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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For related information, see Frankenstein (disambiguation).
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein character
Steel engraving (993 × 78 mm), for the frontispiece of the 1831 revised edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, published by Colburn and Bentley, London
First appearance Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Created by Mary Shelley
Portrayed by Charles Stanton Ogle
Boris Karloff
Lon Chaney Jr
Bela Lugosi
Glenn Strange
Christopher Lee
David Prowse
Kiwi Kingston
John Bloom
Nick Brimble
Robert De Niro
Kevin James
Rory Kinnear
Xavier Samuel
Evan Jones-Sawyer
Shuler Hensley
Jacob Elordi
In-universe information
Nicknames "Creature", "fiend", "spectre", "the dæmon", "wretch", "devil", "thing", "being", "ogre"[1]
Species Simulacrum (made from different human body parts)
Gender Male
Family Victor Frankenstein (creator)
Bride of Frankenstein (companion/predecessor; in some adaptions)
Frankenstein's monster, also referred to as Frankenstein,[a] is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus as its main antagonist. Shelley's title compares the monster's creator, Victor Frankenstein, to the mythological character Prometheus, who fashioned humans out of clay and gave them fire.
In Shelley's Gothic story, Victor Frankenstein builds the creature in his laboratory through an ambiguous method based on a scientific principle he discovered. Shelley describes the monster as 8 feet (240 cm) tall and emotional.[2] The monster attempts to fit into human society but is shunned, which leads him to seek revenge against Frankenstein. According to the scholar Joseph Carroll, the monster occupies "a border territory between the characteristics that typically define protagonists and antagonists".[3]
Frankenstein's monster became iconic in popular culture, and has been featured in various forms of media, including films, television series, merchandise and video games.[4][5] The most popularly recognized versions are the film portrayals by Boris Karloff in the 1931 film Frankenstein, the 1935 sequel Bride of Frankenstein, and the 1939 sequel Son of Frankenstein.
Names
The actor T. P. Cooke as the monster in an 1823 stage production of Shelley's novel
Mary Shelley's original novel does not give the character a specific name. In the novel, Victor Frankenstein variously refers to his creation as the "creature", "fiend", "spectre", "dæmon", "wretch", "devil", "thing", "being", and "ogre".[1] Frankenstein's creation referred to himself as a "monster" at least once, as did the residents of a hamlet who saw the creature towards the end of the novel.
As in Shelley's story, the creature's namelessness became a central part of the stage adaptations in London and Paris during the decades after the novel's first appearance. In 1823, Shelley herself attended a performance of Richard Brinsley Peake's Presumption, the first successful stage adaptation of her novel. "The play bill amused me extremely, for in the list of dramatis personae came, -------- by Mr T. Cooke," she wrote to her friend Leigh Hunt. "This nameless mode of naming the unnameable is rather good."[6]
Within a decade of publication, the name of the creator, "Frankenstein", was used to refer to the creature, but it did not become firmly established until much later. The story was adapted for the stage in 1927 by Peggy Webling,[7] and Webling's Victor Frankenstein does give the creature his name. However, the creature has no name in the Universal film series starring Boris Karloff during the 1930s, which was largely based upon Webling's play.[8] The 1931 Universal film treated the creature's identity in a similar way as Shelley's novel: in the opening credits, the character is referred to merely as "The Monster" (the actor's name is replaced by a question mark, but Karloff is listed in the closing credits).[9] However, in the sequel Bride of Frankenstein (1935), the frame narration by a character representing Shelley's friend Lord Byron does refer to the monster as Frankenstein, although this scene takes place not quite in-universe. Nevertheless, the creature soon enough became best known in the popular imagination as "Frankenstein". This usage is sometimes considered erroneous, but some usage commentators regard the monster sense of "Frankenstein" as well-established and not an error.[10][11]
Modern practice varies somewhat. For example, in Dean Koontz's Frankenstein, first published in 2004, the creature is named "Deucalion", after the character from Greek mythology, who is the son of the Titan Prometheus, a reference to the original novel's title. Another example is the second episode of Showtime's Penny Dreadful, which first aired in 2014. Victor Frankenstein briefly considers naming his creation "Adam", before deciding instead to let the monster "pick his own name". He is also referred to as Adam in the 2014 film I, Frankenstein, where the Queen of the Gargoyles Leonore gives him the name after understanding Victor never gave him one. Thumbing through a book of the works of William Shakespeare, the monster chooses "Proteus" from The Two Gentlemen of Verona. It is later revealed that Proteus is actually the second monster Frankenstein has created, with the first, abandoned creation having been named "Caliban", from The Tempest, by the theatre actor who took him in and later, after leaving the theatre, named himself after the English poet John Clare.[12] Another example is an attempt by Randall Munroe of webcomic xkcd to make "Frankenstein" the canonical name of the monster, by publishing a short derivative version which directly states that it is.[13] In The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, the 2017 novel by Theodora Goss, the creature is named Adam.[14]
Shelley's plot
Charles Stanton Ogle in the 1910 film version
Close-up of Charles Ogle as the monster in Thomas Edison's Frankenstein (1910)
Main article: Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein builds the creature over a two-year period in the attic of his boarding house in Ingolstadt after discovering a scientific principle which allows him to create life from non-living matter. Frankenstein is disgusted by his creation, however, and flees from it in horror. Frightened, and unaware of his own identity, the monster wanders through the wilderness.
He finds solace beside a remote cottage inhabited by an older, blind man and his two children. Eavesdropping, the creature familiarizes himself with their lives and learns to speak, whereby he becomes an eloquent, educated, and well-mannered individual. During this time, he also finds Frankenstein's journal in the pocket of the jacket he found in the laboratory and learns how he was created. The creature eventually introduces himself to the family's blind father, who treats him with kindness. When the rest of the family returns, however, they are frightened of him and drive him away. Enraged, the creature feels that humankind is his enemy and begins to hate his creator for abandoning him. However, although he despises Frankenstein, he sets out to find him, believing that he is the only person who will help him. On his journey, the creature rescues a young girl from a river but is shot in the shoulder by the child's father, believing the creature intended to harm his child. Enraged by this final act of cruelty, the creature swears revenge on humankind for the suffering they have caused him. He seeks revenge against his creator in particular for leaving him alone in a world where he is hated. Using the information in Frankenstein's notes, the creature resolves to find him.
The monster kills Victor's younger brother William upon learning of the boy's relation to his creator and frames Justine Moritz, a young woman who lives with the Frankensteins, as the culprit (causing her execution afterwards). When Frankenstein retreats to the Alps, the monster approaches him at the summit, recounts his experiences, and asks his creator to build him a female mate. He promises, in return, to disappear with his mate and never trouble humankind again, but threatens to destroy everything Frankenstein holds dear should he fail or refuse. Frankenstein agrees, and eventually constructs a female creature on a remote island in Orkney, but aghast at the possibility of creating a race of monsters, destroys the female creature before it is complete. Horrified and enraged, the creature immediately appears, and gives Frankenstein a final threat: "I will be with you on your wedding night."
After leaving his creator, the creature goes on to kill Victor's best friend, Henry Clerval, and later kills Frankenstein's bride, Elizabeth Lavenza, on their wedding night, whereupon Frankenstein's father dies of grief. With nothing left to live for but revenge, Frankenstein dedicates himself to destroying his creation, and the creature goads him into pursuing him north, through Scandinavia and into Russia, staying ahead of him the entire way.
As they reach the Arctic Circle and travel over the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean, Frankenstein, suffering from severe exhaustion and hypothermia, comes within a mile of the creature, but is separated from him when the ice he is traveling over splits. A ship exploring the region encounters the dying Frankenstein, who relates his story to the ship's captain, Robert Walton. Later, the monster boards the ship, but upon finding Frankenstein dead, is overcome by grief and pledges to incinerate himself at "the Northernmost extremity of the globe". He then departs, never to be seen again.
Appearance
Frankenstein's monster in an editorial cartoon, 1896, an allegory on the Silverite movement displacing other progressive factions in late 19th century U.S.
Shelley described Frankenstein's monster as an 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) creature of hideous contrasts:
His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.
A picture of the creature appeared in the 1831 edition. Early stage portrayals dressed him in a toga, shaded, along with the monster's skin, a pale blue. Throughout the 19th century, the monster's image remained variable according to the artist.
Universal Pictures films
Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) in a variation of the classic 1931 film version with an assist from make-up artist Jack Pierce. Karloff had gained weight since the original iteration and much of the monster's hair has been burned off to indicate having been caught in a fire. Some of the hair was gradually replaced during the course of the film to simulate it beginning to grow back.
The best-known image of Frankenstein's monster in popular culture derives from Boris Karloff's portrayal in the 1931 movie Frankenstein, in which he wore makeup applied and designed by Jack P. Pierce, who based the monster's face and iconic flat head shape on a drawing Pierce's daughter (whom Pierce feared to be psychic) had drawn from a dream.[15] Universal Studios, which released the film, was quick to secure ownership of the copyright for the makeup format. Karloff played the monster in two more Universal films, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein; Lon Chaney Jr. took over the part from Karloff in The Ghost of Frankenstein; Bela Lugosi portrayed the role in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man; and Glenn Strange played the monster in the last three Universal Studios films to feature the character – House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. However, the makeup worn by subsequent actors replicated the iconic look first worn by Karloff. The image of Karloff's face is currently owned by his daughter's company, Karloff Enterprises, secured for her in a lawsuit for which she was represented by attorney Bela G. Lugosi (Bela Lugosi's son), after which Universal replaced Karloff's features with those of Glenn Strange in most of their marketing. In 1969, the New York Times mistakenly ran a photograph of Strange for Karloff's obituary.
Since Karloff's portrayal, the creature almost always appears as a towering, undead-like figure, often with a flat-topped angular head and bolts on his neck to serve as electrical connectors or grotesque electrodes. He wears a dark, usually tattered, suit having shortened coat sleeves and thick, heavy boots, causing him to walk with an awkward, stiff-legged gait (as opposed to the novel, in which he is described as much more flexible than a human). The tone of his skin varies (although shades of green or gray are common), and his body appears stitched together at certain parts (such as around the neck and joints). This image has influenced the creation of other fictional characters, such as the Hulk.[16]
Colin Clive and Karloff in Frankenstein (1931)
Colin Clive and Karloff in Frankenstein (1931)
Frankenstein's monster's bust, based on Boris Karloff, in the National Museum of Cinema of Turin, Italy
Frankenstein's monster's bust, based on Boris Karloff, in the National Museum of Cinema of Turin, Italy
Colored publicity shot of Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
Colored publicity shot of Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
Another colored publicity shot of Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
Another colored publicity shot of Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
Colored publicity shot of Son of Frankenstein (1939).
Colored publicity shot of Son of Frankenstein (1939).
Evelyn Ankers, Lon Chaney Jr. as the monster and Bela Lugosi as Ygor in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
Evelyn Ankers, Lon Chaney Jr. as the monster and Bela Lugosi as Ygor in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
Re-release lobby card for Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) with Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr.
Re-release lobby card for Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) with Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr.
Glenn Strange as the monster in House of Dracula (1945)
Glenn Strange as the monster in House of Dracula (1945)
Onslow Stevens and Glenn Strange in House of Dracula (1945)
Onslow Stevens and Glenn Strange in House of Dracula (1945)
Hammer Films Productions version
Christopher Lee as the creature in Hammer Films' The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
In the 1957 film The Curse of Frankenstein, Christopher Lee was cast as the creature. The producers Hammer Film Productions refrained from duplicating aspects of Universal's 1931 film, and so Phil Leakey designed a new look for the creature bearing no resemblance to the Boris Karloff design created by Jack Pierce.[17] For his performance as the creature Lee played him as a loose-limbed and childlike, fearful and lonely, with a suggestion of being in pain. Author Paul Leggett describes the creature as being like an abused child; afraid but also violently angry.[18] Christopher Lee was annoyed on getting the script and discovering that the monster had no dialogue, for this creature was totally mute.[19] According to Marcus K. Harmes in contrasting Lee's creature with the one played by Karloff, "Lee's actions as the monster seem more directly evil, to judge from the expression on his face when he bears down on the helpless old blind man but these are explained in the film as psychopathic impulses caused by brain damage, not the cunning of the literary monster. Lee also evokes considerable pathos in his performance."[19] In this film the aggressive and childish demeanour of the monster are in contrast with that of the murdered Professor Bernstein, once the "finest brain in Europe", from whom the creature's now damaged brain was taken.[19]
The sequels to The Curse of Frankenstein would feature Victor Frankenstein creating various different Frankenstein monsters, none of which would be played by Christopher Lee:
The film The Revenge of Frankenstein has Victor Frankenstein placing the brain of a hunchback named Karl (portrayed by Oscar Quitak) into a makeshift body (portrayed by Michael Gwynn). Though the procedure works, Karl starts to redevelop his deformities and later dies in front of Victor.
The film The Evil of Frankenstein reveals that Victor Frankenstein had made a prototype version of his monster which was kept in a frozen cave. After being thawed out and reanimated, the Monster (portrayed by Kiwi Kingston) has his brain awakened by a hypnotist named Zoltan (portrayed by Peter Woodthorpe). When Frankenstein's lab went off the cliff, it apparently killed Victor and the Monster.
The film Frankenstein Created Woman has Victor Frankenstein surviving the lab's destruction and making a female monster from the remains of a cowardly innkeeper's half-disfigured daughter Christina Kleve (portrayed by Susan Denberg) after she threw herself in the river following the death of Victor's ally Hans. He and Dr. Hertz transferred Hans' soul into Christina's body causing her to become possessed by him. After coming to her senses, Christina commits suicide by drowning herself in the river.
The film Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed has Victor Frankenstein making a monster out of the remains of the asylum's administrator Professor Richter (portrayed by Freddie Jones) that involves placing the brain of Victor's former assistant Dr. Frederick Brant (portrayed by George Pravda) into Professor Richter's body. The Monster later drags Victor into the burning house.
The film Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell has Victor surviving the fire and making a monster from the hulking ape-like asylum inmate Herr Schneider (portrayed by David Prowse) while also giving him a new brain and new eyes. During it's plans for revenge, the Monster is killed by a mob of asylum inmates.
Toho versions
In the 1965 Toho film Frankenstein vs. Baragon, the heart of Frankenstein's monster was transported from Germany to Hiroshima as World War II neared its end, only to be irradiated during the atomic bombing of the city, granting it miraculous regenerative capabilities. Over the ensuing 20 years, it grows into a complete human child, who then rapidly matures into a giant, 20-metre-tall man after he is rediscovered. Frankenstein escapes a laboratory in the city after being agitated by news reporters using flash photography on him, and goes to fend for himself in the countryside, only to be accused of attacking villages and killing people, actually the victims of the underground monster Baragon. The two monsters face off in a showdown that ends with Frankenstein's monster victorious, though he falls into the depths of the Earth after the ground collapses beneath his feet. The film's sequel War of the Gargantuas would see pieces of the monster regenerate into the titular Gargantuas, two hairy giants consisting of the malicious green sea monster Gaira and the friendly brown mountain monster Sanda.
Other film versions
In the 1973 TV miniseries Frankenstein: The True Story, in which the creature is played by Michael Sarrazin, he appears as a strikingly handsome man who later degenerates into a grotesque monster due to a flaw in the creation process.
In the 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the creature is played by Robert De Niro and has an appearance closer to that described in the original novel, though this version of the creature possesses balding grey hair and a body covered in bloody stitches. He is, as in the novel, motivated by pain and loneliness. In this version, Frankenstein gives the monster the brain of his mentor, Doctor Waldman, while his body is made from a man who killed Waldman while resisting a vaccination. The monster retains Waldman's "trace memories" that apparently help him quickly learn to speak and read.
In the 2004 film Van Helsing, the monster is shown in a modernized version of the Karloff design. He is 8 to 9 feet (240–270 cm) tall, has a square bald head, gruesome scars, and pale green skin. The electrical origin of the creature is emphasized with one electrified dome in the back of his head and another over his heart, and he also has hydraulic pistons in his legs, with the design being similar to that of a steam-punk cyborg. Although not as eloquent as in the novel, this version of the creature is intelligent and relatively nonviolent.
In 2004, a TV miniseries adaptation of Frankenstein was made by Hallmark. Luke Goss plays the creature. This adaptation more closely resembles the monster as described in the novel: intelligent and articulate, with flowing, dark hair and watery eyes.
The 2005 film Frankenstein Reborn portrays the creature as a paraplegic man who tries to regain the ability to walk by having a nanobots surging through his body but has side effects. Instead, the surgeon kills him and resurrects his corpse as a reanimated zombie-like creature. This version of the creature has stitches on his face where he was shot, strains of brown hair, black pants, a dark hoodie, and a black jacket with a brown fur collar.
The 2014 TV series Penny Dreadful also rejects the Karloff design in favour of Shelley's description. This version of the creature has the flowing dark hair described by Shelley, although he departs from her description by having pale grey skin and obvious scars along the right side of his face. Additionally, he is of average height, being even shorter than other characters in the series. In this series, the monster names himself "Caliban", after the character in William Shakespeare's The Tempest. In the series, Victor Frankenstein makes a second and third creature, each more indistinguishable from normal human beings.
Personality
As depicted by Shelley, the creature is a sensitive, emotional person whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself. The novel portrayed him as versed in Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Young Werther, books he finds after having learnt language.
From the beginning, the creature is rejected by everyone he meets. He realizes from the moment of his "birth" that even his own creator cannot stand the sight of him; this is obvious when Frankenstein says "…one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped…".[20]: Ch.5 Upon seeing his own reflection, he realizes that he too is repulsed by his appearance. His greatest desire is to find love and acceptance; but when that desire is denied, he swears revenge on his creator.
The creature is a vegetarian. While speaking to Frankenstein, he tells him, "My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment...The picture I present to you is peaceful and human."[21] At the time the novel was written, many writers, including Percy Shelley in A Vindication of Natural Diet,[22] argued that practicing vegetarianism was the morally right thing to do.[23]
Contrary to many film versions, the creature in the novel is very articulate and eloquent in his speech. Almost immediately after his creation, he dresses himself; and within 11 months, he can speak and read German and French. By the end of the novel, the creature is able to speak English fluently as well. The Van Helsing and Penny Dreadful interpretations of the character have similar personalities to the literary original, although the latter version is the only one to retain the character's violent reactions to rejection. In the 1931 film adaptation, the creature is depicted as mute and bestial; it is implied that this is because he is accidentally implanted with a criminal's "abnormal" brain. In the subsequent sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, the creature learns to speak, albeit in short, stunted sentences. However, his intelligence is implied to be fairly developed, since what little dialogue he speaks suggests he has a world-weary attitude to life, and a deep understanding of his unnatural state. When rejected by his bride, he briefly goes through a suicidal state and attempts suicide, blowing up the laboratory he is in. In the second sequel, Son of Frankenstein, the creature is again rendered inarticulate. Following a brain transplant in the third sequel, The Ghost of Frankenstein, the creature speaks with the voice and personality of the brain donor. This was continued after a fashion in the scripting for the fourth sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but the dialogue was excised before release. The creature was effectively mute in later sequels, although he refers to Count Dracula as his "master" in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The creature is often portrayed as being afraid of fire, although he is not afraid of it in the novel, even using fire to destroy himself.
