Horror Essay Research Paper In the course

Horror Essay, Research Paper

In the course of the 20th century, film audiences have come to regard being scared out of their minds as one of the best forms of entertainment. This love affair with horror starts with the fantasy films of France's Georges Melies. His trick-photography shorts, filled with witches, devils, wizards, imps, and mad doctors, were both spooky and funny, and audiences flocked to them internationally in the 1900s. More deliberate attempts at horror soon began appearing in America: Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde reached the screen in 1908; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in 1910. Master filmmaker D.W. Griffith eventually set the tone for the genre with his seven-reel chiller The Avenging Conscience (1914), a dream of madness and guilt drawn from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. The German Expressionist cinema produced two landmarks of horror in the wake of World War I. The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1919), written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer and directed by Robert Wiene, used distorted sets to bring an unrelenting sense of doom to its tale of a sleepwalker controlled by a sinister hypnotist. F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), a liberal (and unauthorized) adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, depicted the vampire's supernatural powers through imaginative camera tricks. Elements of horror also distinguished such German silents as Paul Wegener's fantasy The Golem (1920), Wiene's thriller Hands Of Orlac (1925), and Fritz Lang's science-fiction classic Metropolis (1926). Director Paul Leni capped his German filmmaking career with the creepy Waxworks (1924), in which wax statues of killers come to life. Leni later came to America, sticking with the atmospheric and the bizarre for his haunted-house thriller The Cat And The Canary (1927) and The Man Who Laughs (1928), an adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel about a mutilated clown. By the end of the '20s, American films had developed a tradition of horror in which Leni could readily find a place. Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1920), the sixth filming of Stevenson's tale, was the strongest to date, thanks to actor John Barrymore. Rex Ingram's occult thriller The Magician (1926) combined eroticism and shocks. Lon Chaney created the extraordinary make-up for his celebrated roles: a mad doctor and his ape-man assistant in A Blind Bargain (1922), indelible portrayals of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom Of The Opera (1925), and a razor-fanged vampire in director Tod Browning's London After Midnight (1927). Chaney died in 1930, before he could star for the Universal production company in Browning's sound film Dracula (1931). The part went to Bela Lugosi, who repeated his stage triumph and immortalized himself as Stoker's vampire. That same year, Universal released a second horror classic, Frankenstein, directed by James Whale. The film was also a star-making vehicle for Boris Karloff, who brought pathos as well as terror to his role of a monster sewn together from parts of dead bodies. Despite the legendary status of both films, Browning and Whale went on to achieve even greater heights in horror. In Browning's Freaks (1932), a troupe of sideshow freaks takes revenge on a beautiful trapeze artist who tries to kill her dwarf husband. Too bizarre for audiences of its day, the film is now beloved for its unique blend of terror and compassion. Whale's gifts for both humor and horror reached their peak in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), with Karloff bringing an even greater depth and sensitivity to his performance as the monster. The early 1930s was one of the richest periods for horror, with Freaks one of seven classics released in 1932 alone. Fredric March won an Academy Award for his performance in Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, still the most powerful version of Stevenson, thanks to director Rouben Mamoulian's innovative treatment of camera movement and sound. Bela Lugosi continued to create memorable portraits of pure evil, with his mad scientist in Murders In The Rue Morgue and his voodoo wizard in White Zombie. Boris Karloff and director Karl Freund introduced a new horror icon in The Mummy. Director Michael Curtiz brought speed and wit to The Mystery Of The Wax Museum, with Lionel Atwill as a disfigured artist who turns people into wax statues. Carl Dreyer's Vampyr, a French-German co-production, remains unsurpassed for its atmosphere of pervasive evil and its chilling scenes of possession. Other classics appeared over the 1930s. Working with special-effects genius Willis O'Brien, producer/directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack made the classic King Kong (1933), in which a giant ape runs amok in New York City. In Island Of Lost Souls (1933), Charles Laughton brought to life H.G. Wells' Dr. Moreau, who turns animals into semi-humans through sadistic medical experiments; Laughton also made real the sufferings of Victor Hugo's deformed bellringer Quasimodo in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1939). The Black Cat (1934), directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, featured Karloff as a devil worshipper who's hunted down by a vengeful Lugosi; in The Raven (1935), Lugosi is a Poe-obsessed madman who mutilates escaped-criminal Karloff. Freund remade Hands Of Orlac as Mad Love (1935), giving Peter Lorre one of his finest roles as the maniacal Dr. Gogol. The Werewolf Of London (1935) brought the first lycanthrope to the screen. The audience for horror, waning in the late '30s, was reinvigorated by Son o