Post 100 – One Hundred Years of Horror Films

So here’s a bit of a milestone. A little more than a year and a half in, this is my 100^th post on this here blog (and also marks passing 200,000 words – a decent length book). In that time, I’ve reviewed 112 movies and 8 books (reading goes more slowly), I’ve composed 50 poems, and I’ve done essays on a range of topics from trying to define the genre and tracking how I got into horror to the often sadly toxic nature of fandom and issues of gender or queerness in horror. I’ve also put together quite a few lists.

And as 100 is a nice round number, that is what we’re going to do again today. I thought it could be fun, or at least interesting, to build a list that somehow looks back on the last one hundred years of horror films, highlighting one from each decade. I’m not making a claim that these are the “ten best” horror films or that each is the “best” of its decade, but rather, I’d like to draw attention to one film that is worthy of consideration, that might be a bit off the beaten path, and that might be somehow representative of the time in which it was made (also, I’m not allowing anything I’ve written about previously – which will sometimes rule out a film I would have otherwise chosen). I might not succeed on all counts for each entry (when it gets to the 30s and 40s, I just haven’t seen enough films to really offer a hidden gem that most people haven’t seen), but I’ll do my best. And hey, I’m the one paying for hosting, so let’s say that’s good enough.

So, here are Ten Great (or at least pretty good) Possibly-Underseen-Possibly-Representative-Films from Ten Decades (that I’ve not written about before). With catchy headings like that, how have I not taken over the internet?

2020s – Freaky (2020)

It’s still early in the decade, but I do think this one stands out as worth mentioning. For one thing, this combination of Freaky Friday and Friday the 13^th, with Millie (Kathryn Newton), a shy teen girl accidentally swapping bodies with a Jason-esque slasher killer (embodied by Vince Vaughn), is just a ton of fun. It’s a great, high concept premise and it takes both its Teen Comedy and its Slasher tropes seriously, committing to both the laughs and the violence. But in addition, I do think it’s a good example of a recently identified trend.

In one of my earliest posts, I discussed a presentation at an academic conference given by Dr. Steve Jones on what he termed the “metamodern slasher.” Whereas from the mid-90s through the early 2000s, many slashers took an ironic, postmodern turn, resting on a self-referentiality that made a joke of its own subject matter (see, e.g., Jason X (2001) and its holodeck scene), recently there has been a recurrence of (still self-aware) emotional sincerity and Freaky is a good example of that. This is a funny movie, and while I don’t know how scary it is, per se, it is violent and gory. But it is also very emotional. Much of Millie’s story revolves around her father’s recent death and what this has done to her relationship with her mother and older sister. The film does knowingly play with genre tropes for comic effect, but the journey is actually one of healing and reconciliation. And along the way, Millie is rooted in friendships with other young people whom we are meant to like and hope won’t get killed, no “disposable teens” here.

There are still (and I expect always will be) actually scary, hard, disturbing movies being made, so I don’t think this trend threatens the bona fides of the genre, but I think it’s great that there’s also a place for work with as much heart as this. Kudos to Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy, who directed and co-wrote, respectively.

2010s – Bliss (2019)

It’s hard to choose a characteristic film from this decade. I think the biggest trend was probably films like The Babadook (2014), The VVitch (2015), or Hereditary (2018) reminding everybody that horror can deal with serious ideas and strong emotions, and feature significant performances and artistry (this is nothing new of course, but I guess from time to time, non-horror-fan pop culture writers need a refresher), launching the much derided phrase, “elevated horror.” And I really love all of these, but I feel like everyone knows them already and thus, they don’t need much support.

Joe Begos’s Bliss is a smaller film that may not be on as many people’s radar, but I think should be. The premise is that a young artist whose trouble finishing a commissioned painting coincides with her sobriety, after getting some bad news, goes on a bender, and in the process of doing a lot of drugs, happens to become a vampire. The metaphor of “vampiric bloodthirst as addiction” is not novel, but the addition of the artistic drive to the mix clicked for me. The film finds the parallels between the self-destructive, self-erasing drive of drug addiction, the outwardly destructive violence of being a vampire, and the mesmerizing thrill of being lost in creativity – of a place where the line between subject and object is obliterated and the action of making is the only thing that remains – the artist lost in the art – creation as oblivion.

This makes it all sound philosophical or heady, but it must also be said that this low budget flick goes hard. The violence and gore is intense and well executed. And the whole ride was very satisfying for me as a vampire story, all artistic pretensions aside. One of my favorite recent discoveries, I definitely want to check out more of Begos’s work (I also rather enjoyed his Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022), which was just released for the last holiday season.) Finally, in works that revolves around a painting like this, we usually don’t really get to see it, but in this case, the artwork, painted by Chet Zar, is present throughout, and I found it so refreshing to see it evolve with the main character. Plus, it’s pretty cool looking.