Interpretations
The monster as a metaphor
Scholars sometimes look for deeper meaning in Shelley's story, and have drawn an analogy between the monster and a motherless child; Shelley's own mother died while giving birth to her.[24] The monster has also been analogized to an oppressed class; Shelley wrote that the monster recognized "the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty".[24] Others see in the monster the dangers of uncontrolled scientific progress,[25] especially as at the time of publishing; Galvanism had convinced many scientists that raising the dead through use of electrical currents was a scientific possibility.
Another proposal is that Victor Frankenstein was based on a real scientist who had a similar name, and who had been called a modern Prometheus – Benjamin Franklin. Accordingly, the monster would represent the new nation that Franklin helped to create out of remnants left by England.[26] Victor Frankenstein's father "made also a kite, with a wire and string, which drew down that fluid from the clouds," wrote Shelley, similar to Franklin's famous kite experiment.[26]
Racial interpretations
1930s Universal's art director Karoly Grosz (illustrator) designed this offbeat 1935 advertisement
In discussing the physical description of the monster, there has been some speculation about the potential his design is rooted in common perceptions of race during the 18th century. Three scholars have noted that Shelley's description of the monster seems to be racially coded; one argues that, "Shelley's portrayal of her monster drew upon contemporary attitudes towards non-whites, in particular on fears and hopes of the abolition of slavery in the West Indies."[27]
Karloff in 1935 teaser ad
In her article "Frankenstein, Racial Science, and the Yellow Peril",[28] Anne Mellor claims that the monster's features share a lot in common with the Mongoloid race. This term, now out of fashion and carrying some negative connotations, is used to describe the "yellow" races of Asia as distinct from the Caucasian or white races. To support her claim, Mellor points out that both Mary and Percy Shelley were friends with William Lawrence, an early proponent of racial science and someone whom Mary "continued to consult on medical matters and [met with] socially until his death in 1830."[28] While Mellor points out to allusions to Orientalism and the Yellow Peril, John Malchow in his article "Frankenstein's Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain"[27] explores the possibility of the monster either being intentionally or unintentionally coded as black. Malchow argues that the monster's depiction is based in an 18th-century understanding of "popular racial discourse [which] managed to conflate such descriptions of particular ethnic characteristics into a general image of the 'Negro' body in which repulsive features, brute-like strength and size of limbs featured prominently."[27] Malchow makes it clear that it is difficult to tell if this alleged racial allegory was intentional on Shelley's part or if it was inspired by the society she lived in (or if it exists in the text at all outside of his interpretation), and he states that "There is no clear proof that Mary Shelley consciously set out to create a monster which suggested, explicitly, the Jamaican escaped slave or maroon, or that she drew directly from any person knowledge of either planter or abolitionist propaganda."[27] In addition to the previous interpretations, Karen Lynnea Piper argues in her article, "Inuit Diasporas: Frankenstein and the Inuit in England" that the symbolism surrounding Frankenstein's monster could stem from the Inuit of the Arctic. Piper argues that the monster accounts for the "missing presence" of any indigenous people during Waldon's expedition, and that he represents the fear of the savage, lurking on the outskirts of civilization.[29]
Portrayals
Actor Year Production
Thomas Cooke 1823 Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein (stage play)
O. Smith 1826 The Man and The Monster; or The Fate of Frankenstein
Charles Stanton Ogle 1910 Frankenstein
Percy Standing 1915 Life Without Soul
Umberto Guarracino 1920 The Monster of Frankenstein
Boris Karloff 1931 Frankenstein
1935 Bride of Frankenstein
1939 Son of Frankenstein
1962 Route 66': "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing" (TV series episode)
Dale Van Sickel 1941 Hellzapoppin
Lon Chaney Jr. 1942 The Ghost of Frankenstein[30]
1952 Tales of Tomorrow: "Frankenstein" (TV series episode)
Bela Lugosi 1943 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
Glenn Strange 1944 The House of Frankenstein
1945 House of Dracula
1948 Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Gary Conway 1957 I Was a Teenage Frankenstein
Christopher Lee The Curse of Frankenstein
Gary Conway 1958 How to Make a Monster
Michael Gwynn The Revenge of Frankenstein
Mike Lane Frankenstein 1970
Harry Wilson Frankenstein's Daughter
Don Megowan Tales of Frankenstein (TV pilot)
Danny Dayton 1963 Mack and Myer for Hire: "Monstrous Merriment" (TV series episode)
Kiwi Kingston 1964 The Evil of Frankenstein
Fred Gwynne The Munsters (as "Herman Munster")
Koji Furuhata 1965 Frankenstein Conquers the World
John Maxim Doctor Who: "The Chase" (TV series episode)
Robert Reilly Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster
Yû Sekida and Haruo Nakajima 1966 The War of the Gargantuas
Allen Swift 1967 Mad Monster Party?
1972 Mad Mad Mad Monsters
Susan Denberg 1967 Frankenstein Created Woman
Robert Rodan Dark Shadows
David Prowse 1967 Casino Royale
1970 The Horror of Frankenstein
1974 Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell
Freddie Jones 1969 Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed
Manuel Leal Santo y Blue Demon contra los monstruos (as "Franquestain")
Howard Morris 1970 Groovie Goolies (as "Frankie")
John Bloom and Shelley Weiss 1971 Dracula vs. Frankenstein
Xiro Papas 1972 Frankenstein 80
Bo Svenson 1973 The Wide World of Mystery "Frankenstein" (TV series episode)
José Villasante The Spirit of the Beehive
Michael Sarrazin Frankenstein: The True Story
Srdjan Zelenovic 1974 Flesh for Frankenstein
Peter Boyle Young Frankenstein
Per Oscarsson 1976 Terror of Frankenstein
Mike Lane Monster Squad
Jack Elam 1979 Struck by Lightning
John Schuck The Halloween That Almost Wasn't
Peter Cullen 1984 The Transformers
David Warner Frankenstein (TV movie)
Clancy Brown 1985 The Bride
2020 DuckTales
Tom Noonan 1987 The Monster Squad
Paul Naschy El Aullido del Diablo
Chris Sarandon Frankenstein (TV movie)
Phil Hartman 1987–1996 Saturday Night Live[31][32]
Zale Kessler 1988 Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School
Jim Cummings Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf
Craig Armstrong 1989 The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
Nick Brimble 1990 Frankenstein Unbound
Randy Quaid 1992 Frankenstein
Robert De Niro 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Deron McBee 1995 Monster Mash: The Movie
Peter Crombie 1997 House of Frankenstein
Thomas Wellington The Creeps
Frank Welker 1999 Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein
Shuler Hensley 2004 Van Helsing
Luke Goss Frankenstein
Vincent Perez Frankenstein
Joel Hebner 2005 Frankenstein Reborn
Julian Bleach 2007 Frankenstein
Shuler Hensley Young Frankenstein
Scott Adsit 2010 Mary Shelley's Frankenhole
Benedict Cumberbatch 2011 Frankenstein
Jonny Lee Miller
Tim Krueger Frankenstein: Day of the Beast
David Harewood Frankenstein's Wedding
Kevin James 2012 Hotel Transylvania
2015 Hotel Transylvania 2
2018 Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
David Gest 2012 A Nightmare on Lime Street[33]
Mark Hamill Uncle Grandpa
Roger Morrissey 2013 The Frankenstein Theory
Chad Michael Collins Once Upon a Time
Aaron Eckhart 2014 I, Frankenstein
Eric Gesecus Army of Frankensteins
Rory Kinnear Penny Dreadful
Dee Bradley Baker Winx Club (in "A Monstrous Crush")
Michael Gladis 2015 The Librarians (in "And the Broken Staff")
Spencer Wilding Victor Frankenstein
Xavier Samuel Frankenstein
Kevin Michael Richardson Rick and Morty
Brad Garrett 2016 Apple holiday commercial
John DeSantis 2017 Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library
Ai Nonaka Fate/Apocrypha
Grant Moninger Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Skylar Astin 2019 Vampirina
Will Ferrell Drunk History
Brad Abrell[34] 2022 Hotel Transylvania: Transformania
Itaru Yamamoto 2023 Undead Girl Murder Farce
See also
Film portal
icon Speculative fiction/Horror portal
Frankenstein in popular culture
List of films featuring Frankenstein's monster
Allotransplantation, the transplantation of body parts from one person to another
Xenotransplantation – Transplantation of cells or tissue across species
Frankenstein's Promethean dimension
Notes
See #Names for other names and explanations.
References
Baldick, Chris (1987). In Frankenstein's shadow: myth, monstrosity, and nineteenth-century writing. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780198117261.
Camidge, Ross (22 September 2007). "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus". BMJ. 335 (7620): 617.2–617. doi:10.1136/bmj.39317.718657.4E. ISSN 0959-8138. PMC 1988964.
Carroll, Joseph; Gottschall, Jonathan; Johnson, John A.; Kruger, Daniel J. (2012). Graphing Jane Austen: The Evolutionary Basis of Literary Meaning. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1137002402.
Lescaze, Zoë (23 October 2017). "The Pop-Culture Evolution of Frankenstein's Monster". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 15 February 2024.
Fischoff, S.; Dimopoulos, Alexandra; Nguyen, François (2005). "The Psychological Appeal of Movie Monsters". Journal of Media Psychology. S2CID 159834592.
Haggerty, George E. (1989). Gothic Fiction/Gothic Form. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0271006451.
Hitchcock, Susan Tyler (2007). Frankenstein: a cultural history. New York City: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393061444.
Young, William; Young, Nancy; Butt, John J. (2002). The 1930s. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 199. ISBN 978-0313316029.
Schor, Esther (2003). The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0521007702.
Evans, Bergen (1962). Comfortable Words. New York City: Random House.
Garner, Bryan A. (1998). A dictionary of modern American usage. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195078534.
Crow, Dennis (19 October 2016). "Penny Dreadful: The Most Faithful Version of the Frankenstein Legend". Den of Geek. London, England: Dennis Publishing. Retrieved 13 July 2017.
"Frankenstein". xkcd. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
Teitelbaum, Ilana (13 October 2018). "Tales of Monstrous Women: "The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter" and "European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman" by Theodora Goss". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
Mank, Gregory William (8 March 2010). Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration, with a Complete Filmography of Their Films Together. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-5472-3.
Weinstein, Simcha (2006). Up, Up, and Oy Vey!: how Jewish history, culture, and values shaped the comic book superhero. Baltimore, Maryland: Leviathan Press. pp. 82–97. ISBN 978-1-881927-32-7.
Rigby, Jonathan (2000). English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema. Reynolds & Hearn Ltd. ISBN 1-903111-01-3.
Legget, Paul (2018). Good Versus Evil in the Films of Christopher Lee. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers Ltd. pp. 09–12. ISBN 978-1-476669-63-2.
Harmes, Marcus K (2015). The Curse of Frankenstein. Columbia University Press. pp. 51–52. ISBN 9780993071706.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (1818). "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus". Retrieved 3 November 2012 – via Gutenberg Project.
Irvine, Ian. "From Frankenstein's creature to Franz Kafka: vegetarians through history". Retrieved 5 October 2020.
Shelley, Percy. A Vindication of Natural Diet. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
Morton, Timothy (21 September 2006). The Cambridge Companion to Shelley. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139827072.
Milner, Andrew (2005). Literature, Culture and Society. New York City: NYU Press. pp. 227, 230. ISBN 978-0814755648.
Coghill, Jeff (2000). CliffsNotes on Shelley's Frankenstein. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 30. ISBN 978-0764585937.
Young, Elizabeth (2008). Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor. New York City: NYU Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0814797150.
Malchow, H L. "Frankenstein's Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain." Past & Present, No. 139, May 1993, pp. 90–130.
Mellor, Anne K. "Frankenstein, Racial Science, and the Yellow Peril" Frankenstein: Second Edition, 2012, pp. 481
Piper, Karen Lynnea (2007). "Inuit Diasporas: Frankenstein and the Inuit in England". Romanticism. 13 (1): 63–75. doi:10.3366/rom.2007.13.1.63. S2CID 161560193. Project MUSE 214804.
Chaney also reprised the role, uncredited, for a sequence in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein due to the character's assigned actor, Glenn Strange, being injured.
"SNL Transcripts: Paul Simon: 12/19/87: Succinctly Speaking". 8 October 2018.
"Watch Weekend Update: Frankenstein on Congressional Budget Cuts from Saturday Night Live on NBC.com".
"A Nightmare On Lime Street – Royal Court Theatre Liverpool". Royal Court Liverpool.
Verboven, Jos (17 May 2021). "Trailer Park: 'Hotel Transylvania: Transformania'". Scifi.radio. Archived from the original on 2 June 2021. Retrieved 29 May 2021.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the novel. For the character, see Count Dracula. For other uses, see Dracula (disambiguation).
Dracula
Cover of the first edition
Author Bram Stoker
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre Horror, Gothic
Publisher Archibald Constable and Company (UK)
Publication date
May 1897
Pages 418
OCLC 1447002
Text Dracula at Wikisource
Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. An epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, investigate, hunt and kill Dracula.
Dracula was mostly written in the 1890s. Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes for the novel, drawing extensively from Transylvanian folklore and history. Some scholars have suggested that the character of Dracula was inspired by historical figures like the Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler or the countess Elizabeth Báthory, but there is widespread disagreement. Stoker's notes mention neither figure. He found the name Dracula in Whitby's public library while on holiday, thinking it meant devil in Romanian.
Following its publication in May 1897, Dracula was positively received by reviewers who pointed to its effective use of horror. In contrast, reviewers who wrote negatively of the novel regarded it as excessively frightening. Comparisons to other works of Gothic fiction were common, including its structural similarity to Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (1859). In the past century, Dracula became regarded as a seminal piece of Gothic fiction. Modern scholars explore the novel within its historical context—the Victorian era—and discuss its depiction of gender roles, sexuality, and race.
Dracula is one of the most famous pieces of English literature. Many of the book's characters have entered popular culture as archetypal versions of their characters; for example, Count Dracula as the quintessential vampire, and Abraham Van Helsing as an iconic vampire hunter. The novel, which is in the public domain, has been adapted for film over 30 times, and its characters have made numerous appearances in virtually all media.
Plot
Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, visits Count Dracula at his castle in the Carpathian Mountains to help the Count purchase a house near London. Ignoring the Count's warning, Harker wanders the castle at night and encounters three vampire women; Dracula rescues Harker, and gives the women a small child bound inside a bag. Harker awakens in bed; soon after, Dracula leaves the castle, abandoning him to the women. Harker escapes and ends up delirious in a Budapest hospital. Dracula takes a ship called the Demeter for England with boxes of earth from his castle. The captain's log narrates the crew's disappearance until he alone remains, bound to the helm to maintain course. An animal resembling a large dog is seen leaping ashore when the ship runs aground at Whitby.
Lucy Westenra's letter to her best friend, Harker's fiancée Mina Murray, describes her marriage proposals from Dr. John Seward, Quincey Morris, and Arthur Holmwood. Lucy accepts Holmwood's, but all remain friends. Mina joins Lucy on holiday in Whitby. Lucy begins sleepwalking. After his ship lands there, Dracula stalks Lucy. Mina receives a letter about her missing fiancé's illness, and goes to Budapest to nurse him. Lucy becomes very ill. Seward's old teacher, Professor Abraham Van Helsing, determines the nature of Lucy's condition, but refuses to disclose it. He diagnoses her with acute blood-loss. Van Helsing places garlic flowers around her room and makes her a necklace of them. Lucy's mother removes the garlic flowers, not knowing they repel vampires. While Seward and Van Helsing are absent, Lucy and her mother are terrified by a wolf and Mrs. Westenra dies of a heart attack; Lucy dies shortly thereafter. After her burial, newspapers report children being stalked in the night by a "bloofer lady" (beautiful lady), and Van Helsing deduces it is Lucy. The four go to her tomb and see that she is a vampire. They stake her heart, behead her, and fill her mouth with garlic. Jonathan Harker and his now-wife Mina have returned, and they join the campaign against Dracula.
Everyone stays at Dr. Seward's asylum as the men begin to hunt Dracula. Van Helsing finally reveals that vampires can only rest on earth from their homeland. Dracula communicates with Seward's patient, Renfield, an insane man who eats vermin to absorb their life force. After Dracula learns of the group's plot against him, he uses Renfield to enter the asylum. He secretly attacks Mina three times, drinking her blood each time and forcing Mina to drink his blood on the final visit. She is cursed to become a vampire after her death unless Dracula is killed. As the men find Dracula's properties, they discover many earth boxes within. The vampire hunters open each of the boxes and seal wafers of sacramental bread inside them, rendering them useless to Dracula. They attempt to trap the Count in his Piccadilly house, but he escapes. They learn that Dracula is fleeing to his castle in Transylvania with his last box. Mina has a faint psychic connection to Dracula, which Van Helsing exploits via hypnosis to track Dracula's movements. Guided by Mina, they pursue him.
In Galatz, Romania, the hunters split up. Van Helsing and Mina go to Dracula's castle, where the professor destroys the vampire women. Jonathan Harker and Arthur Holmwood follow Dracula's boat on the river, while Quincey Morris and John Seward parallel them on land. After Dracula's box is finally loaded onto a wagon by Romani men, the hunters converge and attack it. After routing the Romani, Harker decapitates Dracula as Quincey stabs him in the heart. Dracula crumbles to dust, freeing Mina from her vampiric curse. Quincey is mortally wounded in the fight against the Romani. He dies from his wounds, at peace with the knowledge that Mina is saved. A note by Jonathan Harker seven years later states that the Harkers have a son, named Quincey.
