When a group of films share similar story structures, tropes, themes, conflicts, subject matter, and iconography, they are said to be part of the same GENRE.
In this dark journey through the HORROR GENRE, we’ll be confronting taboo themes that deal with the abject side of human nature, supernatural creatures, mystery, blood, violence, maddening settings, and heightened realities that will subconsciously help us confront our fear of death. And kittens.
OK, let’s get scared!
The first horror film I ever saw was Gremlins.
I was five years old, and I LOVED IT. I was so obsessed with it that I even used to draw little Gremlins all over the pamphlets at the church we went to (which I’m sure led everyone to think I needed an exorcist). Moreover, Gremlins cemented my love of horror comedies, which is my favorite horror subgenre to this day.
What’s funny is that I only remember being truly scared by one scene in particular, and it’s when the Gremlins first hatch from their cocoons. The atmospherics of the scene - the lighting, the sound effects, the score, the fact that the bastards were terrorizing little Gizmo, and the fact that all we saw were the Gremlins’ shadows - made quite an impression on me. Yet I still loved watching that scene over and over.
So, I guess the best way to start this is with a question:
Why do we enjoy being scared by horror films?
If I go to a comedy, I want to laugh; if I go to a drama, I want to feel the gravitas. In the case of feeling scared, it makes the experience much more meaningful if we emerge into the sunlight feeling as if we’d just faced our demons alongside the characters.
It’s cathartic.
I always marvel at that magic trick - the artful ways in which skilled storytellers can cause an audience to be moved or thrilled by something that only exists on a movie screen.
Case in point: I showed Gremlins to my nephew when he turned five, and it felt really special to pass it on - especially because he was the same age as I was when I first saw it. He quotes Gizmo saying, “Bright light!” all the time now, and I love seeing that the magic trick worked on him too.
When you look back at film history, it’s fascinating to see how quickly horror filmmakers caught on to that magic trick.
By all accounts, the first horror movie ever made was a three-minute short called The House of the Devil in 1896 (!). And right away, pioneering director Georges Méliès recognized that in order to scare his audience, he had to get inside their heads.
With that in mind, think about every haunted house attraction you’ve ever walked through - creating an authentic atmosphere of discomfort and disquiet is the key.
So, how do you do that on film?
Expressionism is a European art style that came about in the 1910s featuring skewed, angular designs that are meant to convey a troubled state of mind. This art form was specifically used in certain German films as a design aesthetic, most notably in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer.
Dr. Caligari gave us distorted sets, harsh angles, exaggeratedly narrow streets, misshapen walls, odd-looking windows, and crooked doorframes. Moreover, the filmmakers painted black lines and patterns directly on the floors and walls of the sets to convey light and shadow. And this heightened “unreality” was meant to reflect how a madman sees the world.
Now, a critique you often hear from modern audiences is that these old films just don’t feel “scary” nowadays, despite their fantastic psychological designs. But I would say fear is not always the point.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari may not be “scary” by modern standards, but it is moody and atmospheric, and to me, that makes it effective. The scenes of Cesare the sleepwalker creeping around at night, wandering through otherworldly streets and buildings that are all dark shadows and weird angles, convey a sense of unease that permeates the entire film.
From a pure design standpoint, I can see why Caligari is considered to be a landmark film – it inspired the look and tone of horror for decades to come.
In fact, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari paved the way for Hollywood’s Golden Age of Horror (1931-1939).
This trailblazing era was kicked off by Universal Studios with their one-two punch of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931. And while most of the major studios also threw their hats in the ring – namely MGM, Paramount, RKO, United Artists, and Warner Brothers - Universal led the field significantly.
These genre-defining horror films became popular primarily because audiences had never seen anything like them onscreen before. At the same time, these movies tapped into the Depression-induced fear that was permeating the zeitgeist, giving audiences an outlet to process their angst.
It was a perfect storm of novelty melding with emotional catharsis.
Moreover, filmmaking simply seemed to click into place during this time, giving us much of the formative film language we still see today. And that’s why this period was known as the Golden Age overall, not just in horror; as a matter of fact, the care that was being put into the studios’s “prestige pictures” was also being invested into their horror films.
The studios took the best lessons of German Expressionism - as well as the best tools available at that time in terms of newfound sound capabilities, makeup, and camera techniques - and grafted their highest production values onto largely familiar horror stories, in that many of them were based on classic novels.
In short, horror got the respect it rarely gets even today. And it all goes back to those two inaugural monsters from 1931.