2000s – Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

This is another case where the dominant trends of the decade don’t seem all that necessary to get into. We know that there were loads of slick/gritty remakes of classics from the 70s and 80s, and past that, everyone was talking about “torture porn.” There were also a bunch of great movies that didn’t fit either of those categories. The Descent (2005), The Strangers (2008), Shaun of the Dead (2004), and the House of the Devil (2009) are all stand out examples, but I want to focus on an earlier film that I suspect is underseen.

Shadow of the Vampire tells the story of F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) filming the iconic, essential, early vampire film, Nosferatu (1922), but posits that rather than hiring a professional actor who had performed with the acclaimed Max Reinhardt company (as happened in “real life”), he sourced an actual old world vampire (Willem Defoe) to lend the production authenticity. It is a fun, often hilarious, premise, but though it’s frequently quite funny, it is all played straight. Joining the ranks of the real Max Schreck and Klaus Klinski (who was great in Herzog’s 1979 remake), Defoe’s vampire is genuinely creepy, while still evoking real pathos. It’s a carefully crafted, very physical performance, and it may be one of my favorites.

While the vampire is a direct physical threat, the actual villain of the piece is Malkovich’s Murnau who is so intent on creating his art that he’s more than willing to sacrifice his actors and crew to that end. The rest of the cast is just great (Eddie Izzard, Cary Elwes, and Udo Kier are a treat), and the film is quietly haunting, even if it’s not short on laughs along the way. It is beautiful and funny, and occasionally even a bit scary.

1990s – Cemetery Man (1994)

The 90s are oft-derided as a poor decade for the genre, but of course some flicks have stood the test of time. In the wake of Scream (1996), there was a fresh teen slasher cycle. Before that, there were a number of reality benders that all have warm places in my heart such as Jacob’s Ladder (1990), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), not to mention what may still stand as my favorite horror film of all time, Candyman (1992). But instead I’d like to focus on a quirky, weird little treat: Michele Soave’s Dellamorte Dellamore, released in America as Cemetery Man in 1996.

Based on an Italian comic by Tiziano Sclavi, this was my introduction to Italian horror well before I’d heard of Argento, Fulci, Bava, or Soave himself for that matter (who’d earlier made one of my favorite horror films of the 80s – Stagefright). It was even before I was particularly into horror movies – I mean, I’d watch them occasionally, but wasn’t really a fan yet.

I’ll always remember seeing this with one of my best friends in high school. We’d checked the newspaper to find out what was playing at the mall and while every other film came with a short description, this had nothing. When we got to the cinema, there was no poster and the title of the film was just written on an index card with a magic marker. We soon found that we were the only two people who’d come to see this mystery of a film and in the first few minutes of weirdness, assumed that we’d found some silly, bad B movie and figured at least we could crack jokes with each other. But we soon shut up because it was freaking amazing!

Set in a small Italian village, Francesco (Rupert Everett) is the cemetery caretaker whose main responsibilities include waiting for the dead to rise, as they always inevitably do, shooting them in the head, and re-burying them. He falls in love with a young widow at a funeral who is unfortunately bitten by her husband’s reanimated corpse as she and Francesco make love on her spouse’s fresh grave. He then has to kill her again and again and again; but she always seems to return.

It is an odd film to say the least. Gory, funny, sexual, morbid, poetic, and phantasmagoric, it somewhat defies description. But in its absolute weirdness, it is really something fresh and fun and challenging. It is a cheap b-movie. It’s also an existential meditation on living and dying. It’s also full of political subtext. It’s also dreamy and beautiful. I’m so glad we rolled the dice and went to see it. 

1980s – Intruder (1989)

I think it’s obvious that the 1980s were the era of the slasher. There were of course, the big franchises, but also literally hundreds of smaller pictures capitalizing on the simple premise of some (generally human) madman stalking and killing a hapless group of young people.

But rather than focus on any of the big names, I’d like to draw your attention to the deliriously fun late 80s supermarket-set entry, Intruder. Directed by Scott Spiegel, one could be forgiven for thinking it just might have been filmed by Sam Raimi, given how prominently his name was featured on the poster (he plays a small part, along with his brother, Ted, as well as the always enjoyable Bruce Campbell – I guess Spiegel worked on Evil Dead I and II, and all of them had been friends in high school). But the style feels quite similar as well – high praise indeed.

This is a pretty simple set up – the young workers of a small grocery store are doing a nightshift inventory when they all get locked in with a killer who picks them off one by one. But however straightforward the premise, it is filmed within an inch of its life. The creativity and energy that suffuse every shot is thrilling, making it a really fun, exciting movie, full of over the top murder set pieces, and a few actual twists and turns as you try to unravel the mystery of who is behind the killings and why. The camera is always finding new surprising places to watch the action from, and the bloody, bloody practical effects are great. This grimy little “dead teenager picture” was clearly made with love and glee, and its creative enthusiasm is unmistakable. One of those films that feels like it’s so much better than it possibly needed to be, it really deserves to be seen.