Background
Author
As the acting manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, Bram Stoker was a recognisable figure: he would greet evening guests, and served as assistant to the stage actor Henry Irving. In a letter to Walt Whitman, Stoker described his own temperament as "secretive to the world", but he nonetheless led a relatively public life.[1] Stoker supplemented his income from the theatre by writing romance and sensation novels,[2][3][a] and had published 18 books by his death in 1912.[5] Dracula was Stoker's seventh published book, following The Shoulder of Shasta (1895) and preceding Miss Betty (1898).[6][b] Hall Caine, a close friend of Stoker's, wrote an obituary for him in The Daily Telegraph, saying that—besides his biography on Irving—Stoker wrote only "to sell" and "had no higher aims".[8]
Influences
Vlad III, more commonly known as Vlad the Impaler
Many figures have been suggested as inspirations for Count Dracula, but there is no consensus. In his 1962 biography of Stoker, Harry Ludlam suggested that Ármin Vámbéry, a professor at the University of Budapest, supplied Stoker with information about Vlad Drăculea, commonly known as Vlad the Impaler.[9] Professors Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu popularised the idea in their 1972 book, In Search of Dracula.[10] Benjamin H. LeBlanc writes that there is a reference within the text to Vámbéry, an "Arminius, of Buda-Pesh University", who is familiar with the historical Vlad III and is a friend of Abraham Van Helsing,[11] but an investigation by McNally and Florescu found nothing about "Vlad, Dracula, or vampires" within Vámbéry's published papers,[12] nor in Stoker's notes about his meeting with Vámbéry.[11] Academic and Dracula scholar Elizabeth Miller calls the link to Vlad III "tenuous", indicating that Stoker incorporated a large amount of "insignificant detail" from his research, and rhetorically asking why he would omit Vlad III's infamous cruelty.[13][c]
Raymond McNally's Dracula Was A Woman (1983) suggests another historical figure as an inspiration: Elizabeth Báthory.[16] McNally argues that the imagery of Dracula has analogues in Báthory's described crimes, such as the use of a cage resembling an iron maiden.[17] Gothic critic and lecturer Marie Mulvey-Roberts writes that vampires were traditionally depicted as "mouldering revenants, who dragged themselves around graveyards", but—like Báthory—Dracula uses blood to restore his youth.[18] Recent scholarship has questioned whether Báthory's crimes were exaggerated by her political opponents,[19] with others noting that very little is concretely known about her life.[20] A book that Stoker used for research, The Book of Were-Wolves, does have some information on Báthory, but Miller writes that he never took notes on anything from the short section devoted to her.[21] In a facsimile edition of Bram Stoker's original notes for the book, Miller and her co-author Robert Eighteen-Bisang say in a footnote that there is no evidence she inspired Stoker.[22] In 2000, Miller's book-length study, Dracula: Sense and Nonsense, was said by academic Noel Chevalier to correct "not only leading Dracula scholars, but non-specialists and popular film and television documentaries".[23][d]
Aside from the historical, Count Dracula also has literary progenitors. Academic Elizabeth Signorotti argues that Dracula is a response to the lesbian vampire of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872), "correcting" its emphasis on female desire.[25] Bram Stoker's great-nephew, broadcaster Daniel Farson, wrote a biography of the author; in it, he doubts that Stoker was aware of the lesbian elements of Carmilla, but nonetheless notes that it influenced him profoundly.[26][e] Farson writes that an inscription upon a tomb in Dracula is a direct allusion to Carmilla.[28] Scholar Alison Milbank observes that as Dracula can transform into a dog, Carmilla can become a cat.[29] According to author Patrick McGrath, "traces of Carmilla" can be found in the three female vampires residing in Dracula's castle.[30] A short story written by Stoker and published after his death, "Dracula's Guest", has been seen as evidence of Carmilla's influence.[31] According to Milbank, the story was a deleted first chapter from early in the original manuscript, and replicates Carmilla's setting of Styria instead of Transylvania.[32]
Irish folklore has been suggested as a possible influence on Stoker. Bob Curran, a lecturer in Celtic History and Folklore at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, suggests that Stoker may have drawn some inspiration for Dracula from an Irish vampire, Abhartach.[33][34]
Textual history
Stoker's handwritten notes about the novel's characters
Composition
Prior to writing the novel, Stoker researched extensively, assembling over 100 pages of notes, including chapter summaries and plot outlines.[35] The notes were sold by Bram Stoker's widow, Florence, in 1913, to a New York book dealer for £2. 2s, (equivalent to UK£208 in 2019). Following that, the notes became the property of Charles Scribner's Sons, and then disappeared until they were bought by the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia in 1970.[36] H. P. Lovecraft wrote that he knew "an old lady" who was approached to revise the original manuscript, but that Stoker found her too expensive.[37] Stoker's first biographer, Harry Ludlam, wrote in 1962 that writing commenced on Dracula around 1895 or 1896.[38] Following the rediscovery of Stoker's notes in 1972 by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu,[39] the two dated the writing of Dracula to between 1895 and 1897.[40] Later scholarship has questioned these sets of dates. In the first extensive study of the notes,[41] Joseph S. Bierman writes that the earliest date within them is 8 March 1890, for an outline of a chapter that "differs from the final version in only a few details".[42] According to Bierman, Stoker always intended to write an epistolary novel, but originally set it in Styria instead of Transylvania; this iteration did not explicitly use the word vampire.[42] For two summers, Stoker and his family stayed in the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel in Cruden Bay, Scotland, while he was actively writing Dracula.[43]
Stoker's notes illuminate much about earlier iterations of the novel. For instance, they indicate that the novel's vampire was intended to be a count, even before he was given the name Dracula.[44] Stoker likely found the name Dracula in Whitby's public library while holidaying there with his wife and son in 1880.[41] On the name, Stoker wrote: "Dracula means devil. Wallachians were accustomed to give it as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous by courage, cruel actions or cunning".[45] Stoker's initial plans for Dracula markedly differ from the final novel. Had Stoker completed his original plans, a German professor called Max Windshoeffel "would have confronted Count Wampyr from Styria", and one of the Crew of Light would have been slain by a werewolf.[46][f] Stoker's earliest notes indicate that Dracula might have originally been intended to be a detective story, with a detective called Cotford and a psychical investigator called Singleton.[48]
Publication
1899 first American edition, Doubleday & McClure, New York
Dracula was published in London in May 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company. It cost 6 shillings, and was bound in yellow cloth and titled in red letters.[49] In 2002, Barbara Belford, a biographer, wrote that the novel looked "shabby", perhaps because the title had been changed at a late stage.[50] Although contracts were typically signed at least 6 months ahead of publication, Dracula's was unusually signed only 6 days prior to publication. For the first thousand sales of the novel, Stoker earned no royalties.[3] Following serialisation by American newspapers, Doubleday & McClure published an American edition in 1899.[50] In the 1930s when Universal Studios purchased the rights to make a film version, it was discovered that Stoker had not fully complied with US copyright law, placing the novel into the public domain.[51] The novelist was required to purchase the copyright and register two copies, but he registered only one.[50] Stoker's mother, Charlotte Stoker, enthused about the novel to Stoker, predicting it would bring him immense financial success. She was wrong; the novel, although reviewed well, did not make Stoker much money and did not cement his critical legacy until after his death.[52] Since its publication, Dracula has never been out of print.[53]
In 1901, Dracula was translated into Icelandic by Valdimar Ásmundsson under the title Makt Myrkranna (Powers of Darkness) with a preface written by Stoker. In the preface, Stoker writes that the events contained within the novel are true, and that "for obvious reasons" he had changed the names of places and people.[54] Although scholars had been aware of the translation's existence since the 1980s because of Stoker's preface, none had thought to translate it back into English. Makt Myrkranna differs significantly from Stoker's novel. Character names were changed, the length was abridged, and it was more overtly sexual than the original. Dutch scholar Hans Corneel de Roos compared the translation favourably to Stoker's, writing that where Dracula meandered, the translation was concise and punchy.[55]
Major themes
Gender and sexuality
Academic analyses of Dracula as sexually charged have become so frequent that a cottage industry has developed around the topic.[56] Sexuality and seduction are two of the novel's most frequently discussed themes, especially as it relates to the corruption of English womanhood.[57] Modern critical writings about vampirism widely acknowledge its link to sex and sexuality.[58] Bram Stoker himself was possibly homosexual; Talia Schaffer points to intensely homoerotic letters sent by him to the American poet Walt Whitman.[59] Stoker began writing the novel one month following the imprisonment of his friend Oscar Wilde for homosexuality.[60]
The novel's characters are often said to represent transgressive sexuality through the performance of their genders. The primary sexual threat posed by Count Dracula is, Christopher Craft writes, that he will "seduce, penetrate, [and] drain another male",[61] with Jonathan Harker's excitement about being penetrated by three vampire women serving as a mask and proxy for his homosexual desire.[61] His excitement also inverts standard Victorian gender roles; in succumbing to the vampire women, Harker assumes the traditionally feminine role of sexual passivity while the vampire women assume the masculinised role of acting.[62] Sexual depravity and aggression were understood by the Victorians as the exclusive domain of Victorian men, while women were expected to submit to their husband's sexual wishes. Harker's desire to submit, and the scene's origin as a dream Stoker had, highlights the divide between societal expectations and lived realities of men who wanted more freedom in their sexual lives.[63] In the British version of the text, Harker hears the three vampire women whispering at his door, and Dracula tells them they can feed on him tomorrow night. In the American version, Dracula insinuates that he will be feeding on Harker that night: "To-night is mine! To-morrow is yours!" Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, in the Norton Critical Edition of the text, posit that Stoker thought the line would render the novel unpublishable in 1897 England, and that "the America that produced his hero Walt Whitman would have been more tolerant of men feeding on men".[64]
The novel's depiction of women continues to divide critics. Elaine Showalter writes that Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker represent different aspects of the New Woman.[g] According to Showalter, Lucy represents the "sexual daring" of the New Woman, evidenced by how she wonders why a woman cannot marry three men if they all desire her.[66] Mina, meanwhile, represents the New Woman's "intellectual ambitions", citing her occupation as a schoolmaster, her keen mind, and her knowledge of shorthand.[66] Carol A. Senf writes that Stoker was ambivalent about the New Woman phenomenon. Of the novel's five vampires, four are women, and all are aggressive, "wildly erotic", and driven only by their thirst for blood. Mina Harker, meanwhile, serves as the antithesis of the other female characters, and plays a singularly important role in Dracula's defeat.[31] On the other hand, Judith Wasserman argues that the fight to defeat Dracula is really a battle for control over women's bodies.[67] Senf points out that Lucy's sexual awakening, and her reversal of gender-based sexual roles, is what Abraham Van Helsing considers a threat.[68]
Race
Dracula, and specifically the Count's migration to Victorian England, is frequently read as emblematic of invasion literature,[69] and a projection of fears about racial pollution.[70] A number of scholars have indicated that Dracula's version of the vampire myth participates in antisemitic stereotyping. Jules Zanger links the novel's portrayal of the vampire to the immigration of Eastern European Jews to fin de siècle England.[71][h] Between 1881 and 1900, the number of Jews living in England had increased sixfold because of pogroms and antisemitic laws elsewhere.[73] Jack Halberstam provides a list of Dracula's associations with antisemitic conceptions of Jewish people: his appearance, wealth, parasitic bloodlust, and "lack of allegiance" to one country.[74][i] In terms of his appearance, Halberstam notes Dracula's resemblance to other fictional Jews; for example, his long, sharp nails are compared to those of Fagin in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1838), and Svengali of George du Maurier's Trilby (1895), who is depicted as animalistic and thin.[76]
The novel's depiction of Slovaks and Romani people has attracted some, albeit limited, scholarly attention.[77][j] Peter Arnds wrote that the Count's control over the Romani and his abduction of young children evokes real folk superstitions about Romani people stealing children, and that his ability to transform into a wolf is likewise related to xenophobic beliefs about the Romani as animalistic.[79] Although vagrants of all kinds were associated with animals, the Romani were victims of persecution in Europe due to a belief that they enjoyed "unclean meat" and lived among animals.[80] Stoker's description of the Slovaks draws heavily from a travel memoir by a British major. Unlike the major's description, Harker's description is overtly imperialistic, labelling the people as "barbarians" and their boats as "primitive", emphasising their perceived cultural inferiority.[81]
Stephen Arata describes the novel as a case of "reverse colonisation"; that is, a fear of the non-white invading England and weakening its racial purity.[82] Arata describes the novel's cultural context of mounting anxiety in Britain over the decline of the British Empire, the rise of other world powers, and a "growing domestic unease" over the morality of imperial colonisation.[83] Manifesting also in other works aside from Stoker's novel, narratives of reverse colonisation indicate a fear of the "civilised" world being invaded by the "primitive".[84][k] What Dracula does to human bodies is not horrifying simply because he kills them, but because he transforms them into the racial Other.[85] Monika Tomaszewska associates Dracula's status as the racial Other with his characterisation as a degenerate criminal. She explains that, at the time of the novel's composition and publication, the "threatening degenerate was commonly identified as the racial Other, the alien intruder who invades the country to disrupt the domestic order and enfeeble the host race".[86]
Disease
The novel's representation of vampirism has been discussed as symbolising Victorian anxieties about disease. The theme is discussed with far less frequency than others because it is discussed alongside other topics rather than as the central object of discussion.[87] For example, some connect its depiction of disease with race. Jack Halberstam points to one scene in which an English worker says that the repugnant odour of Count Dracula's London home smells like Jerusalem, making it a "Jewish smell".[88] Jewish people were frequently described, in Victorian literature, as parasites; Halberstam highlights one particular fear that Jews would spread diseases of the blood, and one journalist's description of Jews as "Yiddish bloodsuckers".[89] In contrast, Mathias Clasen writes parallels between vampirism and sexually-transmitted diseases, specifically syphilis.[90][l] Martin Willis, a researcher focused on the intersection of literature and disease, argues that the novel's characterisation of vampirism makes it both the initial infection and resulting illness.[92]
Style
Narrative
As an epistolary novel, Dracula is narrated through a series of documents.[93] The novel's first four chapters are related as the journals of Jonathan Harker. Scholar David Seed notes that Harker's accounts function as an attempt to translocate the "strange" events of his visit to Dracula's castle into the nineteenth-century tradition of travelogue writing.[94] John Seward, Mina Murray and Jonathan Harker all keep a crystalline account of the period as an act of self-preservation; David Seed notes that Harker's narrative is written in shorthand to remain inscrutable to the Count, protecting his own identity, which Dracula threatens to destroy.[95][96] Harker's journal, for example, embodies the only advantage during his stay at Dracula's castle: that he knows more than the Count thinks he does.[97] The novel's disparate accounts approach a kind of narrative unity as the narrative unfolds. In the novel's first half, each narrator has a strongly characterised narrative voice, with Lucy's showing her verbosity, Seward's businesslike formality, and Harker's excessive politeness.[98] These narrative styles also highlight the power struggle between vampire and his hunters; the increasing prominence of Van Helsing's broken English as Dracula gathers power represents the entrance of the foreigner into Victorian society.[96]
Genre
Colorized stills of Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing confronting Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931)
Dracula is a common reference text in discussions of Gothic fiction. Jerrold E. Hogle notes Gothic fiction's tendency to blur boundaries, pointing to sexual orientation, race, class, and even species. Relating this to Dracula, he highlights that the Count "can disgorge blood from his breasts" in addition to his teeth; that he is attracted to both Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray; appears both racially western and eastern; and how he is an aristocrat able to mingle with homeless vagrants.[99] Stoker drew extensively from folklore in crafting Count Dracula, but many of the Count's physical attributes were typical of Gothic villains during Stoker's lifetime. In particular, his hooked nose, pale complexion, large moustache and thick eyebrows were likely inspired by the villains of Gothic fiction.[100] Likewise, Stoker's selection of Transylvania has roots in the Gothic. Writers of the mode were drawn to Eastern Europe as a setting because travelogues presented it as a land of primitive superstitions.[101] Dracula deviates from Gothic tales before it by firmly establishing its time—that being the modern era.[102] The novel is an example of the Urban Gothic subgenre.[103]
Dracula became the subject of critical interest into Irish fiction during the early 1990s.[104] Dracula is set largely in England, but Stoker was born in Ireland, which was at that time part of the British Empire, and lived there for the first 30 years of his life.[105] As a result, a significant body of writing exists on Dracula, Ireland, England, and colonialism. Calvin W. Keogh writes that Harker's voyage into Eastern Europe "bears comparison with the Celtic fringe to the west", highlighting them both as "othered" spaces. Keogh notes that the Eastern Question has been both symbolically and historically associated with the Irish question. In this reading, Transylvania functions as a stand-in for Ireland.[106] Several critics have described Count Dracula as an Anglo-Irish landlord.[107]
Reception
It is said of Mrs. Radcliffe that, when writing her now almost forgotten romances, she shut herself up in absolute seclusion, and fed upon raw beef, in order to give her work the desired atmosphere of gloom, tragedy and terror. If one had no assurance to the contrary, one might well suppose that a similar method and regimen had been adopted by Mr. Bram Stoker while writing his new novel Dracula.
