Horror Homeroom, Author at Horror Homeroom

Posted on June 22, 2015

Coded Queerness in Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

Last week we took a look at how the Legion of Decency’s strict moral code caused horror filmmakers to get creative in their depictions of queerness. This week we are looking at how coding in a film works. Dracula’s Daughter (1936) traces the struggle of Hungarian Countess Marya Zaleska who, upon learning of the death of her father Count Dracula, believes the curse of her being a vampire will be lifted. When her hope is not fulfilled, she enlists the assistance of psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Garth whom she believes has the power to cure her. When his help too proves ineffectual, Marya flees to Transylvania intent on turning Garth into a vampire and her everlasting companion. As noted by film historians, Dracula’s Daughter contains a number of scenes in which a lesbian subtext is evident.

Posted on June 21, 2015

Creepshow (1982) and “Father’s Day” Celebrate Patriarchy

Gwen

“Father’s Day” is one of five short stories included in in the film Creepshow (1982). From the minds of George A. Romero and Stephen King, Creepshow pays homage to the EC horror comics of the 1950s while working out the 1980s challenges to patriarchy. I’ll focus on “Father’s Day” here, and and then critique the film’s treatment of the leading representations of patriarchy.

Posted on June 17, 2015

Review of Jurassic World: Of Dinosaurs and Monsters

Dawn Keetley

It may seem strange that I’m reviewing Jurassic World for a horror blog since none of the Jurassic Park films have ever been categorized as horror films: they are action, adventure, thriller, and science-fiction. But not horror. Why is that? Well, in large part it’s about marketing and studios striving to reach the largest possible audience; it’s about making sure the franchise is family-friendly. It’s also, though, because the films feature dinosaurs—natural creatures, not monsters. Right?

Posted on June 15, 2015

The Legion of Decency & Perversion in Early Horror

Elizabeth Erwin

As a genre known for pushing the boundaries of good taste, horror films occupy a unique position within American cinema. Because horror triggers an emotional response in audiences via the presentation of scenes meant to revile and offend, what is deemed to be horrific is largely dependent upon the time in which a film is made. In the 1930s, horror films were in a state of evolution. Trading in the supernatural, dreamlike qualities that defined 1920s horror, the films of the 1930s relied upon “otherness” as a marker of monstrosity. Villains came from far away lands and posed a threat to the American dream. Complicating these narrative was a calculated movement by critics of the genre concerned that depictions of perversion and violence within films were threatening the moral integrity of the culture. The end result of this effort to “clean up” films was a move by those making horror films to code stories so as to not arouse criticism.

Posted on June 11, 2015

Rewatch: Environment and Race in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

Dawn Keetley

As part of a series of posts on the relatively neglected horror films of the 1950s, I want to begin with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, directed by Eugène Lourié, and released in 1953 by Warner Brothers Studios. It was the first of the “monster” films that have come to define the decade—before Godzilla, before Creature from the Black Lagoon. The monster is a rhedosaurus, long buried in the ice north of the Arctic Circle and released during a routine test of an atomic bomb. It then tracks a path down to its former home, now New York City, and wreaks havoc on lower Manhattan before being taken down by a radioactive isotope shot into its neck in the midst of its rampage through Coney Island Amusement Park.

Horror films from the 1950s in general, and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms in particular, are accruing an increasing importance in the current moment because they so directly address environmental crisis. The atomic explosion that opens Beast from 20,000 Fathoms causes sheets of ice to cascade into the ocean. The shots of catastrophic glacial melting reminded me of a documentary I just watched, Chasing Ice, released in 2012 and documenting the effects of climate change on the glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, and Alaska: like Beast, the centerpiece of Chasing Ice was glacial ice sliding into the ocean.