1970s – Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

John Hancock’s Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is one of my favorite kinds of horror movies: hard to pin down or categorize, uncanny, and just beautiful. Is it a vampire movie? Maybe. A ghost movie? Possibly? A psychological drama about a woman struggling with mental illness, desperate to keep a grip on an ever more slippery reality? Definitely, but it’s probably those other things too. It is also an exemplary sample of where horror cinema was in the 1970s.

Along with such stand out films as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Messiah of Evil (1973), this is a deeply unsettling, independent feature with a real artistic, poetic sensibility. There is a story, and an emotionally affecting one at that, but more than anything else, this movie is a mood. The atmosphere is so hazy, eerie, and beautiful, and I adore dwelling in that space.

The film follows Jessica (Zohra Lampert), recently released from a mental institution as she, her husband, and their friend, Woody, relocate from the stress and anxiety of the city to the supposed peacefulness of a run-down farm house upstate, only to find it currently inhabited by an intriguing, alluring drifter named Emily. All free-love, counterculture types, they let her stay on and things get immediately uncomfortable as Emily seems to be seducing both of the men. Also, she just might be a vampire/ghost who’s resided in the house for over 100 years, holding the creepy, elderly, seemingly exclusively male denizens of the town in her thrall.

Or Jessica is just paranoid, letting her mind run away with her. With frequent voiceover on her part, the whole film clearly has an unreliable narrator and nothing we see can fully be trusted. But something is definitely wrong (besides the clouds of poison they’re spraying in their newly purchased apple orchard).

The whole ordeal is a mesmerizing death trip, both seductive and threatening, and it’s clearly worth a watch if you have the patience for its languid, spooky, and ultimately unresolved vibe.

1960s – Repulsion (1965)

Speaking of mental instability, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion is really at the top of the game. In choosing a film that encapsulates this decade, my first impulse was his Rosemary’s Baby, easily one of my favorite horror films, but everyone already knows how good it is, and I think this striking, black and white piece from just a few years earlier might not be on as many people’s radar. Nonetheless, its exploration of urban paranoia amidst an epoch of great social change and shifting sexual mores is equally captivating.

Primarily taking place within a small London apartment, we follow Carol (Catherine Deneuve), a quiet young woman, left alone for some time as her sister has gone away on holiday with her lover. She seems tormented and repulsed by male attention and the notion of sex (for reasons that seem apparent by the end of the film), and left to her own devices, starts to unravel. Beset by recurring nightmares of rape and assault, Carol retreats into her domestic space, but even that does not feel stable or inviolate, its boundaries breached by men either blithely oblivious to her fears or explicitly predatory, its walls seeming to crack open, allowing in the external masculine threat. By the end, plenty of blood has been spilled and her mind has been shattered.

It is a boldly filmed, emotionally intense piece, clearly the work of a hungry young artist, eager to show off his vast potential. I remember the first time watching it, thinking, “Why aren’t films shot like this anymore – so expressively, making such strong choices?”  And past just being a triumph of style and technical prowess, the psychological terror really lands. Carol may have stronger, less controlled reactions than many, but the danger she feels is real. The world is full of men who will not respect her limits or her agency, who will force their wills upon her, men like the director himself perhaps.

1950s – The Giant Claw (1957)

So, this decade is a bit tricky as I just haven’t seen that many 50s horror films. Furthermore, I’ve already written about many of my favorites, such as The Bad Seed (1956), House of Wax (1953), Godzilla (1954), or Les Diaboliques  (1955). And so, rather than write about a good terrifying movie that was made in the 50s, I want to write about a terrifically fun movie that might typify a dominant trend in those years. Hence, we have one of the most deliriously enjoyable, silly, red-threat adjacent monster movies of the time, The Giant Claw.

Do we have a giant alien bird from an “anti-matter galaxy” as big as an aircraft carrier that can only be defeated by the square-jawed American military? You betcha! Is the monster puppet as lame as could be hoped for, with eyes that can never focus in one place? Oh yeah! Is the film’s gender politics hilariously out of date, featuring such delightful tropes as the “lady mathematician” whose primary role is making sandwiches for all the very-serious men, and who responds to what today would be considered mild sexual assault by falling in love with the guy? But, of course!

Apparently, there is an unsubstantiated report that the marionette of the interdimensional beastie was made in Mexico City for only $50. While that hasn’t been proven, it isn’t much of a stretch to believe. But I don’t want you to think that I’m saying this is a bad movie. I mean, it is. But it’s also a great movie. At least, if a film can be judged not by abstract, and perhaps outdated, aesthetic concepts like ‘quality,’ ‘logical consistency,’ and ‘technical adequacy,’ but rather, by how much unadulterated joy it can instill in its viewers, then this is a masterpiece for the ages.