The Daily Mail, 1 June 1897[108]
Upon publication, Dracula was well received. Reviewers frequently compared the novel to other Gothic writers, and mentions of novelist Wilkie Collins and The Woman in White (1859) were especially common because of similarities in structure and style.[109][m] A review appearing in The Bookseller notes that the novel could almost have been written by Collins,[111] and an anonymous review in Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art wrote that Dracula improved upon the style of Gothic pioneer Ann Radcliffe.[112] Another anonymous writer described Stoker as "the Edgar Allan Poe of the nineties".[113] Other favourable comparisons to other Gothic novelists include the Brontë sisters and Mary Shelley.[114][49]
Many of these early reviews were charmed by Stoker's unique treatment of the vampire myth. One called it the best vampire story ever written. The Daily Telegraph's reviewer noted that while earlier Gothic works, like The Castle of Otranto, had kept the supernatural far away from the novelists' home countries, Dracula's horrors occurred both in foreign lands—in the far-away Carpathian Mountains—and at home, in Whitby and Hampstead Heath.[115] An Australian paper, The Advertiser, regarded the novel as simultaneously sensational and domestic.[116] One reviewer praised the "considerable power" of Stoker's prose and describing it as impressionistic. They were less fond of the parts set in England, finding the vampire suited better to tales set far away from home.[117] The British magazine Vanity Fair noted that the novel was, at times, unintentionally funny, pointing to Dracula's disdain for garlic.[118]
Dracula was widely considered to be frightening. A review appearing in The Manchester Guardian in 1897 praised its capacity to entertain, but concluded that Stoker erred in including so much horror.[119] Likewise, Vanity Fair opined that the novel was "praiseworthy" and absorbing, but could not recommend it to those who were not "strong".[118] Stoker's prose was commended as effective in sustaining the novel's horror by many publications.[120] A reviewer for the San Francisco Wave called the novel a "literary failure"; they elaborated that coupling vampires with frightening imagery, such as insane asylums and "unnatural appetites", made the horror too overt, and that other works in the genre, such as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, had more restraint.[121]
Modern critics frequently write that Dracula had a mixed critical reception upon publication.[122] Carol Margaret Davison, for example, notes an "uneven" response from critics contemporary to Stoker.[49] John Edgar Browning, a scholar whose research focuses on Dracula and literary vampires, conducted a review of the novel's early criticism in 2012 and determined that Dracula had been "a critically acclaimed novel".[123] Browning writes that the misconception of Dracula's mixed reception stems from a low sample size.[124] Of 91 contemporary reviews, Browning identified 10 as "generally positive"; 4 as "mixed" in their assessment; 3 as "wholly or mostly negative"; and the rest as positive and possessing no negative reservations. Among the positive reviews, Browning writes that 36 were unreserved in their praise, including publications like The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, and Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper.[125] Other critical works have rejected the narrative of Dracula's mixed response. Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu's In Search of Dracula mentions the novel's "immediate success".[126][n] Other works about Dracula, coincidentally also published in 1972, concur; Gabriel Ronay says the novel was "recognised by fans and critics alike as a horror writer's stroke of genius",[127] and Anthony Masters mentions the novel's "enormous popular appeal".[128] Since the 1970s, Dracula has been the subject of significant academic interest, evidenced by its own peer-reviewed journal and the numerous books and articles discussing the novel.[24]
Legacy
Adaptations
Further information: Count Dracula in popular culture
Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula in the 1931 film Dracula
The story of Dracula has been the basis for numerous films and plays. Stoker himself wrote the first theatrical adaptation, which was presented at the Lyceum Theatre on 18 May 1897 under the title Dracula, or The Undead shortly before the novel's publication and performed only once, in order to establish his own copyright for such adaptations.[o] Although the manuscript was believed lost,[130] the British Library possesses a copy. It consists of extracts from the novel's galley proof with Stoker's own handwriting providing direction and dialogue attribution.[129]
The first film to feature Count Dracula was Károly Lajthay's Drakula halála (transl. The Death of Dracula), a Hungarian silent film which allegedly premiered in 1921, though this release date has been questioned by some scholars.[131] Very little of the film has survived, and David J. Skal notes that the cover artist for the 1926 Hungarian edition of the novel was more influenced by the second adaptation of Dracula, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu.[132] Critic Wayne E. Hensley writes that the narrative of Nosferatu differs significantly from the novel, but that characters have clear counterparts.[133] Bram Stoker's widow, Florence, initiated legal action against the studio behind Nosferatu, Prana. The legal case lasted two or three years,[p] and in May 1924, Prana agreed to destroy all copies of the film.[135][q]
Christopher Lee as the title character in Dracula (1958)
Visual representations of the Count have changed significantly over time. Early treatments of Dracula's appearance were established by theatrical productions in London and New York. Later prominent portrayals of the character by Béla Lugosi (in a 1931 adaptation) and Christopher Lee (firstly in the 1958 film and later its sequels) built upon earlier versions. Chiefly, Dracula's early visual style involved a black-red colour scheme and slicked back hair.[136] Lee's portrayal was overtly sexual, and also popularised fangs on screen.[137] Gary Oldman's portrayal in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), directed by Francis Ford Coppola and costumed by Eiko Ishioka,[138] established a new default look for the character—a Romanian accent and long hair.[136] The assortment of adaptations feature many different dispositions and characteristics of the Count.[139]
Dracula has been adapted a large number of times across virtually all forms of media. John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan S. Picart write that the novel and its characters have been adapted for film, television, video games and animation over 700 times, with nearly 1000 additional appearances in comic books and on the stage.[136] Roberto Fernández Retamar deemed Count Dracula—along with characters such as Frankenstein's monster, Mickey Mouse and Superman—to be a part of the "hegemonic Anglo-Saxon world['s] cinematic fodder".[140] Across the world, completed new adaptations can be produced as often as every week.[141]
Influence
Dracula was not the first piece of literature to depict vampires,[142] but the novel has nonetheless come to dominate both popular and scholarly treatments of vampire fiction.[53] Count Dracula is the first character to come to mind when people discuss vampires. [143] Dracula succeeded by drawing together folklore, legend, vampire fiction and the conventions of the Gothic novel.[142] Wendy Doniger described the novel as vampire literature's "centrepiece, rendering all other vampires BS or AS".[144][r] It profoundly shaped the popular understanding of how vampires function, including their strengths, weaknesses, and other characteristics.[145] Bats had been associated with vampires before Dracula as a result of the vampire bat's existence—for example, Varney the Vampire (1847) included an image of a bat on its cover illustration. But Stoker deepened the association by making Dracula able to transform into one. That was, in turn, quickly taken up by film studios looking for opportunities to use special effects.[146] Patrick McGrath notes that many of the Count's characteristics have been adopted by artists succeeding Stoker in depicting vampires, turning those fixtures into clichés. Aside from the Count's ability to transform, McGrath specifically highlights his hatred of garlic, sunlight, and crucifixes.[147] William Hughes writes critically of the Count's cultural omnipresence, noting that the character of Dracula has "seriously inhibited" discussions of the undead in Gothic fiction.[148]
Adaptations of the novel and its characters have contributed to its enduring popularity. Even within academic discussions, the boundaries between Stoker's novel and the character's adaptation across a range of media have effectively been blurred.[149] Dacre Stoker suggests that Stoker's failure to comply with United States copyright law contributed to its enduring status, writing that writers and producers did not need to pay a licence fee to use the character.[134]
Notes and references
Notes
Sensation fiction is a genre characterised by the depiction of scandalous events—for example murder, theft, forgery, or adultery—within domestic settings.[4]
Although published in 1898, Miss Betty was written in 1890.[7]
Miller presented this article at the second Transylvanian Society of Dracula Symposium,[14] but it has been reproduced elsewhere; for example, in the Dictionary of Literary Biography in 2006.[15]
Other critics have concurred with Miller. Mathias Clasen describes her as "a tireless debunker of academic Dracula myths".[24] In response to several lines of query as to the historical origin of Dracula, Benjamin H. Leblanc reproduces her arguments in his critical history on the novel.[14]
Lisa Hopkins reproduces the previous quotation, and confirms Farson's relation to Stoker, in her 2007 book on Dracula.[27]
In their annotated version of Stoker's notes, Eighteen-Bisang and Miller dedicated an appendix to what the novel might have looked like had Stoker adhered to his original concept.[47]
"New Woman" is a term that originated in the 19th century, and is used to describe an emerging class of intellectual women with social and economic control over their lives.[65]
Dracula is one of three figures Zanger links to the popular anxiety surrounding Jewish migration to England; the others are Jack the Ripper, who was often imagined as a Jewish butcher, and Svengali.[72]
For further reading on the last point, Zygmunt Bauman writes that the perceived "eternal homelessness" of the Jewish people has contributed to discrimination against them.[75]
In the novel, Harker specifies that the Slovaks are a type of gypsy.[78]
Laura Sagolla Croley expands: "Arata fails to see the class implications of Dracula's racial invasion. Social reformers and journalists throughout the century used the language of race to talk about the very poor".[82]
There is some evidence that Bram Stoker died as a result of syphilis; Daniel Farson argues that he may have caught the disease while writing Dracula.[91]
The full text of all contemporary reviews listed in the bibliography's "contemporary critical reviews" can be found, faithfully reproduced, in John Edgar Browning's Bram Stoker's Dracula: The Critical Feast (2012).[110]
This footnote provides the page number for the 1994 edition; In Search of Dracula was first published in 1972.
This was necessary under the Stage Licensing Act of 1897.[129]
Some sources say the legal battle lasted only two,[132] while others give the number as three.[134][135]
Some sources say that "all prints were ordered destroyed".[134]
Meaning "before Stoker" and "after Stoker".
References
Hopkins 2007, p. 4.
Eighteen-Bisang & Miller 2008, p. 301: "Most of his novels are sentimental romances in which the hero tries to win the love of a woman."
Belford 2002, p. 269.
Rubery 2011.
Hopkins 2007, p. 1.
Belford & 2002, p. 363.
Belford 2002, p. 277.
Caine 1912, p. 16.
Ludlam 1962, p. 100: "Bram sought the help of Arminius Vambery in Budapest [...] Vambery was able to report that 'the Impaler,' who had won this name for obvious reasons, was spoken of for centuries after as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the 'land beyond the forest.'"
Dearden 2014.
Leblanc 1997, p. 360.
McNally & Florescu 1994, p. 150: "Unfortunately, no correspondence between Vambery and Stoker can be found today. Moreover, a search through all of the professor's published writings fails to reveal any comments on Vlad, Dracula, or vampires."
Miller 1996, p. 2: "If Stoker knew as much about Vlad as some scholars claim (for example, that he impaled thousands of victims), then why is this information not used in the novel? This is a crucial question, when one considers how much insignificant detail Stoker did incorporate from his many sources."
Leblanc 1997, p. 362.
Miller 2006.
Fitts 1998, p. 34.
McNally 1983, pp. 46–47.
Mulvey-Roberts 1998, pp. 83–84.
Kord 2009, p. 60.
Stephanou 2014, p. 90.
Miller 1999, pp. 187–188: "The closest we have is that there is a short section on Bathory in Sabine-Gould's The Book of Were-Wolves which is on Stoker's list of books that he consulted. But a careful examination of his Notes shows that while he did make a number of jottings (with page references) from this book, nothing is noted from the Bathory pages. And there is nothing in the novel that can be attributed directly to the short Bathory sections."
Eighteen-Bisang & Miller 2008, p. 131.
Chevalier 2002, p. 749.
Clasen 2012, p. 379.
Signorotti 1996, p. 607.
Farson 1975, p. 22.
Hopkins 2007, p. 6.
Farson 1975, p. 144.
Milbank 1998, p. 15.
McGrath 1997, p. 43.
Senf 1982, p. 34.
Milbank 1998, p. 14.
Curran 2005, p. 64.
Curran 2000.
Bierman 1998, p. 152.
Barsanti 2008, p. 1.
Lovecraft 1965, p. 255; Eighteen-Bisang & Miller 2008, p. 4.
Ludlam 1962, pp. 99–100.
Eighteen-Bisang & Miller 2008, p. 3.
McNally & Florescu 1973, p. 160.
Eighteen-Bisang & Miller 2008, p. 4.
Bierman 1977, p. 40.
Belford 2002, p. 255.
Eighteen-Bisang & Miller 2008, p. 15.
Eighteen-Bisang & Miller 2008, p. 245.
Eighteen-Bisang & Miller 2008, p. 318.
Eighteen-Bisang & Miller 2008, p. 320.
Belford 2002, p. 241.
Davison, 'Introduction' 1997, p. 19.
Belford 2002, p. 272.
Stoker & Holt 2009, pp. 312–313.
Belford 2002, p. 274.
Davison, 'Introduction' 1997, p. 21.
Davison, "Blood Brothers" 1997, pp. 147–148.
Escher 2017.
Spencer 1992, p. 197.
Kuzmanovic 2009, p. 411.
Craft 1984, p. 107.
Schaffer 1994, p. 382.
Schaffer 1994, p. 381.
Craft 1984, p. 110.
Craft 1984, p. 109.
Demetrakopoulos 1977, p. 106.
Auerbach & Skal 1997, p. 52.
Bordin 1993, p. 2.
Showalter 1991, p. 180.
Wasserman 1977, p. 405.
Senf 1982, p. 44.
Kane 1997, p. 8.
Arnds 2015, p. 89.
Zanger 1991, p. 33.
Zanger 1991, p. 41.
Zanger 1991, p. 34.
Halberstam 1993, p. 337.
Bauman 1991, p. 337.
Halberstam 1993, p. 338.
Tchaprazov 2015, p. 524.
Tchaprazov2015, p. 527.
Arnds 2015, p. 95.
Croley 1995, p. 107.
Tchaprazov 2015, p. 525.
Croley 1995, p. 89.
Arata 1990, p. 622.
Arata 1990, p. 623.
Arata 1990, p. 630.
Tomaszweska 2004, p. 3.
Willis 2007, pp. 302–304.
Halberstam 1993, p. 341.
Halberstam 1993, p. 350.
Clasen 2012, p. 389.
Stevenson 1988, p. 148.
Willis 2007, p. 302.
Dracula is also said to be a "folio novel — which is ... a sibling to the epistolary novel, posed as letters collected and found by the reader or an editor." Alexander Chee, "When Horror Is the Truth-teller", Guernica, October 2, 2023
Seed 1985, p. 64.
Seed 1985, p. 65.
Moretti 1982, p. 77.
Case 1993, p. 226.
Seed 1985, p. 70.
Hogle, 'Introduction' 2002, p. 12.
Miller 2001, p. 150.
Miller 2001, p. 137.
Arata 1990, p. 621.
Spencer 1992, p. 219.
Keogh 2014, p. 194.
Glover 1996, p. 26.
Keogh 2014, pp. 195–196.
Ingelbien 2003, p. 1089; Stewart 1999, pp. 239–240.
The Daily Mail 1897, p. 3.
Review of PLTA, "Recent Novels" 1897; Lloyd's 1897, p. 80; The Academy 1897, p. 98; The Glasgow Herald 1897, p. 10.
Browning 2012, Introduction: The Myth of Dracula's Reception.
The Bookseller 1897, p. 816.
Saturday Review 1897, p. 21.
Publisher's Circular 1897, p. 131.
Browning 2012, Introduction: The Myth of Dracula's Reception: "Dracula's writing was seen by early reviewers and responders to parallel, if not supersede the Gothic horror works of such canonical writers as Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, and Edgar Allan Poe."
The Daily Telegraph 1897.
The Advertiser 1898, p. 8.
Of Literature, Science, and Art 1897, p. 11.
Vanity Fair (UK) 1897, p. 80.
TMG 1897.
Land of Sunshine 1899, p. 261; The Advertiser 1898, p. 8; New-York Tribune 1899, p. 13.
San Francisco Wave 1899, p. 5.
Browning 2012, Introduction: The Myth of Dracula's Reception: "That the sample of reviews relied upon by previous studies [...] is scant at best has unfortunately resulted in the common misconception about the novel's early critical reception being 'mixed'".
Browning 2012, Introduction: The Myth of Dracula's Reception: "Rather, while the novel did receive, on the one hand, a few reviews that were mixed, it enjoyed predominantly a critically strong early print life. Dracula was, by all accounts, a critically-acclaimed novel."
Browning 2012, Introduction: The Myth of Dracula's Reception: "That the sample of reviews relied upon by previous studies [...] is scant at best has unfortunately resulted in [a] common misconception about the novel's early critical reception [...]"
Browning 2012, Introduction: The Myth of Dracula's Reception: "firstly, generally positive reviews that include perhaps one, sometimes two negative remarks or reservations, of which I have discerned ten examples; secondly, generally mixed reviews in which scorn and praise are relatively balanced, of which I have found four examples13; and, thirdly, wholly or mostly negative reviews, of which I managed to locate only three examples. What remains are some seventy positive reviews and responses. And, in addition still are thirty-six different laudatory press notices".)
McNally & Florescu 1994, p. 162.
Ronay 1972, p. 53.
Masters 1972, p. 208.
Buzwell 2014.
Stuart 1994, p. 193.
Rhodes 2010, p. 29.
Skal 2011, p. 11.
Hensley 2002, p. 61.
Stoker 2011, p. 2.
Hensley 2002, p. 63.
Browning and Picart 2011, p. 4.
Cengel 2020; The Telegraph 2015.
Sommerlad 2017.
Clasen 2012, p. 378.
Retamar & Winks 2005, p. 22.
Browning and Picart 2011, p. 7.
Miller 2001, p. 147.
Beresford 2008, p. 139.
Doniger 1995, p. 608.
Miller 2001, p. 152.
Miller 2001, p. 157.
McGrath 1997, p. 45.
Hughes 2012, p. 197.
Hughes 2012, p. 198.
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Masters, Anthony (1972). The Natural History of the Vampire. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 9780399109317.
McGrath, Patrick (1997). "Preface: Bram Stoker and his Vampire". In Davison, Carol Margaret (ed.). Bram Stoker's Dracula: Sucking through the Century, 1897–1997. Toronto: Dundurn Press. ISBN 978-1-55488-105-5. OCLC 244770292.
McNally, Raymond T.; Florescu, Radu (1973). Dracula: A Biography of Vlad the Impaler. New York: Hawthorne Books.
McNally, Raymond T. (1983). Dracula Was a Woman: In Search of the Blood Countess of Transylvania. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 9780070456716.
McNally, Raymond T.; Florescu, Radu (1994). In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 9780395657836.
Miller, Elizabeth (2001). Dracula. New York: Parkstone Press.
A New Companion to the Gothic. David Punter. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. 2012. ISBN 978-1-4443-5492-8. OCLC 773567111.
Hughes, William (2012). "Fictional Vampires in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century". In Punter, David (ed.). A New Companion to the Gothic. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4443-5492-8. OCLC 773567111.
Ronay, Gabriel (1972). The Truth About Dracula. New York: Stein and Day. ISBN 9780812815245.
Showalter, Elaine (1991). Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-011587-1.
Spooner, Catherine (2006). Contemporary Gothic. Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-86189-301-7.
Stephanou, Aspasia (2014). Reading Vampire Gothic through Blood: Bloodlines. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137349224. OCLC 873725229.
Stuart, Roxana (1994). Stage Blood: Vampires of the 19th Century Stage. Popular Press. ISBN 978-0-87972-660-7.
Auerbach, Nina; Skal, David J., eds. (1997). Dracula: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Reviews and Reactions, Dramatic and Film Variations, Criticism. W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-97012-8.
Stoker, Dacre; Holt, Ian (2009). Dracula The Un-Dead. Penguin Publishing Group. pp. 312–13. ISBN 978-0-525-95129-2.
Journal and newspaper articles
Arata, Stephen D. (1990). "The Occidental Tourist: "Dracula" and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization". Victorian Studies. 33 (4): 621–645. ISSN 0042-5222. JSTOR 3827794.
Bierman, Joseph S. (1 January 1977). "The Genesis and Dating of 'Dracula' from Bram Stoker's Working Notes". Notes and Queries. CCXXII (jan): 39–41. doi:10.1093/notesj/CCXXII.jan.39. ISSN 0029-3970.
Caine, Hall (24 April 1912). "Bram Stoker. The story of a great friendship". The Daily Telegraph. p. 16.
Case, Alison (1993). "Tasting the Original Apple: Gender and the Struggle for Narrative Authority in "Dracula"". Narrative. 1 (3): 223–243. ISSN 1063-3685. JSTOR 20107013.
Cengel, Katya (October 2020). "How the Vampire Got His Fangs". Smithsonian Magazine.
Chevalier, Noel (2002). "Dracula: Sense & Nonsense by Elizabeth Miller (review)". ESC: English Studies in Canada. 28 (4): 749–751. doi:10.1353/esc.2002.0017. ISSN 1913-4835. S2CID 166341977.
Clasen, Mathias (2012). "Attention, Predation, Counterintuition: Why Dracula Won't Die". Style. 46 (3–4): 378–398. ISSN 0039-4238. JSTOR 10.5325/style.46.3-4.378.
Craft, Christopher (1984). ""Kiss Me with those Red Lips": Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker's Dracula". Representations (8): 107–133. doi:10.2307/2928560. ISSN 0734-6018. JSTOR 2928560.
