Kawin - Horror and the Horror Film

I have a blood disorder similar to hemophilia, and my father was a hunchback. I came to the horror film naturally. I thought it addressed the terms of my real world as well as my imagination. It seemed to me that in a horror film anything could happen, anything could be dreamt of and shown, while all the other movies were stuck in the known world.

I was scared of a lot of things, and a horror film calmed me. Im still afraid of excessive bleeding and I rememberor more exactly, cant forgetvomiting spaghetti-like balls of clots after my tonsils were removed, and a doctor using big forceps to snip off the scabs that were closing my throat as the thick blood built up beneath them. As hands or matched parts fit together, the horror film met my fears with its world full of fear. It offered an alternative and a complement to anxiety with its made-up anxiety. It lived up to the energy inside me. Sometimes it scared methe first mummy film I saw, Pharaohs Curse, gave me bad nightmares at 11, but I still enjoyed it. The thrills and visions, especially the look of a new monster, compensated for the risk of nightmares. They were by far my favorite movies, and this book attempts to convey a mature appreciation for them along with a comprehensive view of their values, their narrative strategies, their artistic achievements, their relations to reality and fantasy and their claims to profundity and cinematic power.

The horror film is a construct of fear and revulsion, and this vivid, sometimes gruesome book examines the frightful and disgusting in the clearest possible terms. These observations are based on close viewings of the films, and not on what has been written about them. The films are the key data here; this is not a survey of horror criticism and theory, although relevant earlier work is of course acknowledged. Instead it is a fresh, comprehensive look at how the horror film frightens, disturbs, shocks and revolts the viewer, the effect and the art of it and some of the good that comes from it.

The book begins with an overall look at the genre, an introduction to the horror experience and some recurring ways it has been structured in cinema. The book then examines the subgenres of the horror film, each one organized by the brand of horror central to it, which is most often embodied in a monster: hence the sub-subgenre of the vampire movie within the subgenre of the supernatural monster movie. This taxonomy proves to be a clear and simple way to organize the whole genre, and to cover many key films across its history, all the way from A Terrible Night (1896) to Scream 4 (2011). At the end, there is an added discussion of two closely related genres that have the ability to integrate horror into their worldviewsthat is, the comedy and the documentary. I have designed this to be a complete description of the horror film, although there will always be new monsters and threats. This book is addressed to horror enthusiasts, to film scholars and to general readers who have yet to be convinced of the importance of the genre.

I am very grateful to those who read earlier drafts of my book: Rick Balkin, Ann R. Cacoullos, Christina Dokou, Katherine Eggert, David Glimp, Lori Janssen, Stephen Graham Jones, Lise Menn, Wayne Phillips, Cathy Preston, Michael Preston and Harold Schechter.

Boulder, Colorado
December 2011