1940s – Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Again a decade that I’m not that deeply versed in – what stands out most for me would be the Val Lewton produced pictures made for RKO like Cat People (1942) or I Walked with a Zombie (1943), but I’m already in the middle of a series of posts about them, so let’s look in another direction. Coming at the tail end of Universal’s second horror cycle, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is one of the earliest and best horror comedies. Truth be told, it is pretty much exclusively a comedy, with the horror elements all played for laughs, but it is genuinely funny in ways that have held up well through the decades, and it is so steeped in the horror films that came before to make it a a treat for any lover of the classic monsters.

Bela Lugosi returns as Dracula, the mastermind of a nefarious, multi-monster plot. Lon Chaney Jr. reprises his doomed Lawrence Talbot, the wolf man. Karloff had long since stopped playing Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange, who’d played the monster twice before, stepped in), but Vincent price does ‘show up’ as the voice of the invisible man, a suitably silky replacement for Claude Rains. And of course, there’s Bud Abbott and Lou Costello bumbling in and out of danger. I’ve read that its success was blamed for the downturn the genre took in subsequent years, the formerly terrifying monsters reduced to a series of jokes, but it really is funny, and I can’t imagine being angry at it. When I was a little kid I wasn’t ready to seriously be scared, but I loved monsters. This is the perfect film for that. I can establish no certain causal link, but I wonder if without this, we would have ever gotten such kid-friendly, fun, horror-themed works as The Munsters, Scooby-Doo, or, The Monster Squad.

1930s – The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

In previous entries, I often tried to choose some underseen treasure, but here I’ve just got to go with one of the biggies. Honestly, I think any of James Whales’s films for Universal could qualify as exemplary of the era, but I’ve already at least briefly discussed The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933), and in my opinion, The Bride of Frankenstein is just untouchable.

In it, I think Whale takes everything that he’d already brought to the first entry and dialed it up to eleven: its gorgeous gothic atmosphere, its wicked, subversive sense of humor, and its real pathos for the creature – a figure of both fear and pity. Also, it is just really, really weird. I mean, just consider Dr. Pretorius’s collection of tiny jar people – something Mary Shelly somehow failed to include in her seminal work.

It is such a fun, funny movie. From the high camp of Ernest Thesiger’s Dr. Pretorious, to Una O’Connor’s hilarious screaming/fainting servant, to the bizarre, aforementioned miniature jar-folk, the film sustains a wild comic streak. But in spite of that, it is also creepy, sometimes a bit scary (for its time), and surprisingly heartfelt. I can’t imagine someone watching this without sympathizing with the poor creature, however many bereft villagers, still mourning the death of their children, he strangles. A lonely outcast, shunned and hated by society, he stands in for the disenfranchised writ large and the return of the repressed, and Karloff shines (as he generally did – he was outstanding) – his performance physically expressive and emotionally nuanced. And of course, when the Bride finally appears (my only gripe being that the absolutely iconic title character, played by Elsa Lanchester, is barely in the film), she is granted a kind of tragic agency. She may have been constructed solely to wed the creature, but on first seeing him, she recoils and screams. It is heartbreaking for him, but at the same time, oddly empowering to see her allowed her own will, her own desire – or lack thereof.

It is a sad, haunting, odd, dramatic, very funny film. What a combination – just whistling through the graveyard. It also feels quite personal. James Whale was an out gay director working in Hollywood in the era of the Hays code and morals clauses. Knowing a bit about his biography, it is impossible not to view this film through that lens – the monster a social pariah, feared and hated for what he is, seeking companionship and community (not to mention the film’s campy sensibility and that the driver of the story is Dr. Pretorius coming to his old colleague, Dr. Frankenstein on his wedding night to take him away from his new bride so they can create life in their own special way, without recourse to the womb), this queer reading ascribing further depth to what was already a moving, unique picture.

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And so, there we have ten films from ten decades that I wholeheartedly recommend. Some are big hitters in the genre, and others are a bit more off the beaten path, but all are great in their way, and all demonstrate some characteristic features of their era.

And also, there we have one hundred posts, covering the last roughly year and a half. This blog has been and continues to be an interesting project for me, and I still have plenty of ideas of what I might write about in the weeks and months to come. That said, I must admit that I sometimes feel I’m throwing words into the void. Google Analytics tells me I have visitors, but I don’t really know who any of you are, so if you feel like it, maybe drop a comment and say hi (it will be a nice break from the endless Russian Spam-Bots pushing online casinos and porn). What would be on your list of highlights form the last ten decades?

But also, if you don’t feel like commenting, no worries. Thanks for being here. I’m honored to have you.