Croley, Laura Sagolla (1995). "The Rhetoric of Reform in Stoker's "Dracula": Depravity, Decline, and the Fin-de-Siècle "Residuum"". Criticism. 37 (1): 85–108. ISSN 0011-1589. JSTOR 23116578.
Curran, Bob (2000). "Was Dracula an Irishman?". History Ireland. 8 (2).
Dearden, Lizzie (20 May 2014). "Radu Florescu dead: Legacy of the Romanian 'Dracula professor'". The Independent. Archived from the original on 12 January 2021.
Demetrakopoulos, Stephanie (1977). "Feminism, Sex Role Exchanges, and Other Subliminal Fantasies in Bram Stoker's "Dracula"". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 2 (3): 104–113. doi:10.2307/3346355. ISSN 0160-9009. JSTOR 3346355.
Fitts, Alexandra (1998). "Alejandra Pizarnik's "La condesa Sangrienta" and the Lure of the Absolute". Letras Femeninas. 24 (1/2): 23–35. ISSN 0277-4356. JSTOR 23021659.
Doniger, Wendy (20 November 1995). "Sympathy for the Vampire". The Nation. pp. 608–612.
Halberstam, Judith (1993). "Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker's "Dracula"". Victorian Studies. 36 (3): 333–352. ISSN 0042-5222. JSTOR 3828327.
Hensley, Wayne E. (2002). "The Contribution of F. W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" To the Evolution of Dracula". Literature/Film Quarterly. 30 (1): 59–64. ISSN 0090-4260. JSTOR 43797068.
Ingelbien, Raphaël (2003). "Gothic Genealogies: Dracula, Bowen's Court, And Anglo-Irish Psychology". ELH. 70 (4): 1089–1105. doi:10.1353/elh.2004.0005. ISSN 1080-6547. S2CID 162335122.
Kane, Michael (1997). "Insiders/Outsiders: Conrad's "The Nigger of the "Narcissus" " and Bram Stoker's "Dracula"". The Modern Language Review. 92 (1): 1–21. doi:10.2307/3734681. ISSN 0026-7937. JSTOR 3734681.
Keogh, Calvin W. (2014). "The Critics' Count: Revisions of Dracula and the Postcolonial Irish Gothic". Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry. 1 (2): 189–206. doi:10.1017/pli.2014.8. ISSN 2052-2614. S2CID 193067115.
Kuzmanovic, Dejan (2009). "Vampiric Seduction and Vicissitudes of Masculine Identity in Bram Stoker's "Dracula"". Victorian Literature and Culture. 37 (2): 411–425. doi:10.1017/S1060150309090263. ISSN 1060-1503. JSTOR 40347238. S2CID 54921027.
Miller, Elizabeth (August 1996). "Filing for Divorce: Vlad Tepes vs. Count Dracula". The Borgo Post: 2.
Miller, Elizabeth (2006). "Filing for Divorce: Count Dracula vs. Vlad Tepes". Dictionary of Literary Biography. 394: 212–217.
Miller, Elizabeth (1999). "Back to the Basics: Re-Examining Stoker's Sources for "Dracula"". Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 10 (2 (38)): 187–196. ISSN 0897-0521. JSTOR 43308384.
Moretti, Franco (1982). "The Dialectic of Fear". New Left Review. 13: 67–85.
Nandris, Grigore (1966). "The Historical Dracula: The Theme of His Legend in the Western and in the Eastern Literatures of Europe". Comparative Literature Studies. 3 (4): 367–396. ISSN 0010-4132. JSTOR 40245833.
Retamar, Roberto Fernández; Winks, Christopher (2005). "On Dracula, the West, America, and Other Inventions". The Black Scholar. 35 (3): 22–29. doi:10.1080/00064246.2005.11413319. ISSN 0006-4246. JSTOR 41069152. S2CID 147429554.
Rhodes, Gary D. (1 January 2010). "Drakula halála (1921):The Cinema's First Dracula". Horror Studies. 1 (1): 25–47. doi:10.1386/host.1.1.25/1.
Schaffer, Talia (1994). ""A Wilde Desire Took Me": the Homoerotic History of Dracula". ELH. 61 (2): 381–425. doi:10.1353/elh.1994.0019. ISSN 1080-6547. S2CID 161888586.
Seed, David (1985). "The Narrative Method of Dracula". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 40 (1): 61–75. doi:10.2307/3044836. ISSN 0029-0564. JSTOR 3044836.
Senf, Carol A. (1982). ""Dracula": Stoker's Response to the New Woman". Victorian Studies. 26 (1): 33–49. ISSN 0042-5222. JSTOR 3827492.
Signorotti, Elizabeth (1996). "Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in "Carmilla" and "Dracula"". Criticism. 38 (4): 607–632. ISSN 0011-1589. JSTOR 23118160.
Spencer, Kathleen L. (1992). "Purity and Danger: Dracula, the Urban Gothic, and the Late Victorian Degeneracy Crisis". ELH. 59 (1): 197–225. doi:10.2307/2873424. ISSN 0013-8304. JSTOR 2873424.
Stewart, Bruce (1999). ""Bram Stoker's Dracula: Possessed by the Spirit of the Nation?"". Irish University Review. 29 (2): 238–255. ISSN 0021-1427. JSTOR 25484813.
Stevenson, John Allen (1988). "A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula". PMLA. 103 (2): 139–149. doi:10.2307/462430. ISSN 0030-8129. JSTOR 462430. S2CID 54868687.
Tchaprazov, Stoyan (2015). "The Slovaks and Gypsies of Bram Stoker's Dracula: Vampires in Human Flesh". English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920. 58: 523–535. ProQuest 1684297393 – via ProQuest.
Tomaszweska, Monika (2004). "Vampirism and the Degeneration of the Imperial Race: Stoker's Dracula as the Invasive Degenerate Other" (PDF). Journal of Dracula Studies. 6. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 November 2020.
Wasserman, Judith (1977). "Women and Vampires: Dracula as a Victorian Novel". Midwest Quarterly. 18.
"Why Christopher Lee's Dracula didn't suck". The Telegraph. 13 June 2015. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022.
Willis, Martin (2007). ""The Invisible Giant," 'Dracula', and Disease". Studies in the Novel. 39 (3): 301–325. ISSN 0039-3827. JSTOR 29533817.
Zanger, Jules (1991). "A Sympathetic Vibration: Dracula and the Jews". English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920. 34.
Contemporary critical reviews
"Recent Novels". Review of Politics, Literature, Theology, and Art. 79. London: 150–151. 31 July 1897.
"A Romance of Vampirism". Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper. London. 30 May 1897. p. 80.
"Untitled review of Dracula". The Bookseller: A Newspaper of British and Foreign Literature. London. 3 September 1897. p. 816.
"Book Reviews Reviewed". The Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art. London. 31 July 1897. p. 98.
"Untitled review of Dracula". The Daily Mail. London. 1 June 1897. p. 3.
"Untitled". Publisher's Circular and Booksellers' Record of British and Foreign Literature. London. 7 August 1897. p. 131.
"Review: Dracula". Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art. London. 3 July 1897. p. 21.
"Books of the Day". The Daily Telegraph. London. 3 June 1897. p. 6.
"Dracula". The Glasgow Herald. Glasgow. 10 June 1897. p. 10.
"Untitled review of Dracula". Of Literature, Science, and Art (Fiction Supplement). London. 12 June 1897. p. 11.
"Current Literature: Hutchinson & Co's Publications". The Advertiser. Adelaide. 22 January 1898. p. 8.
"Books to Read, and Others". Vanity Fair: A Weekly Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares. London. 29 June 1897. p. 80.
"Supped Full with Horrors". The Land of Sunshine. June 1899. p. 261.
"A Fantastic Theme Realistically Treated". New-York Tribune (Illustrated Supplement). New York City. 19 November 1899.
"The Insanity of the Horrible". The San Francisco Wave. San Francisco. 9 December 1899. p. 5.
"Review: Dracula". The Manchester Guardian. 1897.
Websites
Escher, Kat (19 May 2017). "The Icelandic Translation of 'Dracula' Is Actually a Different Book". Smithsonian. Archived from the original on 15 December 2019.
Buzwell, Greg (14 May 2014). "Bram Stoker's stage adaptation of Dracula". The British Library. Retrieved 13 June 2021.
Rubery, Matthew (2 March 2011). "Sensation Fiction". Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 17 January 2021.
Sommerlad, Joe (13 July 2017). "Celebrating Eiko Ishioka's extraordinary costumes for Bram Stoker's Dracula". The Independent. Retrieved 13 July 2021.
External links
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Dracula
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dracula.
Dracula at Standard Ebooks
Dracula at Project Gutenberg, text version of 1897 edition.
Dracula public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Journal of Dracula Studies
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Bram Stoker's Dracula
Universe
Characters
Count Dracula Abraham Van Helsing Jonathan Harker Mina Harker Lucy Westenra Arthur Holmwood Dr. John Seward Quincey Morris Renfield Brides of Dracula
Publications
Dracula (1897) Powers of Darkness (1899)
Icelandic Swedish "Dracula's Guest" (1914) Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914)
Dacre Stoker
Dracula the Un-dead (2009) Dracul (2018)
Possible inspirations
Castle of Droch-fhola Vlad II Dracul Vlad Călugărul Vlad the Impaler
Castles
Castle Dracula Bran Castle Poenari Castle Corvin Castle
Films
Universal
series
Dracula (1931 English-language) Dracula (1931 Spanish-language) Dracula's Daughter (1936) Son of Dracula (1943) House of Frankenstein (1944) House of Dracula (1945) Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Hammer Horror
Dracula (1958) The Brides of Dracula (1960) Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968) Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) Scars of Dracula (1970) Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
Dracula 2000
Dracula 2000 (2000) Dracula II: Ascension (2003) Dracula III: Legacy (2005)
Nosferatu films
Nosferatu (1922) Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) Nosferatu in Venice (1988) Shadow of the Vampire (2000) Nosferatu (2024)
Hotel
Transylvania
Hotel Transylvania (2012) Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015) Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018) Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022)
Parodies
Transylvania 6-5000 (1963) Mad Monster Party? (1967) Batman Fights Dracula (1967) Mad Mad Mad Monsters (1972) Blood for Dracula (1974) Vampira (1974) Son of Dracula (1974) Dracula in the Provinces (1975) Dracula and Son (1976) Dracula Sucks (1979) Love at First Bite (1979) The Halloween That Almost Wasn't (1979) Fracchia contro Dracula (1985) Transylvania 6-5000 (1985) The Monster Squad (1987) Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf (1988) Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) Monster Mash (1995) Monster Mash (2000) Zora the Vampire (2000) Monster Family (2017)
Other
Drakula halála (1923) The Return of the Vampire (1943) Drakula İstanbul'da (1953) Blood of Dracula (1957) The Return of Dracula (1958) Batman Dracula (1964) Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966) Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969) Santo en el tesoro de Drácula (1969) Count Dracula (1970) Los Monstruos del Terror (1970) Cuadecuc, vampir (1971) Vampyros Lesbos (1971) Hrabe Drakula (1971) Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) Blacula (1972) Scream Blacula Scream (1973) Bram Stoker's Dracula (1974) Count Dracula's Great Love (1974) Deafula (1975) Dracula's Dog (1977) Count Dracula (1977) Doctor Dracula (1978) Dracula (1979) Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula (1979) Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned (1980) Dracula's Widow (1988) To Die For (1989) Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989) Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) Nadja (1994) Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula (2000) Bara no Konrei ~Mayonaka ni Kawashita Yakusoku~ (2001) Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002) Dracula (2002) Van Helsing (2004) Van Helsing: The London Assignment (2004) The Vulture's Eye (2004) Dracula 3000 (2004) Blade: Trinity (2004) The Batman vs. Dracula (2005) Bram Stoker's Dracula's Curse (2006) Dracula (2006) Bram Stoker's Dracula's Guest (2008) The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice (2008) House of the Wolf Man (2009) Young Dracula (2011) Dracula Reborn (2012) Dracula 3D (2012) Saint Dracula 3D (2012) Dracula 2012 (2013) Dracula: The Dark Prince (2013) Dracula Untold (2014) Renfield (2023) The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) Abigail (2024) Dracula: A Love Tale (TBA)
Television
Series
Monster Squad (1976) Draculas ring (1978) Cliffhangers (1979) Drak Pack (1980) Count Duckula (1988–1993) Dracula: The Series (1990–1991) Little Dracula (1991–1999) Monster Force (1994) Ace Kilroy (2011–2012) Young Dracula (2006–2014)
characters Dracula (2013–2014) Penny Dreadful (2014–2016) Decker (2014–2017) Van Helsing (2016–21) Hotel Transylvania: The Series (2017–2020) Castlevania (2017–21) Dracula (2020)
Episodes
"Dracula" (Mystery and Imagination) (1968) "Buffy vs. Dracula" (2000) Young Dracula episodes (2006–2014) Penny Dreadful episodes (2014–2016) Hotel Transylvania: The Series episodes (2017–2020)
The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror
"Treehouse of Horror IV" (1993) "Treehouse of Horror XXI" (2010)
Novels
The Dracula Tape and sequels (1975–2002) Anno Dracula series (1992–present)
Anno Dracula The Bloody Red Baron Dracula Cha Cha Cha The Revenge of Dracula (1978) Little Dracula (1986) Dracula the Undead (1997) The Historian (2005) The Book of Renfield (2005) Bloodline (2005) Young Dracula and Young Monsters (2006) Fangland (2007) Out of the Dark (2010)
Radio
Dracula (1938)
Plays
Dracula (1924) Dracula (1995) Dracula (1996)
Musicals
Dracula (Czech musical) (1995) Dracula: A Chamber Musical (1997) Dracula, the Musical (2004) Dracula – Entre l'amour et la mort (2006) Dracula – L'amour plus fort que la mort (2011)
Comics
Crossover Dracula (Marvel Comics)
The Tomb of Dracula X-Men: Apocalypse vs. Dracula Captain Britain and MI13: Vampire State Mrs. Deadpool and the Howling Commandos Dracula (Dell Comics) Don Dracula Dracula Lives! Hellsing Sword of Dracula Batman & Dracula trilogy Victorian Undead Wolves at the Gate Purgatori Rick and Morty – Let the Rick One In
Video games
The Count (1979) Dracula (1983) Ghost Manor (1983) Castlevania series
1986–present Dracula Dracula (1986) Dracula the Undead (1991) Drac's Night Out (unreleased) Dracula Hakushaku (1992) Bram Stoker's Dracula (1993) Bram Stoker's Dracula (handheld) (1993) Dracula Unleashed (1993) Dracula: Resurrection (2000) Dracula 2: The Last Sanctuary (2000) Dracula: Crazy Vampire (2001) Van Helsing (2004) Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon (2008) Dracula: Origin (2008) Vampire Season Monster Defense (2012) Dracula 4: The Shadow of the Dragon (2013) Dracula 5: The Blood Legacy (2013) The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing (2013) Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood (2023)
Pinball
Dracula (1979) Taxi (1988) Bram Stoker's Dracula (1993) Monster Bash (1998)
Tabletop games
The Fury of Dracula
Albums
Dracula Dracula 2000 Iubilaeum Anno Dracula 2001 Perfect Selection: Dracula Battle Transylvania Van Helsing
Songs
"Love Song for a Vampire"
Audio dramas
Son of the Dragon
Original characters
Alternative versions
of Dracula
Alucard (Hellsing) Count Alucard Count Orlok Soma Cruz
Relatives of Dracula
Alucard (Castlevania) Vampire Hunter D Eva Janus Dracula Lilith Dracula Shiklah Dracula
Other
Blade Count von Count Simon Belmont
Related
Lugosi v. Universal Pictures Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories Count Dracula in popular culture Transylvanian Society of Dracula Dracula Daily Dracula Society Dracula tourism Bibliography of works on Dracula
Category (Dracula) Category (derivatives)
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Bram Stoker
Novels
The Primrose Path (1875) The Snake's Pass (1890) The Watter's Mou' (1895) The Shoulder of Shasta (1895) Dracula (1897) Miss Betty (1898) The Mystery of the Sea (1902) The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903) The Man (1905) Lady Athlyne (1908) The Lady of the Shroud (1909) The Lair of the White Worm (1911)
Short story collections
Under the Sunset (1881) Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party (1908) Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914)
"Dracula's Guest"
Non-fiction
The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland (1879) A Glimpse of America (1886) Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906) Famous Impostors (1910)
Related
Florence Balcombe (wife) Thornley Stoker (brother) William Thomson (brother-in-law) Bram Stoker Award
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Horror film
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Horror Movie" redirects here. For the Skyhooks song, see Horror Movie (song).
Max Schreck as Count Orlok in the 1922 film Nosferatu. Critic and historian Kim Newman declared it as a film that set the template for the horror film.[1]
vampire, face of little green man, feather pen (quill) and fire-breathing dragon – to the right of that are scripted words "Speculative (over) Fiction"
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Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.[2]
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apocalyptic events, and religious or folk beliefs.
Horror films have existed for more than a century. Early inspirations from before the development of film include folklore, religious beliefs and superstitions of different cultures, and the Gothic and horror literature of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley. From origins in silent films and German Expressionism, horror only became a codified genre after the release of Dracula (1931). Many sub-genres emerged in subsequent decades, including body horror, comedy horror, slasher films, splatter films, supernatural horror and psychological horror. The genre has been produced worldwide, varying in content and style between regions. Horror is particularly prominent in the cinema of Japan, Korea, Italy and Thailand, among other countries.
Despite being the subject of social and legal controversy due to their subject matter, some horror films and franchises have seen major commercial success, influenced society and spawned several popular culture icons.
