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Horror Films:
All Formula and Social
Commentary
Paige mayhew
Motion pictures, like any works of art,
are the products of the human beings
who make them. In turn these artists
are products of the world around them.
The ideas, hopes, and fears of a society
become a part of a film either overly or
on a subliminal level. While
entertaining, films communicate ideas
by reflecting existing ideologies or by creating their own unique vision of
reality. Each genre has is own revelations about the world around us.
War films can offer a commentary on man’s inhumanity to man.
Westerns, while often maintaining racial stereotypes, can capture the
heroic cycle common to all epic myths. Social dramas point out the ills of
society in an attempt to correct them, while science fiction films glorify
science and technology. Horror films, however, capture all of these
aspects as they deal with humanity’s collective unconscious by offering a
communal catharsis. While the formula of the horror film deals with
archetypes, the specific content of the films changes to reflect the time in
which the film was made.
Horror as a genre has roots in western culture’s
earliest myths. The horror films of the twentieth
century have beginnings in the ancient stories
of Gilgamesh and Humbaba, Perseus and
Medusa, Beowolf and Grendel, and many
others. According to Jungian psychology
these works, and works like them, are
archetypal, symbolic, and phenomena of a
shared unconscious. Horror then can be seen
as a mythic presentation of universal fears, or a
representation of society’s most feared
bogeymen. Stephen King asserts in the Danse Macabre that when horror
films are at their best they can often “serve as an extraordinarily accurate
barometer of those things which trouble the night-thoughts of a whole
society.” By writing horror films the filmmaker is attempting to deal with
society’s fears on a subconscious level. Audiences may only perceive a
film about a vampire, werewolf, or bug-eyed monster; but they are
actually seeing symbolic representations of the greater fears of death,
Medusa

disease, disillusionment, and destruction. King also says of horror films, “I
believe the artistic value the horror film most frequently offers is its ability to
form a liaison between our fantasy fears and our real fears.” Our fears as
a society, as well as fear on a more personal level, can be safely dealt
with in the context of the comforting horror formula.
It is the simple formula of salvation that
attracts the viewer to the horror film.
Although the content of the horror film has
changed with time, its framework has
remained virtually the same. The film
introduces a “Monster” which threatens
normal society. This is followed by some form
of “the Monster and the Girl,” the girl will
either be morally corrupt and a victim or a
“good girl” and a survivor, reinforcing the
dominant societal norm of appropriate
sexual behavior. Respectable members of
society find a solution that returns normality, which maintains predominate
cultural standards of the heterosexual monogamous couple, family, and
the societal institutions that support and defend them. It is the return to
normality that really draws the viewer in. Horror films present problems in
black and white, so a solution can be easily found during the course of
the film. Symbolically fears are neatly solved in the relatively safe
environment of the movie theater. Problems that remain in society at
large, which do not have simple answers, can be dealt with in a less
complicated way.
It is the “Monster” figure that changes over the decades; his form may
change but he still reflects society’s dominant fears of the time. Through
the films of a particular time period we
can see how a society treated the
period, experienced it, and symbolized
it. In the history of film many horror films
came from Europe or used classic
European monsters as their subjects. To
the viewers of the turn of the century
film maintained the world of illusion that
magic had previously held. The early
filmgoer was amazed and often afraid
of the images dancing before him. A
Frenchman named George Melies, a
magician by trade, utilized early silent films to showcase his talent. He is
considered to be the founder of stop-motion photograph and other
Nosferatu (1922)