Dracula (1931)
In theory, Dracula never should have worked as a horror film.
Because of the studio’s strict censorship mandates, director Tod Browning and his team were essentially forced to cut away from every frightening act Dracula commits in the movie, which some critics say took away from his power; we don’t even see Dracula’s fangs, let alone any gore.
However, Dracula’s actual introduction in the film encapsulates every single reason why he has endured as a character, all in one fantastic shot.
There’s the camerawork itself, sweeping in to linger on Dracula in his crypt. There’s the moody lighting and Expressionistic set design, used to maximum effect in this moment. And finally, there’s actor Bela Lugosi himself, whose eerie screen presence and commanding performance gave us an instant icon for the ages.
The main reason why Lugosi was perfect for the role is because he outright exuded Dracula’s primary monstrous attribute, which is known as “horrific metonymy.”
In horror terms, this means that Dracula’s monstrosity is hidden beneath the surface, making him especially dangerous and insidious. On the outside, Dracula seems to be a normal, debonair gentleman, but he is actually concealing his bloodthirsty, supernatural nature on the inside. Thus, he makes others feel uneasy around him… yet they are also somehow drawn to him.
And that is the root of his power.
To throw more horror terms* at you, Dracula is also a “fusion monster,” because he is a mix of the ordinary and the impure – in this case, alive and dead, or “undead.”
And it can also be argued that Dracula is a “massification monster” – a creature whose threat level increases as it amasses “back up” and grows in number - because he is able to create more vampires.
*I highly recommend picking up scholar Rick Worland’s book The Horror Film, wherein he breaks down literary theorist Noel Carroll's "Taxonomy of Monsters." Fantastic stuff!
Dracula gets even further under our skins when we consider the fact that he is the ultimate violator, which makes him a body-genre monster as well.
(Wow, there has been a lot more defining of things going on here than I was expecting, but here we go):
The term “body genre” is used to describe sensationalized stories (in which women are usually victims or voyeuristic subjects) that deal with sex, violence, or emotion in excessive ways. Pornography, horror films, and melodramas are cited as examples. Dracula embodies all three.
Count Dracula uses sex - his aforementioned uncanny magnetism - to seduce his victims. That seduction allows him to commit violence, which is of course signified by the abject act of drinking blood from the human body. And the “emotion” category is embodied by the fear that Dracula’s victims have of him, as well as their disgust over what he did to them, all while combating the uncontrollable desire he instills in them.
In later iterations, most notably Bram Stoker’s Dracula – my favorite version of the story - all three aspects of the body genre would be taken way, way further. Especially “emotion,” seeing as Dracula is depicted by director Francis Ford Coppola and screenwriter James V. Hart as a romantic figure searching for his reincarnated love.
And because Dracula encapsulates so much psychological territory in terms of the various types of horror he represents, vampire stories as a whole are extremely versatile, which explains their enduring popularity.
For starters, there’s the central premise of what a vampire actually is - i.e., a parasite who lives off the lives of others - and this can be used as the central operating conceit of countless terrible creatures. There’s also the existential angst that accompanies being immortal, which means that an exploration of mortality can be utilized as an incisive theme. And there’s also the idea of vampirism as a disease, one that must be cured, and this can serve as the impetus to many kinds of allegories.
In summation, the tropes of “vampirism” act as metaphors, and metaphors are very malleable; they can be made to fit any narrative framework in any genre.
Take the Gothic melodrama, for example…
I’m not sure if Interview with the Vampire is my “favorite” vampire movie – I have a soft spot for The Lost Boys - but it does feature my favorite depiction of vampires. Meaning, I connect more with vampire stories that never let us forget how much of a soul-crushing burden vampirism is. (Living forever and seeing all your loved ones die while having to kill and drink blood to survive is not “cool” unless you are Blade.)
Furthermore, there’s the inclusion of Kirsten Dunst’s Claudia, an adult forever trapped in the body of a child, and that is something we had never seen in a vampire story before.
Depicting a little girl who expresses the desire to do “adult things” in that manner was a refreshingly subversive choice by author/screenwriter Anne Rice and director Neil Jordan, and Dunst’s magnificent performance emodies the dark side of immortality perfectly.
I also have to mention Stephen Norrington’s Blade again, which shows that vampires can even cross over into action cinema. That said, I love Blade 2 even more, mostly because director Guillermo del Toro brought his Expressionistic sensibilities and his trademark thematic exploration of monsters to the table at full tilt.