Characteristics
See also: Horror and terror
The Dictionary of Film Studies defines the horror film as representing "disturbing and dark subject matter, seeking to elicit responses of fear, terror, disgust, shock, suspense, and, of course, horror from their viewers."[2] In the chapter "The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s" from Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (2002), film critic Robin Wood declared that commonality between horror films are that "normality is threatened by the monster."[3] This was further expanded upon by The Philosophy of Horror, or Parodoxes of the Heart by Noël Carroll who added that "repulsion must be pleasurable, as evidenced by the genre's popularity."[3]
Prior to the release of Dracula (1931), historian Gary Don Rhodes explained that the idea and terminology of horror film did not exist yet as a codified genre, although critics used the term "horror" to describe films in reviews prior to Dracula's release.[4] "Horror" was a term used to describe a variety of meanings. In 1913, Moving Picture World defined "horrors" as showcasing "striped convicts, murderous Indians, grinning 'black-handers', homicidal drunkards"[5] Some titles that suggest horror such as The Hand of Horror (1914) was a melodrama about a thief who steals from his own sister.[5] During the silent era, the term horror was used to describe everything from "battle scenes" in war films to tales of drug addiction.[6] Rhodes concluded that the term "horror film" or "horror movie" was not used in early cinema.[7]
The mystery film genre was in vogue and early information on Dracula being promoted as mystery film was common, despite the novel, play and film's story relying on the supernatural.[8] Newman discussed the genre in British Film Institute's Companion to Horror where he noted that Horror films in the 1930s were easy to identify, but following that decade "the more blurred distinctions become, and horror becomes less like a discrete genre than an effect which can be deployed within any number of narrative settings or narratives patterns".[9]
Various writings on genre from Altman, Lawrence Alloway (Violent America: The Movies 1946-1964 (1971)) and Peter Hutchings (Approaches to Popular Film (1995)) implied it easier to view films as cycles opposed to genres, suggesting the slasher film viewed as a cycle would place it in terms of how the film industry was economically and production wise, the personnel involved in their respective eras, and how the films were marketed exhibited and distributed.[10] Mark Jancovich in an essay declared that "there is no simple 'collective belief' as to what constitutes the horror genre" between both fans and critics of the genre.[11] Jancovich found that disagreements existed from audiences who wanted to distinguish themselves. This ranged from fans of different genres who may view a film like Alien (1979) as belonging to science fiction, and horror fan bases dismissing it as being inauthentic to either genre.[12] Further debates exist among fans of the genre with personal definitions of "true" horror films, such as fans who embrace cult figures like Freddy Kruger of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, while others disassociate themselves from characters and series and focusing on genre auteur directors like Dario Argento, while others fans would deem Argento's films as too mainstream, having preferences more underground films.[13] Andrew Tudor wrote in Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie suggested that "Genre is what we collectively believe it to be"[14]
Cinematic techniques
This section relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources.
Find sources: "Horror film" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2021)
Mirrors are often used to create a sense of tension in horror films.
In a study by Jacob Shelton, the many ways that audience members are manipulated through horror films was investigated in detail.[15] Negative space is one such method that can play a part in inducing a reaction, causing one's eyes to remotely rest on anything in the frame – a wall, or the empty black void in the shadows.[15]
The jump scare is a horror film trope, where an abrupt change in image accompanied with a loud sound intends to surprise the viewer.[15] This can also be subverted to create tension, where an audience may feel more unease and discomfort by anticipating a jump scare.[15]
Mirrors are often used in horror films is to create visual depth and build tension. Shelton argues mirrors have been used so frequently in horror films that audiences have been conditioned to fear them, and subverting audience expectations of a jump scare in a mirror can further build tension.[15] Tight framing and close-ups are also commonly used; these can build tension and induce anxiety by not allowing the viewer to see beyond what is around the protagonist.[15]
Music
Main article: Horror film score
Filmmaker and composer John Carpenter, who has directed and scored numerous horror films, performing in 2016
Music is a key component of horror films. In Music in the Horror Film (2010), Lerner writes "music in horror film frequently makes us feel threatened and uncomfortable" and intends to intensify the atmosphere created in imagery and themes. Dissonance, atonality and experiments with timbre are typical characteristics used by composers in horror film music.[16]
Themes
Frankenstein's monster
Apocalypse by Albert Goodwin
A demon in the Book of Wonders
Charles Derry proposed the three key components of horror are that of personality, Armageddon and the demonic.
In the book Dark Dreams, author Charles Derry conceived horror films as focusing on three broad themes: the horror of personality, horror of Armageddon and the horror of the demonic.[17] The horror of personality derives from monsters being at the centre of the plot, such Frankenstein's monster whose psychology makes them perform unspeakable horrific acts ranging from rapes, mutilations and sadistic killings.[17] Other key works of this form are Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which feature psychotic murderers without the make-up of a monster.[17] The second 'Armageddon' group delves on the fear of large-scale destruction, which ranges from science fiction works but also of natural events, such as Hitchcock's The Birds (1963).[17] The last group of the "Fear of the Demonic" features graphic accounts of satanic rites, witchcraft, exorcisms outside traditional forms of worship, as seen in films like The Exorcist (1973) or The Omen (1976).[18]
Some critics have suggested horror films can be a vessel for exploring contemporary cultural, political and social trends. Jeanne Hall, a film theorist, agrees with the use of horror films in easing the process of understanding issues by making use of their optical elements.[19] The use of horror films can help audiences understand international prior historical events occurs, for example, to depict the horrors of the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, the worldwide AIDS epidemic[20] or post-9/11 pessimism.[21] In many occurrences, the manipulation of horror presents cultural definitions that are not accurate,[according to whom?] yet set an example to which a person relates to that specific cultural from then on in their life.[clarification needed][22]
History
This section is an excerpt from History of horror films.[edit]
Poster for Le Manoir du diable (1896), sometimes described as the first horror film
The history of horror films was described by author Siegbert Solomon Prawer as difficult to read as a linear historical path, with the genre changing throughout the decades, based on the state of cinema, audience tastes and contemporary world events.
Films prior to the 1930s, such as early German expressionist cinema and trick films, have been retrospectively described as horror films as the genre did not become a codified genre until the release of Dracula (1931). Dracula was a box office success, leading to Universal and several other American film studios to develop and popularise horror films well into the 1940s. By the 1950s, horror would often be made with science fiction themes, and towards the end of the decade horror was a more common genre of international productions.
The 1960s saw further developments, with material based on contemporary works instead of classical literature. The release of films like Psycho, Black Sunday and Night of the Living Dead led to an increase of violence and erotic scenes within the genre. The 1970s would expand on these themes with films that would delve into gorier pictures, as well as films that were near or straight pornographic hybrids. Genre cycles in this era include the natural horror film, and the rise of slasher films which would expand in the early 1980s. Towards the 1990s, postmodernism entered horror, while some of the biggest hits of the decade included films from Japan with the success of Ring (1998).
In the 21st century, streaming media popularised horror trends, whilst trends included torture porn influenced by the success of Saw, films using a "found footage" technique, and independent productions such as Get Out, Hereditary and the Insidious series which were box office hits.
Part of a series on
Horror films
Sub-genres of horror films
Horror is a malleable genre and often can be altered to accommodate other genre types such as science fiction, making some films difficult to categorize.[23]
Body horror
Main article: Body horror
A genre that emerged in the 1970s, body horror films focus on the process of a bodily transformation. In these films, the body is either engulfed by some larger process or heading towards fragmentation and collapse.[24][25] In these films, the focus can be on apocalyptic implication of an entire society being overtaken, but the focus is generally upon an individual and their sense of identity, primarily them watching their own body change.[24] The earliest appearance of the sub-genre was the work of director David Cronenberg, specifically with early films like Shivers (1975).[24][25] Mark Jancovich of the University of Manchester declared that the transformation scenes in the genre provoke fear and repulsion, but also pleasure and excitement such as in The Thing (1982) and The Fly (1986).[26]
Christmas horror
Main article: Christmas horror
Christmas horror is a film genre that emerged in the 1970s with films such as Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971) and Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972),[27] which were soon followed by the influential Black Christmas (1974).[27][28] Defining the Christmas horror genre has been described as challenging,[29]: 6 as it has generally been regarded as a sub-genre of the slasher film.[29]: 5 [30] Adam Rockoff, in Rue Morgue, noted that the sub-genre sits within a trend of holiday-themed slasher films, alongside films such as My Bloody Valentine (1981) and April Fool's Day (1986).[30] Others take a broader view that Christmas horror is not limited to the slasher genre,[29]: 5 noting how it evolved from the English Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories.[27] Christmas in literature has historically included elements of "darkness"—fright, misery, death and decay—tracing its literary antecedents as far back as the biblical account of the Massacre of the Innocents and more recently in works such as E. T. A. Hoffmann's "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816) and Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843).[27][28] Although ghosts have largely been replaced by serial killers, Christmas horror creates an outlet through which to explore "a modern reinvention of the Christmas ghost story".[27]
Erotic horror
Main article: Erotic horror
Erotic horror is a subgenre of horror fiction that blends sensual and sexual imagery with horrific themes for the sake of sexual arousal. Erotic horror has had influences on French[31] and American horror cinema. The works of Jean Rollin, such as Le Viol du Vampire and Fascination, are considered quintessential erotic horror films, blending deeply sexual imagery with gore.[31] American cinema has also featured notable erotic horror film franchises, such as Candyman.[32] An example of a British erotic horror film series is Hellraiser.[33] Alien features heavy erotic imagery, with the design of the Xenomorph by H. R. Giger featuring both phallic and vaginal imagery, intended to symbolize patriarchal guilt[34] as well as sex, rape, and pregnancy.[35]
Folk horror
Main article: Folk horror
Folk horror uses elements of folklore or other religious and cultural beliefs to instil fear in audiences. Folk horror films have featured rural settings and themes of isolation, religion and nature.[36][37] Frequently cited examples are Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), The Witch (2015), and Midsommar (2019).[36][37] Local folklore and beliefs have been noted as being prevalent in horror films from the Southeast Asia region, including Thailand and Indonesia.[38][39]
Found footage horror
The found footage horror film "technique" gives the audience a first person view of the events on screen, and presents the footage as being discovered after. Horror films which are framed as being made up of "found-footage" merge the experiences of the audience and characters, which may induce suspense, shock, and bafflement.[40] Alexandra Heller-Nicholas noted that the popularity of sites like YouTube in 2006 sparked a taste for amateur media, leading to the production of further films in the found footage horror genre later in the 2000s including the particularly financially successful Paranormal Activity (2007).[41]
Gothic horror
Main article: Gothic film
In their book Gothic film, Richard J. McRoy and Richard J. Hand stated that "Gothic" can be argued as a very loose subgenre of horror, but argued that "Gothic" as a whole was a style like film noir and not bound to certain cinematic elements like the Western or science fiction film.[42] The term "gothic" is frequently used to describe a stylized approach to showcasing location, desire, and action in film. Contemporary views of the genre associate it with imagery of castles at hilltops and labyrinth like ancestral mansions that are in various states of disrepair.[43] Narratives in these films often focus on an audiences fear and attraction to social change and rebellion.[44] The genre can be applied to films as early as The Haunted Castle (1896), Frankenstein (1910) as well as to more complex iterations such as Park Chan-wook's Stoker (2013) and Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017).[42]
The gothic style is applied to several films throughout the history of the horror film. This includes Universal Pictures' horror films of the 1930s, the revival of gothic horror in the 1950s and 1960s with films from Hammer, Roger Corman's Poe-cycle, and several Italian productions.[45] By the 1970s American and British productions often had vampire films set in a contemporary setting, such as Hammer Films had their Dracula stories set in a modern setting and made other horror material which pushed the erotic content of their vampire films that was initiated by Black Sunday.[46][47][48] In the 1980s, the older horror characters of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster rarely appeared, with vampire themed films continued often in the tradition of authors like Anne Rice where vampirism becomes a lifestyle choice rather than plague or curse.[49] Following the release of Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), a small wave of high-budgeted gothic horror romance films were released in the 1990s.[50]
Natural horror
See also: List of natural horror films
Also described as "eco-horror", the natural horror film is a subgenre "featuring nature running amok in the form of mutated beasts, carnivorous insects, and normally harmless animals or plants turned into cold-blooded killers."[51][52] In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock defined a new genre nature taking revenge on humanity with The Birds (1963) that was expanded into a trend into the 1970s. Following the success of Willard (1971), a film about killer rats, 1972 had similar films with Stanley (1972) and an official sequel Ben (1972).[53] Other films followed in suit such as Night of the Lepus (1972), Frogs (1972), Bug (1975), Squirm (1976) and what Muir described as the "turning point" in the genre with Jaws (1975), which became the highest-grossing film at that point and moved the animal attacks genres "towards a less-fantastic route" with less giant animals and more real-life creatures such as Grizzly (1976) and Night Creature (1977), Orca (1977), and Jaws 2 (1978).[53][54][55] The film is linked with the environmental movements that became more mainstream in the 1970s and early 1980s such vegetarianism, animal rights movements, and organizations such as Greenpeace.[56] Following Jaws, sharks became the most popular animal of the genre, ranging from similar such as Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976) and Great White (1981) to the Sharknado film series.[56] James Marriott found that the genre had "lost momentum" since the 1970s while the films would still be made towards the turn of the millennium.[57]
Psychological horror
Main article: Psychological horror
Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror and psychological fiction with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience. The subgenre frequently overlaps with the related subgenre of psychological thriller, and often uses mystery elements and characters with unstable, unreliable, or disturbed psychological states to enhance the suspense, drama, action, and paranoia of the setting and plot and to provide an overall unpleasant, unsettling, or distressing atmosphere.[58]
Religious horror
Main article: Religious horror
Religious horror is a subgenre of horror film whose common themes are based on religion and focus heavily on supernatural beings, often with demons as the main antagonists that bring a sense of threat.[59][60] Such films commonly use religious elements, including the crucifix or cross, holy water, the Bible, the rosary, the sign of the cross, the church, and prayer, which are forms of religious symbols and rituals used to depict the use of faith to defeat evil.[61]
Slasher film
Main article: Slasher film
The slasher film is a horror subgenre which involves a killer murdering a group of people (often teenagers), usually by use of bladed tools.[62] In his book on the genre, author Adam Rockoff wrote that these villains represented a "rogue genre" of films that are "tough, problematic, and fiercely individualistic."[63] Following the financial success of Friday the 13th (1980), at least 20 other slasher films appeared in 1980 alone.[64] These films usually revolved around three properties: unique social settings (campgrounds, schools, holidays) and a crime from the past committed (an accidental drowning, infidelity, a scorned lover) and a ready made group of victims (camp counselors, students, wedding parties).[65] The genre was derided by several contemporary film critics of the era such as Ebert, and often were highly profitable in the box office.[66] The release of Scream (1996), led to a brief revival of the slasher films for the 1990s.[67] Other countries imitated the American slasher film revival, such as South Korea's early 2000s cycle with Bloody Beach (2000), Nightmare (2000) and The Record (2000).[68]
Supernatural horror
Main article: Supernatural horror film
Supernatural horror films integrate supernatural elements, such as the afterlife, spirit possession and religion into the horror genre.[69]
Teen horror
Teen horror is a horror subgenre that victimizes teenagers while usually promoting strong, anti-conformity teenage leads, appealing to young generations. This subgenre often depicts themes of sex, under-aged drinking, and gore.[70] Horror films aimed a young audience featuring teenage monsters grew popular in the 1950s with several productions from American International Pictures (AIP) and productions of Herman Cohen with I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957).[71] This led to later productions like Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957) and Frankenstein's Daughter (1958).[71] Teen horror cycle in the 1980s often showcased explicit gore and nudity, with John Kenneth Muir described as cautionary conservative tales where most of the films stated if you partook in such vices such as drugs or sex, your punishment of death would be handed out.[72] Prior to Scream, there were no popular teen horror films in the early 1990s.[73] After the financial success of Scream, teen horror films became increasingly reflexive and self-aware until the end of the 1990s with films like I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and non-slasher The Faculty (1998).[74][73] The genre lost prominence as teen films dealt with threats with more realism in films like Donnie Darko (2001) and Crazy/Beautiful (2001).[75] In her book on the 1990s teen horror cycle, Alexandra West described the general trend of these films is often looked down upon by critics, journals, and fans as being too glossy, trendy, and sleek to be considered worthwhile horror films.[76]
Regional horror films
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Asian horror films
Horror films in Asia have been noted as being inspired by national, cultural or religious folklore, particularly beliefs in ghosts or spirits.[38][77] In Asian Horror, Andy Richards writes that there is a "widespread and engrained acceptance of supernatural forces" in many Asian cultures, and suggests this is related to animist, pantheist and karmic religious traditions, as in Buddhism and Shintoism.[77] Although Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Korean horror has arguably received the most international attention,[77] horror also makes up a considerable proportion of Cambodian[78] and Malaysian cinema.[79]
Hong Kong
The Hong Kong film industry has long been associated with genre cinema, specifically for action films.[80] The Hong Kong horror films are generally broad and often feature demons, wraiths and reanimated corpses and have been described by authors Gary Bettinson and Daniel Martin as "generically diffuse and resistant to Western definitions."[81] This was due to Hong Kong cinema often creating various hybrid films which mesh traditional horror films with elements of other genres such as A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which led to Hong Kong critic Chen Yu to suggest that this form was "one more indication of the Hong Kong cinema's inability to establish a proper horror genre."[82]
Various interpretations of the Hong Kong horror film have included Bettinson and Martin stating that Hong Kong films frequently prioritize comedy and romance over fear.[83] Author Felicia Chan described Hong Kong cinema as being noted for its extensive use of parody and pastiche and the horror and ghost films of Hong Kong often turn to comedy and generally follow forms of ghost erotica and jiangshi (transl. stiff corpses).[84] Early horror-related cinema in Mandarin and Cantonese featured ghost stories that occasionally had rational explanations.[85] The literary source of Hong Kong horror films is Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a series of short stories with supernatural themes written in the 17th century.[86][87] Unlike Western stories, Pu focuses on the value of the human form which is essential for reincarnation, leading to stories about ghosts such as Fox spirit trying to seal a mortal man's life essence, usually through sex.[86] This led to a relatively large degree of Hong Kong horror films, even more than their Korean and Japanese counterparts, featuring chimeric creatures exhibiting bodily features of various animals.[88] According to author Stephen Teo, corporeal 'trans-substantiation', such as in the form of a human to werewolf or vampire to bat, is "unthinkable in Chinese culture since the rule of pragmatism requires that one's physical, human shape be kept intact for reincarnation and for the wheel of life to keep revolving"[89]
