchcraft and Voodoo
in Film. Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Flicks Books, 2000.
Lowenstein, Adam. Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cin-
ema, and the Modern Horror Film. New York: Columbia University Press,
2005.
Mank, Gregory William. It’s Alive! The Classic Cinema Saga of Frankenstein.
New York: A. S. Barnes, 1981.
McCarty, John. Splatter Movies: Breaking the Last Taboo of the Screen. New
York: St Martin’s Press, 1984.
Meikle, Denis. Jack the Ripper: The Murders and the Movies. London:
Reynolds and Hearn, 2002.
———. The Ring Companion. London: Titan Books, 2005.
Modleski, Tania. “The Terror of Pleasure.” 155–167 in Studies in Entertain-
ment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, edited by Tania Modleski.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Newman, Kim. Nightmare Movies. London: Bloomsbury, 1988.
Olney, Ian. “The Problem Body Politic, or ‘These Hands Have a Mind All Their
Own!’: Figuring Disability in the Horror Film Adaptations of Renard’s Les
mains d’Orlac.” Literature Film Quarterly 34, no. 4 (2007): 294–302.
Pattison, Barrie. The Seal of Dracula. London: Lorrimer, 1975.
Pinedo, Isabel Cristina. Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Hor-
ror Film Viewing. New York: State University of New York Press, 1997.
Pirie, David. The Vampire Cinema. London: Quarto, 1977.
Powell, Anna. Deleuze and Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2005.
Prawer, S. S. Caligari’s Children: The Film as Tale of Terror. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1980.
Reed, Joseph. “Subgenres in Horror Pictures: The Pentagram, Faust and
Philoctetes.” 101–112 in Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, ed-
ited by Barry K. Grant. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984.
Rockett, W. H. “The Door Ajar: Structure and Convention in Horror Films that
Would Terrify.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 10, no. 3 (1982):
130–136.
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358 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
CROSS-MEDIA STUDIES
Aaron, Michele, ed. The Body’s Perilous Pleasures: Dangerous Desires and
Contemporary Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires Ourselves. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago
Press, 1995.
Bann, Stephen, ed. Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity. London: Reaktion,
1994.
Botting, Fred. Making Monstrous: Frankenstein, criticism, theory. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1991.
Gelder, Ken. Reading the Vampire. London: Routledge, 1994.
Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Mon-
sters. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995.
Hills, Matt. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum, 2005.
Jancovich, Mark. Horror. London: Batsford, 1992.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 359
Great Britain
Barker, Martin, ed. The Video Nasties. London: Pluto Press, 1984.
Boot, Andy. Fragments of Fear: An Illustrated History of British Horror Films.
London: Creation, 1996.
Chibnall, Steve, and Julian Petley, eds. British Horror Cinema. London: Rout-
ledge, 2002.
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360 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
Conrich, Ian. “Traditions of the British Horror Film.” 226–232 in The British
Cinema Book, 2nd edition, edited by Robert Murphy. London: British Film
Institute, 2001.
Earnshaw, Tony. Beating the Devil: The Making of Night of the Demon.
Sheffield: Tomahawk Press, 2005.
Fenton, Harvey, and Dave Flint, eds. Ten Years of Terror: British Horror Films
of the 1970s. Godalming, Surrey: FAB Press, 2001.
Freeman, Nick. “London Kills Me: The English Metropolis in British Horror
Films of the 1970s.” 193–210 in Shocking Cinema of the Seventies, edited by
Xavier Mendik. Hereford: Noir Publishing, 2002.
Hearn, Marcus, and Alan Barnes. The Hammer Story. London: Titan, 1997.
Hunt, Leon. British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation. London:
Routledge, 1998.
Hunter, I. Q. “Hammer Goes East: A Second Glance at The Legend of the Seven
Golden Vampires.” 138–146 in Shocking Cinema of the Seventies, edited by
Xavier Mendik. Hereford: Noir Publishing, 2002.
Hutchings, Peter. Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1993.
———. Dracula. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003.
Kinsey, Wayne. Hammer Films—The Bray Studio Years. London: Reynolds and
Hearn, 2002.
———. Hammer Films—The Elstree Studio Years. Sheffield: Tomahawk Press,
2007.
Lowenstein, Adam. “‘Under-the-skin horrors’: social realism and classlessness
in Peeping Tom and the British New Wave.” 221–232 in British Cinema, Past
and Present, edited by Justine Ashby and Andrew Higson. London: Rout-
ledge, 2000.
Meikle, Denis. A History of Horrors: The Rise and Fall of the House of Ham-
mer. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1996.
Murphy, Robert. Sixties British Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 1992.
Petley, Julian. “The Lost Continent.” 98–119 in All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of
British Cinema, edited by Charles Barr. London: British Film Institute, 1986.
Pirie, David. A Heritage of Horror: The English Gothic Cinema 1946–1972.
London: Gordon Fraser, 1973.
