Elements of horror have always been part of movies, but horror movies didn’t exist in until the release of Dracula in 1931—at least not in Hollywood or under the name of horror, according to the author of a new study.
The prehistory of cinematic horror is investigated in A Place of Darkness: The Rhetoric of Horror in Early American Cinema (University of Texas Press). Syracuse University communications professor Kendall R. Phillips poured over film reviews, essays and other texts from the advent of the motion picture projector through the unanticipated success of Dracula to show that before Bela Lugosi donned his cape, no one spoke of horror films. In the U.S., horrific or supernatural elements were usually set-ups to disparage the ignorant and the foreigners. The ghosts, devils and mediums were fake; the believers were not only fools but represented a danger to the can-do rationalism of America. “Weird” elements, as they were termed in the early 20th century press, were bound up in anxiety over immigration and what those immigrants might bring with them in their psychological kitbags.
But like any suppressed thought or repressed memory, horror refused to go away. Director Tod Browning’s Dracula, which played on fears of changing sexual mores and xenophobia, found its audience. “The social turmoil caused by the Great Depression also created an atmosphere of anxiety that led audiences to be receptive to a horrific tale of the undead rising from their graves,” Phillips concludes in his thoughtful, thought-provoking study.
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