according to police and authorities
● Big thing about horror at first was disfigurement - a trend that people had when horror
was first introduce
○ Phantom of the Opera - the first picture of horror
■ Synopsis is that people cannot know what the phantom was like under the
mask
○ Dracula - was more of a sauve monster trend > monsters that may be terrifying
but are also handsome
■ Xenophobia was the main thing about the movie due to being made
during the end of WW2
○ Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein
■ Bride of Frankenstein was considered the most accurate to the book
despite being the sequel
● The director (James Whale) was gay which decided him to have a
lot of Christian allegories/references
○ Tod Browning’s Freaks > inspiration to the Freak Show season of American
Horror Story
■ Synopsis of the movie was about people with disfigurements which was
an appeal to the audience
● Main thing: WW1 has ended during the time so many soldiers had
disfigurements due to the chemicals, etc. which many thought was
“too close to home” to watch the movie
○ Cat People - first movie Universal Studios made that was horror > trend with the
weird horror movie titles
■ Was the first movie that introduced jumpscares in movies
● Golden age of horror movies ended in the 1950s and were replaced with scientists
○ This is due to the atomic bomb from WW2
■ E.g. Godzilla, Body Snatchers, The Brain that Wanted to Die
● Hammer Film production - made more cheesy versions of horror movies like
Frankenstein
○ Introduced blood into horror movies
■ 1960s - more into nature so folk horror was introduced
● More suggestive themes become introduced such as Doctor Jekyll
and Sister Hyde
● Alfred Hitchcock - revived the original horror themes but more gritty and bloody
○ Had to have Psycho be changed due to certain standards movies had to satisfy
but Hitchcock didn’t change the movie
■ Night of the Living Dead - changed the concept of how zombies were in
horror movies
● Turned to make zombies being created from viruses, etc.
○ Was considered an allegory for immigration or republican
people due to being ‘old’