FEAR IN FILM
On-screen horror: More than just a gory good time
Since the earliest days of commercial cinema, filmmakers have produced movies intended to shock and terrify their audience — and viewers keep coming back for more. This Halloween season, Dr. Amanda Ann Klein, associate professor of film studies, took a seat in the eerily quiet and empty Hendrix Theatre to talk about the power of horror films and recommend her favorites.
Glancing over her shoulder at the shadows looming underneath the theater’s balcony, Klein explained that there are films aimed at scaring people that date to the 1890s. An 1895 film called “The Execution of Mary Stuart” was produced by Thomas Edison and depicts a woman getting her head chopped off in front of a crowd of onlookers.
Predating computer-generated imagery by almost a century, it makes use of stop-motion editing for its dramatic climax, considered the first use of special effects in film.
“There’s also a George Méliès film from 1896 called ‘The Haunted Castle,’” Klein said.
Running more than three minutes, the film is set in a castle and includes a bat that turns into a devil, as well as appearances by a skeleton and four ghosts, all of whom play tricks on and bewilder a pair of cavaliers.
Both of those early short films, utterly shocking for audiences of the time, can be found on YouTube.
“But then you really don’t start to see anything in terms of storytelling until 1910 — there’s an adaptation of ‘Frankenstein’ — and the genre doesn’t really catch on until the 1930s,” said Klein. “You start to see movies about Dracula, Frankenstein, the mummy — things like that.”
Universal, which wasn’t a major studio at the time, gambled on the genre in the years after the stock market crash.
“It was cheap to make horror movies; you don’t need big stars because the scariness is the star,” Klein said. “It turned out to be a very smart move for them, and they really became associated with those monster movies.”
So why do people turn out for movies they know are intended to terrify them? Fear, like other fundamental emotions, produces a chemical reaction in the body that can be satisfying.
“Horror films are an example of what can be called a body genre. That includes horror, pornography, comedy and melodrama,” Klein said. “They all force your body to have a reaction, whether it’s crying, laughing or fear. It’s very cathartic to feel that and have that bodily emotion.
“If you’ve ever watched a really good comedy, afterwards you feel a sense of release and satisfaction because you’ve laughed so hard. And horror movies can do the same thing for you. Horror is about that bodily sensation.”
They also give filmmakers and audiences a platform through which to explore the fundamental conflict between the self and the Other, with a capital O, said Klein. “Basically anything that is not you is scary, and what we define as the Other changes over time.”
DR. KLEIN’S TOP FIVE
Students “saw” a good time during ECU’s Halloween Havoc 2017. (Photo by Cliff Hollis)
“These are the five horror movies that have had the strongest impact on me, either by being very scary or by digging their way into my brain and not getting out.”
“Night of the Living Dead,” 1968, U.S.
“Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” 1974, U.S.
“The Descent,” 2005, U.K.
“The Host,” 2006, South Korea
“The Orphanage,” 2007, Spain
“The more sophisticated the special effects become, the more gore you can show and get a reaction out of your audience,” Klein said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean today’s movies are scarier or more violent — violence can be conveyed in all sorts of ways other than showing direct gore — but definitely in the amount of pure blood and guts we see, absolutely it’s way more now than ever before.”
In the 1930s it was monsters, and they all came from other countries. In the ’50s there were more science fiction invasion movies, and the ’70s featured domestic, human monsters. Each makes sense when viewed alongside what was happening in the world.
“You can always see this moment of reflection on what people are nervous or worried about,” she said. “That’s why, when I taught this class, the students are not as scared by, say, ‘Frankenstein.’ They’ll admit it’s good, it’s a fun movie, but they’re not scared.
“It’s because horror films are very carefully crafted to tap into what’s happening at that particular moment.”
Films have also changed over time in terms of special effects and what it takes to startle or shock the audience. When Hollywood’s production code, which regulated content for a general audience, was replaced with the rating system in 1968, it took the handcuffs off filmmakers, allowing for more gore and violence.
Her own favorites include a pair of classics — “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” — and a trio of foreign films from the mid-2000s that tapped into a very specific and powerful emotion: the loss of a child.
“If you think about horror films (in terms of) your greatest fear and what’s going to tap into that, as a parent, especially watching those when my kids were really young, it activates that primal fear. So for me those movies really did it,” she said.
Klein, whose class on horror films will be offered again in the spring, said she enjoys introducing students to the history of this genre of cinema.
“A lot of them have never seen a black-and-white movie, and most of them have never seen a silent film,” she said.
The movies also provide a catalyst for deeper class discussions.
“We watched ‘Get Out’ and it gave us the ability to talk about race and the way white society tries to appropriate the aspects of black culture that they like and discard the rest,” she said. “I get to show them what else horror is doing besides scaring you or trying to gross you out.”