Early Hong Kong horror films of the 1950s were often described by terms such as shenguai (gods/spirits and the strange/bizarre), qi guai (strange) and shen hua (godly story).[90] Most of these films involved a man meeting a neoi gwei (female ghost), followed by a flashback illustrating how the woman had died and usually concluded with a happy ending involving reincarnation and romance.[91] Examples include the ghost story Beauty Raised from the Dead (1956) and The Nightly Cry of the Ghost (1957) which suggests the supernatural but concludes with a rational explanation for the proceedings.[92][93] Other trends included humorous variations such as The Dunce Bumps into a Ghost (1957) as well as films about snake demons that were imitating films from the Philippines and made co-productions with the country with Sanda Wong (1955) and The Serpent's Girls' Worldy Fancies (1958).[94]
Director Kuei Chih-Hung in 1979, one of the few Hong Kong directors to specialize in horror films[95]
Other Early works include The Enchanting Shadow (1960) based on Pu's work, which did not create a cycle of ghost films.[85] In the 1970s films such as the Shaw Brothers and Hammer Film Productions co-production Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires would not take off worldwide and not produce cycles of similar horror films.[96][97] King Hu's films such as Touch of Zen would touch upon Pu's work, including plot points of fox spirits, while his other work such as Legend of the Mountain would be full on ghost stories.[98][99]
Veteran stuntman, actor and director Sammo Hung decided to blend horror with more humour, leading to Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980). The film was popular at the box office leading to several kung-fu-oriented ghost comedies.[100] Directors ranging from Ann Hui to Tsui Hark would all dabble with the genre, with Sammo Hung producing Mr. Vampire and Tsui Hark producing A Chinese Ghost Story, which would be stories from Pu Songling's work.[100][98]
According to Gary Bettinson and Daniel Martin, the critical attitude towards Hong Kong horror was that it reached its commercial and artistic peaks in the 1980s, partially in response to the audience's decline in the dominance of kung fu films.[80] The rise of Asian horror films in the 2000s has been described by Laikwan Pang in Screen as setting Hong Kong horror films back, stating that "once famous for churning out hundreds of formulaic horror films have almost completely died out - precisely because of the industry's fraught efforts to adapt to a Chinese market and its policy environment."[101] In 2003, author Daniel O'Brien stated that the Hong Kong film industry still turned out horror films. Still, the number of them turned out much lower, with the genre rarely attracting major filmmakers and operating on the low-budget side of the industry with films like the Troublesome Night series, which had 18 entries.[100] In 2018, Bettinson and Martin found that the Hong Kong horror film had become nostalgic and contemporary, noting films like Rigor Mortis (2013) as referencing the older Mr. Vampire film while also as adapting to the shifting global market for Asian cinema.[87]
Exploitation and Category III
In the 1970s a shift in style and type of Hong Kong horror films began being produced with more explicit depictions of sex.[102] Actor Kam Kwok-leung who appeared in some of these films such as the Shaw Brothers produced The Killer Snakes (1974) stated that the studio's "attitude was rather shameless; they threw in nude scenes or sex scenes regardless of the genre [...] As long as they could insert these scenes, they didn't mind throwing logic out the window. The Killer Snakes was no exception"[95] The film was directed by Kuei Chih-Hung, it was his first horror film and led to him being one of the few Hong Kong directors to specialize in horror.[95] These films were sometimes described as exploitation, characterized by their gratuitous or excessive nudity, extreme violence, and gore are generally regarded by critics as "bad" rather than quality or serious cinema.[103] Keui would return to horror in various films after such as Ghost Eyes (1974), Hex (1980), Hex vs Witcraft (1980), Hex After Hex (1982) Curse of Evil (1982) and The Boxer's Omen (1984).[104] These films were swept aside by the late 1980s when an even more raw form of exploitation cinema arose with the Category III film creation in 1988.[105] Category III films from the era such as Dr. Lamb (1992) and The Untold Story (1993) were linked to horror from their excessive violence and blood-letting of their serial killer central characters.[106]
Other horror films borrowing from Western trends were made such as Dennis Yu's two films The Beasts (1980) resembling Last House on the Left and The Imp (1981), Patrick Tam's Love Massacre (1981) resembling the American slasher film trend. [107] Later cases of the genre often exclude the ghost story style, such as The Untold Story (1993) and Dream Home (2010) which have lead characters within scientific explanation.[81]
India
Main articles: Indian ghost movie and Bollywood horror films
The Cinema of India produces the largest amount of films in the world, ranging from Bollywood (Hindi cinema based in Mumbai) to other regions such as West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Unlike Hollywood and most Western cinematic traditions, horror films produced in India incorporate romance, song-and-dance, and other elements in the "masala" format,[108] where as many genres as possible are bundled into a single film.[109] Odell and Le Blanc described the Indian horror film as "a popular, but minor part of the country's film output" and that "has not found a true niche in mainstream Indian cinema."[109][110] These films are made outside of Mumbai, and are generally seen as disreputable to their more respectable popular cinema.[109] As of 2007, the Central Board of Film Certification, India's censorship board has stated films "pointless or unavoidable scenes of violence, cruelty and horror, scenes of violence intended to provide entertainment and such scene that may have the effect of desensitising or dehumanizing people are not shown."[111]
Still of Madhubala in Mahal (1949), an early Indian horror film
The earliest Indian horror films were films about ghosts and reincarnation or rebirth such as Mahal (1949).[109] These early films tended to be spiritual pieces or tragic dramas opposed to having visceral content.[112] While prestige films from Hollywood productions had been shown in Indian theatres, the late 1960s had seen a parallel market for minor American and European co-productions to films like the James Bond film series and the films of Mario Bava.[113] In the 1970s and 1980s, the Ramsay Brothers created a career in the lower reaches of the Bombay film industry making low-budget horror films, primarily influenced by Hammer's horror film productions, with little known about their production or distribution history.[114][113] The Ramsay Brothers were a family of seven brothers who made horror films that were featured monsters and evil spirits that mix in song and dance sections as well as comic interludes.[115] Most of their films played at smaller cinema in India, with Tulsi Ramsay, one of the brothers, later stating "Places where even the trains don't stop, that's where our business was."[116] Their horror films are generally dominated by low-budget productions, such as those by the Ramsay Brothers. Their most successful film was Purana Mandir (1984), which was the second highest-grossing film in India that year.[115][117] The influence of American productions would have an effect on later Indian productions such as The Exorcist which would lead to films involving demonic possession such as Gehrayee (1980). India has also made films featuring zombies and vampires that drew from American horror films opposed to indigenous myths and stories.[112] Other directors, such as Mohan Bhakri made low budget highly exploitive films such as Cheekh (1985) and his biggest hit, the monster movie Khooni Mahal (1987).[115]
Horror films are not self-evident categories in Tamil and Telugu films and it was only until the late 1980s that straight horror cinema was regularly produced with films like Uruvam (1991), Sivi (2007), and Eeram (2009) were released.[118] The first decade of the twenty-first century saw a flurry of commercially successful Telugu horror films like A Film by Aravind (2005), Mantra (2007), and Arundhati (2009) were released.[118] Ram Gopal Varma made films that generally defied the conventions of popular Indian cinema, making horror films like Raat (1992) and Bhoot (2003), with the latter film not containing and comic scenes or musical numbers.[115] In 2018, the horror film Tumbbad premiered in the critics' week section of the 75th Venice International Film Festival—the first ever Indian film to open the festival.[119]
Indonesia
This section is an excerpt from Indonesian horror.[edit]
Actress Suzzanna has been called the "Queen of Indonesian horror".[120]
Indonesian horror are the films of the horror genre produced by the Indonesian film industry. Often inspired by local folklore and religious elements,[121][122] Indonesian horror films have been produced in the country since the 1960s. After a hiatus during the Suharto era in the 1990s, when censorship affected production, Indonesian horror films continued being produced following Reformasi in 1998.[123][124]
Japan
Main article: Japanese horror
The Japanese film industry began in the late 1800s with its most films from the 1920s to the 1970s being made through its studio system.[125] Following World War II, Donald Richie noted that directors and screenwriters were no longer as interested in subjects that promoted a rosy future. This led to development of ghost story and monster movies being made in Japan during the 1950s.[126] The term "horror" as a genre, only began circulating in Japan in the 1960s in press and everyday language. Prior to this, horror fiction as it may be known was referred to with terms like "mystery", "terror", and "dread".[127] According to manga author and critic Yoshihiro Yonezawa, the first boom of horror manga with the success of the Kaiki shōsetsu zenshū' and the success of the British horror films from Hammer Films which began circulating in Japan and gaining popularity.[128] Due to the circulation of these magazines, a growing interest in the supernatural developed, inspired by traditional Japanese ghost stories (kaidan) such as Yotsuya Kaidan as well as classical Japanese woodcut prints with themes of Japanese ghosts.[129][130]
Colette Balmain in her book Introduction to Japanese Horror Film stated the two most important films that would influence the growth of the horror genre were Ugetsu (1953), exploring fears around modernization, and Godzilla (1954), with its monster and its atomic breath reminding about the devastation caused by nuclear weapons.[131] Ugetsu would also lay the groundwork for several forms of Japanese horror films. This included gothic ghost stories which accounted for most of Japanese horror films of the 1950s and 1960s, the erotic-themed ghost story films of the as well as later Japanese ghost story films like Ring (1998) and Ju-On: The Grudge.[132][133] Ugetsu would borrow from traditional Japanese theatre forms such as Kabuki and Noh .[125] [134][132] Noh was marked for estrained understatement and abstraction with more focus on emotion than narrative of dialogue which would be reflected in later Japanese films like Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968).[135]
In 1964, Shochiku released Daydream, the first Japanese New Wave to have a blatantly erotic story.[136] These films later became known as pink films, a term of American origin applied to low-budget and low-profile films. These softcore films helped struggling studios with the first wave of them being between 1964 and 1972.[136] One sub-genre of these films was the erotic ghost story, which were less explicit than the usual pink cinema. These films often featured wronged women, such as the vengeful ghostly cat woman in Kuroneko (1968).[137] Stories of ghost cats and similar creatures were part of the sub-genre known as bakeneko mono, or monster-cat tales starting with The Ghost Cat of Otama Pond (1960).[138]
In 1985, the Japanese film producer Ogura Satoru developed the series and directed the first installment: Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment.[139] The series was controversial in Japan, due in part to the public scrutiny the videos faced after the capture of Tsutomu Miyazaki, a child murderer who had the films in his collection.[140] The series circulated enough within horror film fan circles that in a March 1994 issue of Fangoria, a fan wrote in to ask the magazine to shift its toward underground films such as "the notorious gorefests from Japan [...] the infamous Guinea Pig series." The magazine responded that the independent film market was fading away and that major studios had taken over the b-film industry and "that is where the power - and commercial success - lies. Guinea Pig is not the future of horror."[141] Jay McRoy, author of Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema declared that films like Toshiharu Ikeda's Evil Dead Trap (1988) and Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) "spurred the emergence of an increasingly visceral and graphically violent wave of Japanese horror films" with the latter film being "one of the most influential Japanese horror films ever produced.[142]
Author and critic Kim Newman described the release of Hideo Nakata's Ring (1998) as one of the major "cultural phenomenons" in the horror film in the late 1990s.[143] Along with the South Korean film Whispering Corridors (1998), it was a major hit across Asia leading to sequels and similar ghost stories from Asian countries.[143] With more than 24 million sales worldwide, the Resident Evil video game franchise began in 1996. Several Japanese productions involving zombies followed the games success, such as Wild Zero (1999) and Versus (2000), and Junk (2000).[144] These films zombies resembled the monsters from the 1970s such Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Zombi 2 (1979).[145] In 2003, independent films had overtaken studio-produced films with 234 of the 287 total films released in 2003 were independent.[146] The independent Japanese zombie film One Cut of the Dead (2017) became a sleeper hit in Japan, receiving general acclaim worldwide and making Japanese box office history by earning over a thousand times its budget.[147][148]
South Korea
Main article: Korean horror
The Korean horror film originated in the 1960s and became a more prominent part of the countries film production in the early 2000s.[149] While ghosts have appeared as early as 1924 in Korean film, attempting to chart the history of the genre from this period was described by Alison Peirse and Daniel Martin, the authors of "Korean Horror Cinema" as "problematic", due to the control of the Japanese colonial government blocking artistic or politically independent films.[150] Regardless of settings or time period, many Korean horror films such as Song of the Dead (1980) have their stories focused on female relationships, rooted in Korean Confucianism tradition with an emphasis on biological families.[151] Despite the influence of folklore in some films, there is no key single canon to define the Korean horror film.[152] Korean horror cinema is also defined by melodrama, as it does in most of Korean cinema.[153]
The Housemaid (1960) is widely credited as initiating the first horror cycle in Korean cinema, which involved films of the 1960s about supernatural revenge tales, focused on cruelly murdered women who sought out revenge.[154] Several of these films are in dept to Korean folklore and ghost stories, with stories of animal transformation.[151] Traces of international cinema are found in early Korean horror cinema. such as Shin Sang-ok's Madame White Snake (1960) from the traditional Chinese folktale Legend of the White Snake.[151] Despite bans of Japanese cultural products that lasted from 1945 to 1998, the influence of Japanese culture are still found in Kaibyō eiga (ghost cats) themed films, such as A Devilish Homicide (1965) and Ghosts of Chosun (1970). Other 1960s films featured narratives involving kumiho such as The Thousand Year Old Fox (Cheonnyeonho) (1969).[152] These tales based on folklore and ghosts continued into the 1970s.[155] Korea also produced giant monster films that received release in the United States such as Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967) and Ape (1976).[153]
Park Chan-wook, the director of Thirst (2009), one of the many varied Korean horror films from the early 21st century
By the end of the 1970s, the Korean horror film entered a period known commonly as the "dark time" for South Korean cinema with audience attracted to Hong Kong and American imports. The biggest influence on this was the "3S" policy adopted by the Chun Doo-hwan government which promoted the production of "sports, screen and sex" for the film industry leading to more relaxed censorship leading to a boom in Erotic Korean films. Horror films followed this trend with Suddenly at Midnight (1981), a reimagining of The Housemaid (1960).[156] As of 2013, many pre-1990 Korean horror films are only available through the Korean Film Archive (KOFA) in Seoul.[149] It was not until the 1998 release of Whispering Corridors was the Korean horror film reinvigorated, with its style containing traces of traditional Korean cinema (culturally specific themes and melodrama) but also the American pattern of making a franchise of horror films, as the film received four sequels.[157] Since the film's release, Korean horror films had had strong diversity with gothic tales like A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), gory horror films like Bloody Reunion (2006), horror comedy (To Catch a Virgin Ghost (2004)), vampire films (Thirst (2009)), and independent productions (Teenage Hooker Became a Killing Machine (2000)).[157] These films varied in popularity with Ahn Byeong-ki's Phone (2002) reaching the top ten in the domestic box office sales in 2002 while in 2007, no locally produced Korean horror films were financially successful with local audiences.[157] In 2020, Anton Bitel declared in Sight & Sound that South Korea was one of the international hot spots for horror film production in the last decade, citing the international and popular releases of films like Train to Busan (2016), The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale (2019) Peninsula (2020) and The Wailing (2016).[158]
Thailand
This section is an excerpt from Thai horror.[edit]
Thai horror refers to horror films produced in the Thai film industry. Thai folklore and beliefs in ghosts have influenced its horror cinema.[159][160][161][162] Horror is among the most popular genres in Thai cinema, and its output has attracted recognition internationally.[163][164][165][166] Pee Mak, for example, a 2013 comedy horror film, is the most commercially successful Thai film of all time.[167]
Oceania
Australia
It is unknown when Australia's cinema first horror title may have been, with thoughts ranging from The Strangler's Grip (1912) to The Face at the Window (1919) while stories featuring ghosts would appear in Guyra Ghost Mystery (1921).[168] By 1913, the more prolific era of Australian cinema ended with production not returning with heavy input of government finance in the 1970s.[169] It took until the 1970s for Australia to develop sound film with television films that eventually received theatrical release with Dead Easy (1970) and Night of Fear (1973). The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) was the first Australian horror production made for theatrical release.[168] 1970s Australian art cinema was funded by state film corporations, who considered them more culturally acceptable than local exploitation films (Ozploitation), which was part of the Australian phenomenon called the cultural cringe.[170] The greater success of genre films like Mad Max (1979), The Last Wave (1977) and Patrick (1978) led to the Australian Film Commission to change its focus to being a more commercial operation. This closed in 1980 as its funding was abused by investors using them as tax avoiding measures. A new development known as the 10BA tax shelter scheme was developed ushering a slew of productions, leading to what Peter Shelley, author of Australian Horror Films, suggested meant "making a profit was more important than making a good film."[170] Shelley called these films derivative of "American films and presenting generic American material".[170] These films included the horror film productions of Antony I. Ginnane.[171] While Australia would have success with international films between the mid-1980s and the 2000s, less than five horror films were produced in the country between 1993 and 2000.[172][173] It was only after the success of Wolf Creek (2005) that a new generation of filmmakers would continuously make horror genre films in Australia that continued into the 2010s.[172][173]
New Zealand
By 2005, New Zealand has produced around 190 feature films, with about 88% of them being made after 1976.[174] New Zealand horror film history was described by Philip Matthews of Stuff as making "po-faced gothic and now we do horror for laughs."[175] Among the earliest known New Zealand horror films productions are Strange Behavior (1981), a co-production with Australia and Death Warmed Up (1984) a single production.[176] Early features such as Melanie Read's Trial Run (1984) where a mother is sent to remote cottage to photograph penguins and finds it habitat to haunted spirits, and Gaylene Preston's Mr. Wrong (1984) purchases a car that is haunted by its previous owner.[177] Other films imitate American slasher and splatter films with Bridge to Nowhere (1986), and the early films of Peter Jackson who combined splatter films with comedy with Bad Taste (1988) and Braindead (1992) which has the largest following of the mentioned films.[176] Film producer Ant Timpson had an influence curating New Zealand horror films, creating the Incredibly Strange Film Festival in the 1990s and producing his own horror films over the 2010s including The ABCs of Death (2012), Deathgasm (2015), and Housebound (2014).[175] Timpson noted the latter horror entries from New Zealand are all humorous films like What We Do in the Shadows (2014) with Jonathan King, director of Black Sheep (2006) and The Tattooist (2007) stating "I'd love to see a genuinely scary New Zealand film but I don't know if New Zealand audiences – or the funding bodies – are keen."[175]
European horror films
Ian Olney described the horror films of Europe were often more erotic and "just plain stranger" than their British and American counter-parts.[178] European horror films (generally referred to as Euro Horror)[179] draw from distinctly European cultural sources, including surrealism, romanticism, decadent tradition, early 20th century pulp-literature, film serials, and erotic comics.[180] In comparison to the narrative logic in American genre films, these films focused on imagery, excessiveness, and the irrational.[181]
Between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s, European horror films emerged from countries like Italy, Spain and France and were shown in the United States predominantly at drive-in theatre and grindhouse theatres.[178] As producers and distributors all over the world were interested in horror films, regardless of their origin, changes started occurring in European low-budget filmmaking that allowed for productions in the 1960s and 1970s for horror films from Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain, as well as co-productions between these countries.[182] Several productions, such as those in Italy, were co-productions due to the lack of international stars within the country.[183] European horror films began developing strong cult following since the late 1990s.[178]
France
See also: New French Extremity
French director Julia Ducournau (centre) won the Palme d'Or for horror film Titane. She is pictured with actors Agathe Rousselle and Vincent Lindon, who star in the film, at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
