The Modern Horror Film [antikvár]

INfRODlICYION It may be hard to believe—especially for young people-but tliere was a time not too long ago when there were very few opportunities to read about horror films. For a kid growing up in the Fifties—which is when I began tuning in to genre films—it was a real dry spell, believe me. Critical assessments of past or present horror films were as hard to come by as a unicorn. This is why the appearance of Forrest J. Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland, the very first magazine devoted to exploring every facet of the horror, SF and fantasy film, caused such a stir—and proved to be such a formative experience. It literally opened the door for us teens with a thirst for knowledge about the genre's past and paved the way for the flood of horror film books and magazines that have come our way since—many of them written by "the children of FM." In truth, FM was scarcely a scholarly publication. Nevertheless, it fostered a critical approach to assessing genre films that was quickly adopted by more serious writers. FM tended to take the genre films of the past a lot more seriously (albeit in its own pun-filled way) than those films that were being made at the time. Remarkably this approach is still with us. And more remarkable still, even though more than thirty years have gone by since FM defined the list of the genre's past triumphs, very few writers since then have attempted to expand upon that list. It's almost as if criticism of the horror film got locked in some kind of time warp back in 1957, the year oiPM's debut, and has stubbornly refused to budge. If you subscribe to the view that the passage of a considerable amount of time is necessary for judging the true merits of a film, there is something basically illogical about this phenomenon—for the fact is, at the present moment, we are as far away in time from the genre films of the Fifties and Sixties as FM was from the films of the Twenties and Thirties when it began venerating those older films as classics. Even allowing for the "broad view of time" approach, the genre must surely have contributed something of worth over the past thirty-odd years. And yet if you look at most books purporting to deal with the best horror movies ever made, you'll find very few post '57 films hailed as "classics." With only slight modification, the basic checklist is always the same. This book takes a very different approach by exploring fifty modern horror films that, I feel, are equally deserving of classic status and boldly adding them to that list. The arrival of FM coincided with the syndicated debut of Universal's legendary shockers of the Thirties and Forties on TV screens all across the country—and with the worldwide premiere of The Curse of Frankenstein, a seemingly minor but, as it turned out, revolutionary film made by a little known studio based in Britain called Hammer Film Productions Ltd. Curse launched the next great cycle of screen horror following the heyday of Universal and gave birth to the modern horror film. In terms of its influence on the evolution of the horror film. Hammer is second in importance only to Universal— though even today it seldom gets the recognition it deserves. Though clearly rooted in the genre's past—as most horror films are even to this day—Hammer's early productions beginning with The Curse of Frankenstein altered the look, style and, most importantly, approach to screen horror This may be the main reason why so many critics stubbornly refuse to give the studio its proper due. Few people welcome change—and film critics tend to welcome it less than most. This is evident by how many critics are still tearing their hair and beating their breasts over the changes wrought to the genre—and to film in general—by the next, post-Hammer wave of graphically sexier and bloodier horror films typified by Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980^ And yet without the emergence of a Halloween and a Friday the 13th, there might not have emerged David Cronenberg',s superb remake of The Fly (1986), Stuart Gordon's hysterically original romp The Re-Animator (1985), or Frank LaLoggia's delicate and moving Lady in White (1988), a film whose effectiveness stems in large part from the director's attempt to alter the look, style and approach to screen horror yet again. The fact that it influences change does not exclusively qualify a film for classic status, of course. The film must offer something more in the way of content, point of view and the relating of style to both. This is why you won't find Halloiveen or Friday the 13th included in this book on modern horror film classics. A.S influential as they may have been, my view is that they are fairly empty films that don't offer anything more. [You are certainly free to disagree with this view, as many will, I'm sure.) At the same time, I have included a good number of Hammer's early films precisely because they do offer something more—in some cases a whole lot more than previous writers have been willing to acknowledge. No, not all of Hammer's output was great. But then, neither was all of Universal's. And yet most critical vol-