The Horror Film: An Introduction (review)

Previously, much of the important critical work on the horror film genre has been cloaked in the language of dense, sometimes convoluted film theory. This work has certainly been fruitful in legitimizing the study of the popular horror film in advanced film and cultural studies programs. However, the majority of this previous work has not been successful, in this reviewer’s teaching experience, as an introduction for undergraduate students either to film studies, generally, or to the horror film genre, specifically. For several years, I have tried to pull readings together from disparate sources that would provide an accessible entrée into the guilty pleasure of the horror film as popular culture, but with only varying degrees of success. Now, with the publication of Rick Worland’s The Horror Film: An Introduction, I no longer have to cull my readings from a variety of sources for my undergraduate horror film class. Worland has written a solid history of the contributing sources in the evolution of the horror film genre, as well as analyses of specific horror films that illustrate the continuing impact of those sources.

The overarching strength of The Horror Film: An Introduction is the exploration of cultural and social forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, the horror film genre. Although both the themes of gothic literature and the visual style of German expressionism have been acknowledged by other film scholars as important generative mechanisms of this particular film genre, the book’s discussion expands beyond the parameters of those influences. While noting the horror film’s ongoing gothic fascination with social decay, corrupt authority, and violent eroticism, Worland points out that the three major monster tropes of classic gothic novels persist as the bases for present-day monsters. Frankenstein’s monster as the signifier of human attempts to control nature through science, the struggle between the more civilized nature of Dr. Jekyll and the animal nature of his alter ego Mr. Hyde, and the unbridled eroticism of Dracula continue as the underlying thematic conflicts in the contemporary horror film, even one hundred years later. Also, horror films continue to utilize the visual style of German expressionism to convey the interior psychological turmoil of heroes, heroines, and monsters.

In addition to graphic impact of German expressionism, Worland makes a thoughtful case concerning the visual impact in the horror film of Georges Melies’s trick films. Melies’s films broke down clear distinctions between the waking world and the dream world, often conveyed through “the orchestration of spectacle alone, the display of visual effects” (33), an emphasis that still holds sway in many contemporary horror films. Contributing to this visual spectacle, the author argues that the Grand Guignol Theater of Paris, with its live graphic on-stage depictions of murder and insanity, became an important influence for the horror film genre. This influence was somewhat subdued because of various censorship forces in horror films produced before the 1960s. However, the implementation of the film content ratings system and the rise of independent filmmaking during the 1960s factored, and continues to factor, into increasingly more explicit representations of grand guignol gore in the horror film’s cinematic excess. Finally, though not the least important factor, an important element of the horror film genre grew out of the Hollywood studios’ practice of cloaking early film monsters with pathos and sympathy, drawn mainly from the psychological conflicts the monsters experience. The paradox between repulsion and attraction often fuels the sympathetic fascination with the fate of the monster, normally not a narrative function associated with the supposed villain of most Hollywood films.

In addition to the cultural factors that have shaped the evolution of the horror film genre, Worland also charts the social impact of large-scale wars, censorship, the breakdown of the traditional family, the global nuclear threat, and the economic imperatives that have shaped the direction of the horror film over the past ninety years. Although some of these influences have appeared in other published academic venues, it is nice to have an...