special effects that are still used today. Melies is responsible for what is
probably the first horror film. The Apparition (1900) is a simple film of a
ghost mysteriously appearing and disappearing. This film and other early
horror films were very basic, but they brought ancient folk tales and
literature to the screen. They seemed to provide evidence that these
mysterious and terrifying creatures really
existed. From Germany came a film which
changed the look of American
cinematography, The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari (1920). The surrealist movement
inspired by this and other German films
affected many genres including horror and
film noir, another type of film that deals
with the dark side of people’s emotions.
American
made
films of the
1930’s relied
heavily on the foreign born monsters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Egyptian tales of mummies’ curses. Universal
classics such as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy
(1932) and the numerous sequels dominated the genre for over a
decade. Interestingly enough these characters would again rear their
heads in times of trouble. According to critic Robin Wood the foreignness
of horror in the 1930’s can be interpreted in two ways: simply as a means
of disavowal (as in it can’t happen here in America) and more
unconsciously, as a means of locating horror as a “country of the mind,”
as more of a psychological state. Other American films made during this
decade continued the tradition of the circus sideshow attractions of
strange and deformed characters. Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932)
showcases a variety of midgets, living torsos, and Siamese twins in film
MGM refused to show.
Horror films of the 1940’s continued to be focused on
European monsters. The dominate figure of this
decade was the Wolf Man. The wolf has long been
a symbol of warfare and came to represent the
distance between the human and the soldier in an
individual. The Wolf Man (1941) is set in a present
day England that knows nothing of the war, but has
its share of roving gypsies. The main character, while
of English extraction, speaks with a distinctly
American accent. Lawrence Talbot’s struggle with
his animalistic side seemed to parallel America’s
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

involvement with World War II. The Wolf Man was released in the year of
America’s direct involvement in the conflict and its final sequel, The House
of Dracula (1945), came out just in time for Hiroshima. Werewolves would
return in a post-Watergate America as figures of the dual identity of
political betrayal, the evil lurking behind a friendly facade.
Horror films of the homegrown variety really began to appear in the
1950’s. Although America emerged from World War II victorious, around
the globe former allies became threatening. In the early days of the Cold
War “fellow travelers” could be living right next door, and with Joseph
McCarthy adding fuel the flame, Communists were going to found.
Individuals were forced to conform to the norms of white, heterosexual,
male society least they be suspected of being a communist. Once
labeled an individual could expect to lose his job, his friends, his home,
maybe even his family. Individual heroism was only beneficial if it
reinforced the social good. This atmosphere of forced conformity lead
many individuals to feel alienated. In films of the period, people who did
not sacrifice individual desires for general social need were fated to die,
commit suicide, be outcast or simply go mad.
One of the most telling films of the 1950’s is Don Siegel’s Invasion of the
Body Snatchers (1956). The film is not specifically about conformity or
communism; it is about giant seed pods that attempt to take over
people’s identities. Indirectly, however, it makes a statement about the
collective paranoia of a community forced to place
individuals in categories of “us” and “them”, while
looking at the issue of conformity inherent in Post War
America. The film opens as Dr. Miles Bennell, an
apparently insane man, tells the story of his small town
of Santa Mira to a policeman and doctor. In a
flashback we are shown Miles’ story of giant seed pods
as they take over the identities of the local
townspeople. It is a town where people feel that their
family and friends aren’t really themselves. Miles’
girlfriend Becky attempts to dismiss the delusion, but
even she has to finally admit that her uncle is a
changed man. She finds him strangely emotionless.
Fears are confirmed when Miles finds a semi-human body on Jack’s
billiard table. The body begins to take on Jack’s features and the pace of
the film quickens. Miles then finds an entire greenhouse full of seed pods
which contain half-formed bodies.
As the pods assume the characters’ identities, they take away any power
of free thought, turning the individual into a calm, peaceful, collective

thinker. In times of war it is easy to distinguish between good and evil.
Following World War II it became more difficult to identify the enemy, so
America endeavored to create a team-like atmosphere where everyone
dressed alike, spoke alike, and lived alike. Those who chose to be
different were obviously the enemy. Invasion of the Body Snatchers brings
out the loss of identity that this type of oppressive conformity can lead to
by showing the world what emotionless, non-thinking entities humans
become as a part of a purely conformist community. The film also makes
the point that maybe we had lost something distinctly American – the
power of the rugged individual.

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