Carlos Clarens. Horror Movies: an illustrated survey. London: Panther, 1971. (pp.312)
"It would seem logical to suppose that troubled art is born out of troubled times. But it would be wrong to be that systematic about it, for what period of history has siled in, pre-ordained and self-acknowledged a golden age? Edgar Allan Poe existed in a momentary by-way of relative peace and security in a new country still full of hope, yet his work is limned by the same dark phantoms that haunt E.T.A Hoffmann's, a writer who lived when Europe was an open field trampled by the Napoleonic Wars. The landscape of the mind does not always correspond to external circumstance" (p.9).
"Satan is immutable, it would seem, whether ancestral dark angel or devil in the flesh. Those who imagine him today are not the doctors of demonology but the psychiatrist, the anthropologist, the sociologist. To them, horror movies might be seen as a historical imperative, if not an as aesthetic necessity" (p.10).
"Only the best horror movies sustain their power to frighten through the passage of time. Yet this does not necessarily entail a loss of interest or even popularity. They gain a new dimension in perspective by appearing encrusted with the meaning of their period. Didn't Prometheus come to represent the Myth of Electricity (in Frankenstein) after being the Myth of Scientific Power and, before then, the mythical alibi for man's defiance of divine will? Didn't Mr Hyde become more recognisably human as we learned to accept that our forefathers endeavoured to conceal and represses? Besides making us nostalgic of the things we once feared, they help us to gauge the escalation of our insensibility. It follows that a supremely violent age like ours calls for unprecedented violence in its aesthetics manifestations" (p.11)
"Whether horror films set out to scare us or to elevate what scares us to the status of myths, the movies follow popular taste or at least try to, inasmuch as they are products of an industry, and are bound to reflect something of the collective unconscious of their audience. It may commonly be that the artistic best does not always coincide with the mythological most tangible: a film may hit a very definite chord in the public mind and still not be distinguished on any other terms" (p.12)
"In France, most of the movies discussed in this book fall under the rather vague (for Anglo-Saxons) heading of le fantastique. Besides horror films, le fantastique includes such titles as Alice in the Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, while excluding the more earthbound thrillers that carry no supernatural implications. I am aware of the shortcomings of 'horror films' as a designation - the term unavoidably carries it connotations of repulsion and disgust- but it is the one sanctioned by usage and the best available in English. Yet, in writing about horror films, I have occasionally included for illustrative purposes a fantastic movies that contains little or no horror. I have not singled out, however, serials such as Feuillade's Les Vampires or Universal's Flash Gordon, although their mention crops up in the text several times. Despite the fact that it contains some delightful moments of near-fantasy, Les Vampires is unshakeably (an in spite of its masked hoods and hooded vamps) on the side of light: its essence is poetry and movement and one would look in vain for the dark undertow of, say, the Fritz Lang serials, which are included. As for Flash Gordon, it is pure prewar science fiction, utterly devoid of anxiety, a superior adventure romance. But my respect for the serial excludes its inclusion here as a mere appendage to the horror film" (p.13)
"Finally, my exclusion of Les Diaboliques, Psycho, Repulsion and the more blatant borrowings from Krafft-Ebing are not as arbitrary as it may seem if we are to consider the Horror Film as the Cinema of Obsession, the rendering unto film of the immanent fears of mankind: damnation, demonic possession, old age, death, in brief, the night side of life. In Jungian fashion, I fell more compelled to single out and explore the visionary than the psychological" (p.14). [Clarens suggests the paternity of Psycho lies in Fritz Lang's M, cross of police dossier and psychiatric case-history]
"Horror, like beauty, may reside in the eye of the beholder; or in the attitude of the director towards his material. Most film-makers have, at one stage or another of their careers, felt the challenge to instil that elusive feeling of terror in the audience. There are unforgettable horror moments in non-horror films" (p.14).
"As we tend to pigeonhole the enormous mass of films laid at our disposal through seventy years of industry, we apply to movies the strict rules and superficial restrictions of genre headings, when horror films (and Westerns) at best obey no rules and transcend the limitations we impose on them. Let me the first to realise that such staggering number of movies can wreak havoc on any serious attempt at theorising. Most movies have their own voice, and none of them was created to support a single aesthetic or theory" (p.15)
The Wizard on Montreuil Paris, 1815-1913: Chapter about George Méliès and who the fantastic film 'accidentally' came into being. Méliès did not think the new invention of the motion picture (Lumière Cinématographe and Thomas Edison Kinetoscope) should merely record reality in a journalistic way. He thought it excluded poetry, fantasy and unbridled imagination therefore he set up a studio in Montreuil where he created his films Battleship Maine (1896), The Haunted Cave (1898), The One Man Band (1900), Trip to the Moon (1902), The Conquest of the Pole (1912), among others. In order to create his illusions, Méliès resorted to double and multiple exposure of the film, the gradual disappearance of the image (fade) and the slow transition from one image to another (dissolve), plus trap doors and other resources used by magicians and well as a great deal of pantomime trickery and stage-based acts. Clarens chapter is an homage to Méliès and his dream factory.
"Horror, like beauty, may reside in the eye of the beholder; or in the attitude of the director towards his material. Most film-makers have, at one stage or another of their careers, felt the challenge to instil that elusive feeling of terror in the audience. There are unforgettable horror moments in non-horror films" (p.14).
"As we tend to pigeonhole the enormous mass of films laid at our disposal through seventy years of industry, we apply to movies the strict rules and superficial restrictions of genre headings, when horror films (and Westerns) at best obey no rules and transcend the limitations we impose on them. Let me the first to realise that such staggering number of movies can wreak havoc on any serious attempt at theorising. Most movies have their own voice, and none of them was created to support a single aesthetic or theory" (p.15)
The Wizard on Montreuil Paris, 1815-1913: Chapter about George Méliès and who the fantastic film 'accidentally' came into being. Méliès did not think the new invention of the motion picture (Lumière Cinématographe and Thomas Edison Kinetoscope) should merely record reality in a journalistic way. He thought it excluded poetry, fantasy and unbridled imagination therefore he set up a studio in Montreuil where he created his films Battleship Maine (1896), The Haunted Cave (1898), The One Man Band (1900), Trip to the Moon (1902), The Conquest of the Pole (1912), among others. In order to create his illusions, Méliès resorted to double and multiple exposure of the film, the gradual disappearance of the image (fade) and the slow transition from one image to another (dissolve), plus trap doors and other resources used by magicians and well as a great deal of pantomime trickery and stage-based acts. Clarens chapter is an homage to Méliès and his dream factory.
