Kim Newman - Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s

NIGHTMARE MOVIES

HORROR ON SCREEN SINCE THE 1960s

KIM NEWMAN

For my parents, Bryan and Julia Newman.

Thanks for everything.

Contents

Part One

The first edition of Nightmare Movies was written between 1982 and 1984, and came out in 1985 from a house which fell, Usher-like, the week after publication. Despite egregious misprints and graphic illustrations which kept it off the shelves at WH Smiths, the slim, jaggedly designed book was well received. When I prepared a second edition for the more reliable publishing firm of Bloomsbury, I took the first manuscript apart and completely rewrote it, adding chapters, reassessing some filmmakers, stretching to cope with titles released between late 1985 and early 1988. Now, over twenty years on, Im not treating that already much-overhauled text in the same manner. Too much has happened. Nightmare Movies which has had a different subtitle on each of its editions (a third, very slightly expanded, came out from Crown in the US in 1989) attained whatever reputation it has in the form it had. I worked on the book for the best part of a decade and have resisted the temptation to rearrange the furniture yet again. Ive fixed a few errors Im sure some remain and blatant mistypings, but left any argument I have with my younger self to the footnotes. Rereading the old chapters, I expected to be haunted by embarrassing opinions, but found surprisingly few statements I wouldnt stand by today. I was more struck by changes in my writing style since 1988, and wonder when I started using though rather than although. Also this might have something to do with the mixed blessing of research on the Internet I now habitually refer to film characters by their scripted names rather than those of the actors The Omen (1976) is about Robert Thorn, not Gregory Peck (discuss). Nevertheless, the althoughs and star names stand in the old section of the book.

In my last preface, I wrote by 1982, when I started working on Nightmare Movies , there were already many good, bad and indifferent histories of the horror film on the market. The ground-breakers, Carlos Clarens An Illustrated History of the Horror Film and Ivan Butlers Horror in the Cinema , were both published in 1967. Most of the subsequent books give the impression that even if they werent published before 1968, they might as well have been. Invariably, they suggest that the great era of the horror film was some time in the 1920s and 1930s when Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were starring in films directed by Tod Browning and James Whale. The then current genre masters Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, Terence Fisher, Mario Bava and Roger Corman receive scant, mainly grudging attention. Somehow, well into the 1970s, it was possible for experts to make statements like Night of the Demon is the last genuine horror classic that we have had (William K. Everson, Classics of the Horror Film ) and In quantity, Hammer Films are fast approaching Universal, but in quality they have yet to reach Monogram (Denis Gifford, A Pictorial History of Horror Movies ). Astonishingly, sentiments like this could be trotted out as late as 1986, in The Dead That Walk where Leslie Halliwell blithely lumps together Halloween , The Fog and The Amityville Horror as claptrap. Of course, the authors are of the generation that saw the Karloff and Lugosi films on their original releases. They nurture an indulgent fondness for the Rondo Hatton and George Zucco pictures they saw as children, and simultaneously sneer at the likes of Dracula, Prince of Darkness and The Abominable Dr Phibes for debasing their idea of what the genre should be. I should have made it clearer that I wouldnt have written Nightmare Movies if it were not for pioneering critics like Clarens, Butler and Everson and historians like Gifford. As a teenager, I loved their books and reread them along with science-fiction cinema studies by Philip Strick and John Baxter until they fell apart. Their work is still an essential starting place for anyone reading up on the horror film; Halliwells book remains useless, though.

To continue quoting myself: I was born in 1959, and the first horror film I remember seeing on television in 1971 was the 1931 Dracula . In my early teens, I caught up with the Universal films, the Hammer horrors, and Roger Cormans Edgar Allan Poe movies. In 1973, David Piries A Heritage of Horror came out and said the Giffords and the Eversons were wrong, and that the 1950s and 1960s films I was enjoying were classics too. In my middle and late teens, I got a little bored with the endless Frankenstein and Dracula reruns of Hammer and Universal, and was stimulated by the few off-beat movies that came to the Palace or the Classic, Bridgwater Daughters of Darkness , Lets Scare Jessica to Death , DePalmas Sisters and Cohens Its Alive . I saw The Exorcist while doing my O levels. I saw Suspiria during my first week at the University of Sussex. I projected Night of the Living Dead three times on the walls of my hall of residence one weekend in 1978. I was at the London Film Festival showing of Dawn of the Dead in 1979. I saw Friday the 13th while I was jobless and homeless in London in 1980. I was around to gauge the impact of Shivers , Carrie , The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , Halloween and The Evil Dead on their original releases. My first professionally published piece was a review of Last House on the Left in 1982.

These films are the heart of Nightmare Movies . I set out to concentrate on what had happened in the genre since Clarens, Everson and Gifford closed their books. My original outline was heavily auteurist a chapter each devoted to Romero, Cronenberg, Craven, Hooper and company (down to Bob Clark, Alfred Sole and Peter Sasdy) but I eventually concluded that only a mapping of the various sub-genres existing within the larger field could provide the overview I was looking for. Part of my intention has been to redefine our understanding of exactly what a horror film is. To me, the central thesis of horror in film and literature is that the world is a more frightening place than is generally assumed (one of the most significant titles in the genre is Jack Williamsons Darker Than You Think ). Another formulation for horror Ive often cited is that old staple of childrens annuals, whats wrong with this picture? Robin Woods normality is threatened by the monster from his essay An Introduction to the American Horror Film is useful, though it doesnt take into account the possibility that sometimes normality is the monster ( The Stepford Wives , 1974, The Stepfather , 1986). In discussing such phenomena as the disaster movie ( Earthquake ), the conspiracy film ( The Parallax View ) or the psycho cop drama ( Manhunter ), I have tried to show how these out-of-genre pictures share narrative strategies, a pool of scary ideas and an audience impact with the mainstream horror film. This book is called Nightmare Movies , not Horror Movies .

I closed my preface with recently Ive started wondering if Im turning into Denis Gifford. I keep coming across enthusiasts acclaiming the Nightmare on Elm Street series, Fright Night or Re-Animator as classics. Some of these are pretty good, but I dont think they quite stack up against the best of Romero and Cronenberg, or even Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre . This sounds a lot like where we came in, only now Ive got the Donald Pleasence role rather than the Jamie Lee Curtis one. When Freddy Krueger says you are all my children now, he doesnt mean me. I foresaw that a Critical History of the Horror Film, 19882008 would eventually be written by someone else and contradict everything in my book. Well, a library has been filled with books about horror cinema since then, though the trend has been to micro-focus on particular filmmakers, sub-genres or even single films rather than attempt all-encompassing historical sweep. There are multiple studies of the zombie film (by David Flint, Jamie Russell, and others) and a number of in-depth books about Dario Argento (the Alan Jones and Maitland McDonagh volumes are essential). Tim Lucas Mario Bava book is finally a reality. Jonathan Rigby has looked at British and American Gothic. Tome One of Steve Throwers monumental Nightmare U.S.A. covers independent American films and filmmakers of the 1970s and 80s in depth. Axelle Carolyns It Lives Again! covers the first decade of the twenty-first century. But theres still a big picture to take in. By writing this update (a year or so later than predicted), Im jostling back into a game my younger self assumed Id no longer be qualified to play. Furthermore, I like The Devils Rejects about as much as Gifford liked Night of the Living Dead ; but to spoil the suspense early on I think the best horror films of the last few years stack up against the best of any decade.