Porter, Vincent. “The Context of Creativity: Ealing Studios and Hammer
Films.” 179–207 in British Cinema History, edited by Vincent Porter and
James Curran. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983.
Rigby, Jonathan. English Gothic: a century of horror cinema. London:
Reynolds and Hearn, 2000.
Smith, Gary A. Uneasy Dreams: The Golden Age of British Horror Films,
1956–1976. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 361
Wright, Peter. “The British post-Alien intrusion film.” 138–152 in British Sci-
ence Fiction Cinema, edited by I. Q Hunter. London: Routledge, 1999.
Italy
Del Valle, David. “The cosmic mill of Wolfgang Preiss: Giorgio Ferroni’s Mill
of the Stone Women.” 105–110 in Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema
Across The Globe, edited by Steven Jay Schneider. Godalming, Surrey: FAB
Press, 2003.
Erickson, Glenn. “Women on the Verge of a Gothic Breakdown: Sex, Drugs
and Corpses in The Horrible Dr. Hichcock.” 269–280 in Horror Film
Reader, edited by Alain Silver and James Ursini. New York: Limelight,
2000.
Hunt, Leon. “Burning Oil and Baby Oil: Bloody Pit of Horror.” 172–180 in Al-
ternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945, edited by
Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik. London: Wallflower, 2004.
———. “A (Sadistic) Night at the Opera: Notes on the Italian Horror Film.”
324–335 in The Horror Reader, edited by Ken Gelder. London: Routledge,
2000.
Koven, Mikel J. La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo
Film. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 2006.
Mendik, Xavier. “Detection and Transgression: The Investigative Drive of the
Giallo.” 35–54 in Necronomicon, Book One, edited by Andy Black. London:
Creation Books, 1996.
———. Tenebre/Tenebrae. Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Flicks Books, 2000.
Needham, Gary. “Playing with genre: defining the Italian giallo.” 135–144 in
Fear without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe, edited by Steven
Jay Schneider. Godalming, Surrey: FAB Press, 2003.
Slater, Jay, ed. Eaten Alive! Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies. London:
Plexus, 2002.
Tohill, Cathal, and Pete Tombs. Immoral Tales: Sex and Horror Cinema in Eu-
rope 1956–1964. London: Primitive Press, 1994: 29–39.
Totoro, Donato. “The Italian zombie film: from derivation to invention.”
161–173 in Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across The Globe, ed-
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Spain
Tohill, Cathal, and Pete Tombs. Immoral Tales: Sex and Horror Cinema in Eu-
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Willis, Andrew. “Spanish horror and the flight from ‘art’ cinema, 1967–73.”
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———. “From the margins to the mainstream: trends in recent Spanish horror
cinema.” 237–250 in Spanish Popular Cinema, edited by Antonio Lázaro
Reboll and Andrew Willis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.
———. “The Spanish Horror Film as Subversive Text: Eloy de la Iglesia’s La
semana del asesino.” 163–179 in Horror International, edited by Steven Jay
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Babington, Bruce. “Twice a Victim: Carrie Meets the BFI.” Screen 24, no. 3
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Benshoff, Harry. “Blaxploitation Horror Films: Generic Reappropriation or
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Berenstein, Rhona J. Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender, Sexuality, and
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———. “Mommie Dearest: Aliens, Rosemary’s Baby, and Mothering.” Journal
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Berks, John. “What Alice Does: Looking Otherwise at The Cat People.” Cin-
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Bracke, Peter M. Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the
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Brottman, Mikita. “Fecal Phantoms: Oral and Anal Tensions in The Tingler.”
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Hendershot, Cyndy. “The cold war horror film: taboo and transgression in The
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Other
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07_671_z2AA.qxd 2/5/08 9:41 AM Page 379
Peter Hutchings was born in England and obtained a B.A. in film and
literature from Warwick University and a Ph.D. from the University of
East Anglia. He is currently a reader in film studies at Northumbria Uni-
versity, Newcastle upon Tyne, Great Britain. His doctoral thesis was on
the British horror film, and he has continued to undertake research both
on British cinema and on the horror film as well as developing broader
interests in film genres and transnational cinemas. He is the author of
four monographs, Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film
(1993), Terence Fisher (2002), Dracula (2003), and The Horror Film
(2004). He also co-edited (with Joanne Hollows and Mark Jancovich)
The Film Studies Reader (2000) and has contributed essays to numer-
ous books, including British Science Fiction Cinema (ed. Ian Hunter,
1999), British Cinema—Past and Present (eds. Justine Ashby and An-
drew Higson, 2000), British Horror Cinema (eds. Steve Chibnall and
Julian Petley, 2001), The British Cinema Book, 2nd edition (ed. Robert
Murphy, 2002), and Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Op-
positional Taste (ed. Julian Stringer et al, 2003). Reference books to
which he has contributed include Kim Newman’s The BFI Companion
to Horror (1996), Brian McFarlane’s The Encyclopedia of British Film
(2003), and Robert Murphy’s Directors in British and Irish Film Cin-
ema: A Reference Guide (2006).
379