Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films,
2016
Images from the Internet
Dreaming of Nightmares: A Crash Course in Horror Movie History
By Nige Burton and Jamie Jones
Stripley Media Ltd.
28 pages, 2016
I’m old enough to have grown up with Olde Tyme monster movies, mostly
in black and white, usually on WPIX, shown on New York’s “Chiller Theater,”
sometimes hosted by Zacherle(y). Whether the Universal films, or even schlock
like The Monster That Conquered the World (1957), Plan Nine from Outer Space (1959), The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959), and even Attack of the Giant
Crab Monsters (1957; where you could see the sneakers of the guy holding up
the crab suit), it didn’t matter, you were glued to the screen. In fact, the
first horror film I remember on TV (not counting The Wizard of Oz) was Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).
I’d often also go to the theater to see the latest AIP Poe
adaptation with Vincent Price, enjoy bad gimmick films like Two on a Guillotine (1965) where a
skeleton flew down on a wire in the theater…just once before it was knocked
down by kids throwing candy and popcorn boxes), and the film that scared the
shit out of me, Straight-Jacket (1964),
where I couldn’t sleep for a couple of weeks (I was 9 years old). The last film
I saw that really had a profound effect on my fear level was The Haunting (1963), which I saw when I
was a teen in the early ‘70s (since then, I’ve probably read Shirley Jackson’s
original novel, The Haunting of Hill
House from 1959, about five times).I’ve been watching these kinds of films
since as long as I can remember.
Magazines like Famous
Monsters of Filmland [FMF] and Castle
of Frankenstein were great primers and history lessons, telling stories and
showing behind the scene photos of people like Karloff, Lugosi, Harryhausen,
Lorre, Cushing, Lee, and the countless Hammer actresses (especially Castle…). Then came Classic Monsters mag at some point.
When I had the offer to see this book for free as a .pdf (you
can do if you visit the website and sign up for the monthly newsletter), I
figured, why not. I find that most younger fans’ knowledge of horror starts
around the period of Night of the Living
Dead (1968; yes, I know it’s a gross generalization, but that’s okay).
Other than being quite a slim volume, the first inside image I
noticed was a full-page picture on page 2 of a close-up of William Henry Pratt
(aka Boris Karloff), and I thought, “Oh, that’s from The Old Dark House (1932). That’s when I knew I was in the right
place.
It’s pretty quick to see by the grammar and tone of the book
that it is British. Well, first there’s the use of “s” instead of “z,” such as
in “generalisation.” Then there are some quaint wordings like “whilst” and “behindhanded”
(the last word not even recognized by Spellchecker). Who knows, perhaps
“unbeknownst” will show up?
But what about the content?
Okay, okay, stop badgering me. The book is broken up into six chapters, each
covering a period of time or era. The first chapter, “Silent Shudders,” focuses
on the advent of film in the late 1800s to the introduction of sound in 1929.
The biggies are here, such as Murneau’s Nosferatu
(1922), Edison’s Frankenstein (1910), and especially Lon
Chaney (Sr.). I would argue they left out Metropolis
(1927), but I suppose technically that’s science fiction (it can be both; I
mean the Maria robot was creepy as hell). I understand why they put in George
Méiliès since his films did have a sort of devil character, but there was no real
narrative story. I propose that the first really
frightening film was Edison’s Great Train Robbery in 1903: at the end of the western, one of the villain characters
(who was killed in the story) is shown in a portrait level shot. Facing
directly to the camera (i.e., the audience), pulls out a pistol, points it at
the viewer, and fires. That may seem kind of benign now, but then, because of
the lack of context, people in the theater screamed, ducked and some even
fainted.
The second chapter deals with “The Golden Age,” or for those of
us fans of the period genre, the Universal monsters. Of course, the first up,
and rightfully so, is Dracula (1931).
While each chapter is short, there are some interesting tidbits, such as
resting the myth of Lon Chaney being up for the Lugosi role, and that Lugosi
turned down the Frankenstein (1931)
monster due to its lack of dialog. Burton wrote books that were definitive
histories of these two films, so I believe his credentials. It’s amusing to see
the authors’ grammar rear up again when describing director James Whale as a Brummie (I looked it up; it’s someone
from Birmingham, UK). However, their amusing bias comes through when they make sure to describe Karloff as
British (where he lived until his early 20s, when he moved to Toronto).
Of course other films than Universal are discussed, such as
RKO’s King Kong (1933). Again, they
are correct that the Golden Age ended with the censorship boards, but they
discuss it under the British Board of Film Censors, rather than the effect of the
Motion Picture Production Code (MPPA, aka the Hay’s Code) in America, where the
films actually originated, which had a more drastic and direct artistic
negative effect (FYI, I did my Master’s Thesis, in part, on the Code).
In the third chapter, “Second Wind,” they delve into how the
monster machine was turned off because of the gatekeeping Code, but thanks to a
bill of Frankenstein and Dracula shown towards the end of the ‘30s, there was
such a profit margin that the factory started again, with the first big star
being Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolfman
(1941), and his revitalizing a new Egyptian myth with The Mummy’s Tomb (1942). The profitability of these monsters was
the first time that the sequel train seriously pulled out of the station, with
the likes of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
(1943) and House of Dracula (1945). They
had mentioned the artistic success of The
Bride of Frankenstein (1935), in the previous chapter, and acknowledge that
many of the other sequels were more quickie B-films than A-line quality. Other
studios, such as RKO, went in another direction and tended to focus on more
human monsters, such as with The Body
Snatchers and Isle of the Dead
(both 1945 and both with Karloff, who was loaned to the studio).