In addition, del Toro also made the film Cronos and the TV show The Strain, two more examples of the versatility of vampires – an existential family drama and a sci-fi/thriller, respectively.
All in all, it seems as if the sky is the limit when it comes to the tales of those undead bloodsuckers. And we can certainly say the same for cinema’s most tragic monster...
“Where should we be if no one tried to find out what lies beyond?”
Frankenstein (1931)
From the first frame, it’s clear that director James Whale and his team made a gorgeous-looking film that is all about theme. The graveyard of Frankenstein’s opening scene features crooked headstones, twisted trees, and high-contrast lighting, which are three key signifiers of German Expressionism. There’s also a Grim Reaper statue nearby, subtly conveying the film’s central conceit of man’s desire to dominate death.
As we know, the key aspect of German Expressionism is that it is used to reflect the characters’ inner psychologies. As such, these same motifs can also be seen in Dr. Frankenstein’s wonderfully designed watchtower laboratory and the climactic windmill set. Specifically, there’s a surreal moment that occurs within said windmill that feels like an especially Expressionistic flourish.
As Frankenstein and his Monster square off for the finale, the shadows of the windmill’s swirling mechanism pass across both of their faces and seem to blend them into each other. This wonderful visual illustrates the core theme of the movie: In playing God, men can become monsters.
And that theme is precisely why Frankenstein has endured - it was the first major monster movie that made us feel more compassion for the monster than the man.
After all, the Monster did not ask to be created, and then his creator just abandoned him. What’s worse, the Monster can’t help what he is, yet he is condemned for it.
And the film makes us feel this injustice.
The first big scene that illustrates this point is when the Monster is revealed to us in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. After they get him under control and restrain him, the camera pans down from the Monster’s face to his hands, which are making a pleading motion. It’s like he’s begging his creator to tell him why he is feeling all these confusing feelings, to offer him comfort, to even offer him love. My heart broke in that moment.
The second big thematically important scene occurs when the Monster accidentally drowns the little village girl. Of course, the Monster has no malice in his heart when he throws Maria into the lake – he just wants to see something else float alongside those beautiful flowers.
But this avoidable tragedy happened because the Monster had no one to guide him morally, to teach him right from wrong, to teach him what life and death are. Thus, by doing something monstrous, the Monster seems to realize that he is an abomination, which causes him to seek revenge on his creator.
Originally, this moment was cut from the film because of censorship mandates, but thankfully it was restored in the 1980s. The movie really needed this scene because we really needed to see the Monster make that fatal mistake so we could feel what he felt. It all serves as a potent commentary on the responsibility we have toward our creations… our children.
Circling back to the question of whether old movies like Frankenstein are “scary,” I am once again reminded of The Cabinet of Caligari. Just like that film, Frankenstein is moody and atmospheric more than scary, but that doesn’t mean it was unsuccessful in what it set out to do.
I would even go a step further and say that Frankenstein is full of poignancy and moral resonance, and those qualities are more important for this particular horror film than “being scary” is. Boris Karloff’s iconic portrayal of the Monster infuses the story with a melancholic soul that is irreplaceable. We feel deeply sorry for him here, and it is his singular presence that drives the movie’s themes.
Frankenstein would simply be empty without the pathos of its Monster.
This all brings me to my ultimate point: Because of the foundational genre tenets I’ve laid out for you, I believe all horror movies are either a Dracula story or a Frankenstein story at their core - even those with human monsters.
In a Dracula story, the monster invades the lives of innocents and destroys their world. It often relishes being what it is and lives for the body count. And because the characters must summon their inner strength and conquer this formidable evil, Dracula stories are often testaments to the human condition. Examples: It, The Silence of the Lambs, Jaws.
In a Frankenstein story, the monster is monstrous through no fault of its own. It doesn’t understand what it is, and it only does what it is naturally predisposed to do. And because the characters are often the ones who create or provoke or unleash this inadvertent destructive force, Frankenstein stories are often indictments of the human condition. Examples: Carrie, The Fly, Jurassic Park.
Now, there certainly have been variations of these formulas, and we certainly have seen plenty of mixes and matches.
For example, I would argue that films like Evil Dead, Poltergeist, and Pet Semetary have qualities of both Drac and Frank stories because they involve people messing with things that shouldn’t be messed with, but at the same time, they definitely don’t “deserve” to die thematically. It all depends on the nature of the monster and the lessons at play in the story.
In the end, it only makes sense that Dracula and Frankenstein, arguably the most important monsters in the history of the horror genre, would form its bloody, beating heart.