“Out of this World,” the fourth chapter, delves into the 1950s
paranoia of science fiction like This
Planet Earth (1955) and Creature from
the Black Lagoon (1954). While science was in some form in films like Frankenstein, it was dark and mysterious
arts that paralleled alchemy. By the ‘50s, however, with the ending of World
War II and huge leaps and bounds made by technology and science that affected everyday
life, such as television and Jonas Salk’s serum, it became more of a daily
reality rather than an electric and test tube filled hocus pocus. Radiation
fear was a big factor that entered into mainstream culture in the ‘50s, with
giant insects and bugs, as well as monsters (e.g., Godzilla in 1956), which were seen as nearly a possibility (much
like fear of a viral Zombie Apocalypse seems now).
Burton and Jones are correct, moreover, that the Comics Code had
some effect on the death of that type of sci-fi (though, of course, it didn’t
end completely). What really brought the end of this period in the States was a
series of lawsuits by foreign films (e.g., The Bicycle Thief) about unfair
distribution; according to the Hays Code, the companies that played the films
also owned the theaters, shutting out foreign and independent releases. The end
result of a Supreme Court decision was the studios were no longer allowed to do
both (anti-trust laws), which wore down the MMPA enough so that independent
studios could open and get their films distributed (e.g., those by the likes of
Hershell Gordon Lewis, David Friedman, and of course, Roger Corman).
Another positive
function of this period was the sexing up of the cinema, where monsters met
women in tight clothing or even (gasp) bathing suits, such as the Black Lagoon chap kidnaping Julie Adams,
or astronauts finding a zaftig Zsa Zsa Gabor in The Queen of Outer Space (1958).
Rightfully so, this leads to the next and fifth chapter of British
monsters in “New Blood.” Of course, a large portion this focuses on the most
important and influential British (I would say European) film studio, Hammer
Pictures, which was arguable the Universal Studios of the late 1950s into the
mid-1970s, even reviving the Frankenstein
and Dracula mythos. This led to the
rise of new horror icons such as Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. It also led
to the further lowering of the cleavage line.
There is a whole section of American cinema that is not
addressed in the book, namely the indies of the ‘60s that dealt heavily in gore
and sex, such as Blood Feast (1964), Two Thousand Maniacs (1965), and Mantis in Black Lace (1968), in addition
to the myriad of Corman releases.
The final and sixth chapter is titled “Slasher Suburbia.” The
authors posit that the slasher films started in the vacuum of the end of Hammer
as a force in 1972, but I would disagree. Night
of the Living Dead (1968; it was not a slasher film per se, but the level
of gore equaled one), The Texas Chain Saw
Massacre (1974) and its predecessor Last
House on the Left (1972) were all filmed while Hammer still existed and was
a driving concern, and I do believe most would cite these films as a reference
point more than Hammer (as wonderful as those films were, no argument with the
authors). In fact, in modern extreme horror cinema, many do not even bother to
go past these touchstone films, considering many of the Hammers were benign in
comparison (I believe this is an error; it’s good to learn the history). To be fair,
Burton and Jones do declare Psycho
(1960) as the first slasher.
Nicely, they also give credit to the giallo for helping launch it, and of course it was the advent of
video that made giallo have any real
lasting impact. And it’s smart that they call it Suburban Horror, as many of
the films take place at home (or someone’s
house); another way they put it, I would postulate, is the events happen in “the
ordinary.”
What follows the introduction of slashers is actually away from
the ordinary, though in somewhat serene settings, leading to new icons to
replace the Frankenstein monsters, Draculas, werewolves, etc. These came with
the names Michael, Jason and Freddy. A neighborhood, a children’s camp in the
woods, and in dreams are examples of what I’m going to call the “extraordinary
ordinary.” That is part of where the story here ends, with the authors asking,
“What’s next.”
Well, in part to answer that question by me is twofold. First,
there is the introduction of digital production, with cheap cameras that look good
and editing programs on the computer, creating a world in which anyone can be a
filmmaker, even more so than with 8mm or 16mm thanks to means of distribution
through the Internet and conventions. Films now are often more visceral and yet
sometimes sillier, due to this. This gives rise to the likes of omnipresent
zombies, torture porn, and handheld found-footage miasma, as well as some
masterful works such as those by the likes of indie filmmakers like Richard
Griffin and Dustin Wayde Mills (among many others).
This book is chock full of really fine stills, which thanks to
it being a .pdf can be enlarged. That being said, perhaps I’m being a bit hard
on what they didn’t put in,
considering the thin volume, but I also believe it is also somewhat cultural,
as they are looking from a British standard, and as I stated, some of these
films didn’t play there, or the laws were different as far as content. Many of
the more graphic films were banned in England in the 1980s as “Video Nasties.”
Most of this book could have been lifted right off the pages of FMF, but that is not meant as anywhere
near an insult. It’s actually a really fun read, and the authors make some
really fine points and history details, some I had never really thought of or known
(remembered?) before.
To get the book you do have to join, but it’s still worth
looking for, as it is associated with Classic
Monsters of the Movies magazine. It is a fun read, as well.
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