France never truly developed a horror film movement to the volume that the United Kingdom or Italy had produced.[184] In their book European Nightmares, editors Patricia Allmer, Emily Brick, and David Huxley noted that French cinema was generally perceived as having a tradition of the fantastic, rather than horror films. The editors noted that French cinema had produced a series of outstanding individual horror films, from directors who did not specialize in the field.[185] In their book Horror Films, Colin Odell & Michelle Le Blanc referred to director Jean Rollin as one of the countries most consistent horror auteurs with 40 years of productions described as "highly divisive" low budget horror films often featuring erotic elements, vampires, low budgets, pulp stories and references to both high and low European art.[186] Another of the few French directors who specialized in horror is Alexandre Aja, who stated that "the problem with the French is that they don't trust their own language [when it comes to horror]. American horror movies do well, but in their own language, the French just aren't interested."[185]
A 21st-century movement of transgressive French cinema known as New French Extremity was named by film programmer James Quandt in 2004, who declared and derided that films of Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Gaspar Noé, and Bruno Dumont, among others, had made "cinema suddenly determined to break every taboo, to wade in rivers of viscera and spumes of sperm, to fill each frame with flesh, nubile, or gnarled, and subject it to all manner of penetration mutilation and defilement."[187] In her book Films of the New French Extremity, Alexandra West described the phenomenon as initially an art house movement, but as the directors of those films started making horror films fitting arthouse standards such as Trouble Every Day (2001) and Marina de Van's In My Skin (2002), other directors began making more what West described as "outright horror films" such as Aja's High Tension (2003) and Xavier Gens' Frontier(s) (2007). Some of these horror films of the New French Extremity movement would regularly place on "Best Of" genre lists, such as Martyrs (2008), Inside (2007) and High Tension (2003) while Julia Ducournau's film Titane (2021) won the Palme d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.[188][189]
Germany
Jörg Buttgereit in 2015. Buttgereit was described by Kai-Uwe Werbeck as "arguably the most visible German horror director of the 1980s and early 1990s".[190]
German postwar horror films remained marginal after its success during the silent film era.[191] The Third Reich ended production of horror films and German productions never gained a mass audience in Germany's horror film output leading the genre to not return in any major form until the late 1960s.[192][193] Between 1933 and 1989, Randall Halle stated about only 34 films that could be described as horror films and 45 which were co-productions with other countries, primarily Spain and Italy. Outside of Herzog's Nosferatu (1979) most of these films low-budget that focused on erotic themes over horrific turns in narrative.[193] In the mid-1970s, Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons was tasked with protection of minors from violent, racist and pornographic content in literature and comic books which led to increased the code which became law in 1973.[194] These laws expanded to home video in 1985 following the release of titles such as Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981) and the political change when Helmut Kohl became chancellor in 1982.[195] The amount of West German film productions were already low in the 1980s, leaving the genre to be shot by amateurs who had little to no budgets.[196] In the early 1980s, West Germany's government cracked down on graphic horror films similar to the United Kingdom's Video nasty panic.[197] A direct response to this led to West German independent directors in the late 1980s and early 1990s, West German indie directors to release a comparatively high number of what Kai-Uwe Werbeck described as low-budget "hyper-violent horror films" sometimes described as German underground horror.[197][198] Werbeck described the most prominent of these were of Jörg Buttgereit, described by Werbeck as "arguably the most visible German horror director of the 1980s and early 1990s", one which Harald Harzheim claimed to be "the first German director since the 1920s to give the horror genre new impulses".[190] Similar gory films such as Olaf Ittenbach's The Burning Moon was the first, and last film to be made in Germany that is still banned there as of 2016.[197][199]
German horror films made a comeback in what Werbeck described as a mainstream fashion in the 21st century.[198] This included the box office hit Anatomy (2000) and Antibodies (2005), who Odell and Le Blanc described as being a similar to the 1960s krimi genre of crime films.[199][200] The second were films made for international markets such as Legion of the Dead (2001) and the video game adaptations directed Uwe Boll such as House of the Dead (2003) and Alone in the Dark (2005).[200]
Italy
Director Riccardo Freda on the set of I Vampiri, the first Italian horror film of the sound era.[201][202]
See also: Giallo
Early silent Italian fantastique films focused more on adventure and farce opposed to Germany's expressionism.[201] The National Fascist Party in Italy had forced film in the early sound era to "spread the civilization of Rome throughout the world as quickly as possible."[203] Another influence was the Centro Cattolico Cinematografico (Catholic Cinematic Centre) that was described by Curti as "permissive towards propaganda and repressive against anything related to sexuality or morality."[203] The Vatican City's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano for example, critiqued the circulation of films like Bride of Frankenstein (1935) in 1940.[203]
As Italian neorealism had monopolized Italian cinema in the 1940s, and as the average Italian standard for living increased, Italian critic and historian Gian Piero Brunetta stated that it would "appear legitimate to start exploring the fantastic."[204] Italian film historian Goffredo Fofi echoed these statements, stating in 1963 that "ghosts, monsters and the taste for the horrible appears when a society that became wealthy and evolves by industrializing, and are accompanied by a state of well-being which began to exist and expand in Italy only since a few years"[205][206] Initially, this was a rise in peplum films after the release of Hercules (1958).[207] Italy started moving beyond peplums making Westerns and horror films which were less expensive to produce than the previous sword-and-sandal films.[183]
Italy's initial wave of horror films were gothic horror were rooted in popular cinema, and were often co-productions with other countries.[204] Curti described the initial wave of the 1960s Italian gothic horror allowed directors like Mario Bava, Riccardo Freda and Antonio Margheriti to helm what Curti described as "some of their very best works."[208] Bava's Black Sunday (1960) was particularly influential.[48] Many productions of this era were often written in a hurry, sometimes developed during filming production by production companies that often did not last very long, sometimes for only one film production.[209] After 1966, the gothic cycle ended, primarily through a broader crisis that effected the Italian film industry with its audience rapidly shrinking.[210] Some gothics continued to be produced into the beginning of the 1970s, while the influence of the genre was felt in other Italian genres like the Spaghetti Western.[211] The term giallo, which means "yellow" in Italian, is derived from Il Giallo Mondadori, a long-running series of mystery and crime novels identifiable by their distinctive uniform yellow covers, and is used in Italy to describe all mystery and thriller fiction. English-language critics use the term to describe more specific films within the genre, involving a murder mystery that revels in the details of the murder rather than the deduction of it or police procedural elements.[212] Tim Lucas deemed early films in the genre such as Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) while Curti described Blood and Black Lace (1964) as predominantly a series of violent, erotically charged set pieces that are "increasingly elaborate and spectacular" in their construction, and that Bava pushed these elements to the extreme which would solidify the genre.[213][214][212] It was not until the success of Dario Argento's 1970 film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage that the giallo genre started a major trend in Italian cinema.[215][216]
Other smaller trends permutated in Italy in the 1970s such as films involving cannibals, zombies and Nazis which Newman described as "disreputable crazes".[217] In Italy entered the 1980s, the Italian film industry would gradually move towards making films for television.[218] The decade started with a high-budgeted production of Argento's Inferno (1980) and with the death of Mario Bava, Fulci became what historian Roberto Curti called "Italy's most prominent horror film director in the early 1980s".[219] Several zombie films were made in the country in the early 80s from Fulci and others while Argento would continue directing and producing films for others such as Lamberto Bava.[219] As Fulci's health deteriorated towards the end of the decade, many directors turned to making horror films for Joe D'Amato's Filmirage company, independent films or works for television and home video.[220][221]
Spain
The highest point of production of Spanish horror films took place during late Francoism, between 1968 and 1975,[222] a period associated to the so-called Fantaterror, the local expression of Euro Horror, identifiable for its "disproportionate doses of sex and violence".[223] During this period, several Spanish filmmakers appeared with unique styles and themes such as Jesús Franco's The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962), first internationally successful horror and exploitation film production from Spain.[224] Dr. Orloff would appears in other films of Franco's during the period.[225] Paul Naschy, the actor and screenwriter.,[225] and Amando de Ossorio with his zombie like medieval knights in Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972).[225] These directors adapted established monsters from popular films, comics and pulp fiction and imbuing them with what Lazaro-Reboll described as "certain local flavour and relevance."[225] A partial overview of films from this era focused on classic monsters (Frankenstein's Bloody Terror (1968), Dr. Jekyll y el Hombre Lobo (1972)) and films that grew from trends created by Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist (The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974), Exorcismo (1975)).[226] Most films of the period were low-budget films with short shooting schedules, while occasional films had respectable budgets such as 99 Women (1969) and others that had art house directors attempt commercial production such as Vicente Aranda's The Blood Spattered Bride and Jorge Grau's Bloody Ceremony (1973)[227] Antonio Lazaro-Reboll wrote in 2012 that in the last forty years, the horror film has formed as a significant part of Spain's local transnational filmic production, that created its own auteurs, stars and cycles.[228] For decades, it was described by Beck and Rodríguez-Ortega in Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre that the view of the genre has been "almost exclusively been constructed negatively" and that the rise in horror film productions in the late 1960s and 1970s in Spain was "reviled by contemporary critics, film historians and scholars".[229] In his 1974 book Cine español, cine de subgéneros, author Román Gurbern saw contemporary Spanish horror films as "derivative of Authentic American and European traditions" that will "never make it into the histories of Spanish cinema, unless it is dealt with in a succinct footnote."[230]
Film production decreased dramatically in the late 1970s and 1980s for several reasons, including the boom in historical and political films in Spain during early year of democracy. The film legislation implemented by general director of cinematography Pilar Miró in 1983 introduced a selective subvention system, causing the overall number of annually made films (including horror films) to shrink, thereby dealing a heavy blow to horror industry and the Fantaterror craze.[231] In addition, there were changing habits on audiences and the visual material they sought. It was not until the late 1990s and the 2000s that Spanish horror reached another production peak.[222]
After the success of private television operator Canal+ from the 1990s onward investing in the production of films by the likes of Álex de la Iglesia (The Day of the Beast; 1995) or Alejandro Amenábar (Tesis; 1996 and The Others; 2001) through Sogecine,[232] other television companies such as Antena 3 and Telecinco (through Telecinco Cinema) came to see horror as a profitable niche, and the genre thereby became a successful formula for box-office hits in the 2000s, underpinning the wider switch in the industry from the largely State-dependent model of the 1980s to the hegemony of mass media holdings in domestic film production.[233] Jaume Balagueró's The Nameless (1999), which became a popular film both in Spain and abroad, paved the way for new Spanish horror films.[234] Filmax tried to capitalise on the success of the former film by creating the Fantastic Factory genre label[235] and eventually came to develop one of the most successful Spanish film franchises with the Rec film series.[236] The success of Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage (2007) ensued with the release of ersatz gothic films featuring creepy children.[235] Other key names for the development of the genre in the 21st-century Spanish industry include Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and Paco Plaza.[237]
United Kingdom
Further information: British horror cinema
Americas
Mexico
Main article: Horror films of Mexico
After the 1931 release of a US-produced Spanish-language version of Dracula by George Melford for the Latin-American market employing Mexican actors, Mexican horror films were produced throughout the 1930s and 1940s, often reflecting on the overarching theme of science vs. religion conflict.[238] Ushered by the release of El vampiro, the Mexploitation horror film era started in 1957, with films characterised by their low production values and camp appeal, often featuring vampires, wrestlers, and Aztec mummies.[239] A key figure in the Mexican horror scene (particularly in Germán Robles-starred vampire films) was producer Abel Salazar.[240] The late 1960s saw the advent of the prominence of Carlos Enrique Taboada as an standout Mexican horror filmmaker, with films such as Hasta el viento tiene miedo (1967), El libro de piedra (1968), Más negro que la noche (1975) or Veneno para las hadas (1984).[241] Mexican horror cinema has been noted for the mashup of classic gothic and romantic themes and characters with autochthonous features of the Mexican culture such as the Ranchería setting, the colonial past or the myth of La Llorona (shared with other Hispanic-American nations).[242]
Horror has proven to be a dependable genre at the Mexican box office in the 21st-century, with Mexico ranking as having the world's largest relative popularity of the genre among viewers (ahead of South Korea), according to a 2016 research.[243]
Effects on audiences
Psychological effects
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In a study done by Uri Hasson et al., brain waves were observed via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This study used the inter-subject correlation analysis (ISC) method of determining results. It was shown that audience members tend to focus on certain facets in a particular scene simultaneously and tend to sit as still as possible while watching horror films.[244]
In another study done by John Greene & Glenn Sparks, it was found that the audience tends to experience the excitation transfer process (ETP) which causes a physiological arousal in audience members. The ETP refers to the feelings experienced immediately after an emotion-arousing experience, such as watching a horror film. In this case, audience members' heart rate, blood pressure and respiration all increased while watching films with violence. Audience members with positive feedback regarding the horror film have feelings similar to happiness or joy felt with friends, but intensified. Alternatively, audience members with negative feedback regarding the film would typically feel emotions they would normally associate with negative experiences in their life.[citation needed]
Only about 10% of the American population enjoy the physiological rush felt immediately after watching horror films. The population that does not enjoy horror films could experience emotional fallout similar to that of PTSD if the environment reminds them of particular scenes.[citation needed]
A 2021 study suggested horror films that explore grief can provide psychological benefits to the bereaved, with the genre well suited to representing grief through its genre conventions.[245]
Physical effects
In a study by Medes et al., prolonged exposure to infrasound and low-frequency noise (<500 Hz) in long durations has an effect on vocal range (i.e. longer exposure tends to form a lower phonation frequency range).[246] Another study by Baliatsas et al. observed that there is a correlation between exposure to infrasound and low-frequency noises and sleep-related problems.[247] Though most horror films keep the audio around 20–30 Hz, the noise can still be unsettling in long durations.[15]
Another technique used in horror films to provoke a response from the audience is cognitive dissonance, which is when someone experiences tension in themselves and is urged to relieve that tension.[248] Dissonance is the clashing of unpleasant or harsh sounds.[249] A study by Prete et al. identified that the ability to recognize dissonance relied on the left hemisphere of the brain, while consonance relied on the right half.[250] There is a stronger preference for consonance; this difference is noticeable even in early stages of life.[250] Previous musical experience also can influence a dislike for dissonance.[250]
Skin conductance responses (SCRs), heart rate (HR), and electromyographic (EMG) responses vary in response to emotional stimuli, showing higher for negative emotions in what is known as the "negative bias."[251] When applied to dissonant music, HR decreases (as a bodily form of adaptation to harsh stimulation), SCR increases, and EMG responses in the face are higher.[251] The typical reactions go through a two-step process of first orienting to the problem (the slowing of HR), then a defensive process (a stronger increase in SCR and an increase in HR).[251] This initial response can sometimes result in a fight-or-flight response, which is the characteristic of dissonance that horror films rely on to frighten and unsettle viewers.[15]
Reception
In film criticism
See also: Vulgar auteurism
Critic Robin Wood was not the first film critic to take the horror film seriously, but his article Return of the Repressed in 1978 helped inaugurate the horror film into academic study as a genre.[252] Wood later stated that he was surprised that his work, as well as the writing of Richard Lippe and Andrew Britton would receive "historic importance" intellectual views of the film genre.[252] William Paul in his book Laughing Screaming comments that "the negative definition of the lower works would have it that they are less subtle than higher genres. More positively, it could be said that they are more direct. Where lower forms are explicit, higher forms tend to operate more by indirection. Because of this indirection the higher forms are often regarded as being more metaphorical, and consequently more resonant, more open to the exegetical analyses of the academic industry."[253]
Steffen Hantke noted that academic criticism about horror cinema had "always operated under duress" noting that challenges in legitimizing its subject, finding "career-minded academics might have always suspected that they were studying something that was ultimately too frivolous, garish, and sensationalistic to warrant serious critical attention".[254]
Some commentary has suggested that horror films have been underrepresented or underappreciated as serious works worthy of film criticism and major films awards.[255][256] As of 2021, only six horror films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, with The Silence of the Lambs being the sole winner.[257][258] However, horror films have still won major awards.[259]
Critics have also commented on the representation of women[260][261][262][263] and disability[264] in horror films, as well as the prevalence of racial stereotypes.[265][266]
Censorship
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Many horror films have been the subject of moral panic, censorship and legal controversy.
In the United Kingdom, film censorship has frequently been applied to horror films.[267] A moral panic over several slasher films in the 1980s led to many of them being banned but released on videotape; the phenomenon became popularly termed "video nasties".[268][269] Constraints on permitted subject matter in Indonesian films has also influenced Indonesian horror films.[270] In March 2008, China banned all horror films from its market.[271]
In the U.S., the Motion Picture Production Code which was implemented in 1930, set moral guidelines for film content, restraining movies containing controversial themes, graphic violence, explicit sexuality and/or nudity. The gradual abandonment of the Code, and its eventual formal repeal in 1968 (when it was replaced by the MPAA film rating system)[272] offered more freedom to the movie industry.
References
Notes
Marriott & Newman 2018, p. 20.
Kuhn, Annette; Westwell, Guy (20 December 2012), "horror film", A Dictionary of Film Studies, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acref/9780199587261.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-958726-1, retrieved 20 December 2021
Balmain 2008, p. 4.
Rhodes 2014, p. 91.
Rhodes 2018b, p. 97.
Rhodes 2018b, p. 98.
Rhodes 2018b, p. 97-98.
Rhodes 2014, p. 90.
Balmain 2008, p. 5.
Jancovich 2000, p. 31-32.
Jancovich 2000, p. 25-26.
Jancovich 2000, p. 26-27.
Jancovich 2000, p. 28.
Tudor 1991, p. 6-7.
"15 Ways You Didn't Even Realize Horror Movies Are Manipulating You into Fear". Ranker. Retrieved 22 November 2019.
Lerner, Neil (16 December 2009). Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-28044-4.
Prawer 1989, p. 16.
Prawer 1989, p. 17.
Lizardi, Ryan (31 August 2010). "'Re-Imagining' Hegemony and Misogyny in the Contemporary Slasher Remake". Journal of Popular Film and Television. 38 (3): 113–121. doi:10.1080/01956051003623464. S2CID 191466131.
Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra. History and Horror. Screen Education.
Aston & Walliss 2013, p. 4.
Carta, Silvio (October 2011). "Orientalism in the Documentary Representation of Culture". Visual Anthropology. 24 (5): 403–420. doi:10.1080/08949468.2011.604592. S2CID 144730190.
Odell & Le Blanc 2007, p. 15.
Jancovich 1994, p. 26.
Jancovich 1992, p. 112.
Jancovich 1992, p. 115.
Newby, Richard (21 December 2018). "The Strange Appeal of Christmas Horror". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 3 December 2023.
Ulaby, Neda (12 December 2015). "Oh Holy Fright: Christmas Horror Movies That Slay". NPR. Archived from the original on 15 November 2023.
DuPée, Matthew C. (2022). A Scary Little Christmas: A History of Yuletide Horror Films, 1972–2020. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-1-4766-7999-0.
Rockoff 2003, p. 30.
"Kinoeye | French horror: Jean Rollin - an introduction". www.kinoeye.org. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
Hobbs, Thomas (31 October 2021). "'A living mirror to white brutality': Tony Todd on Candyman's violent (and erotic) horror". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
"The sexual undertones of Clive Barker's 'Hellraiser'". faroutmagazine.co.uk. 1 October 2022. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
Topel, Fred (29 January 2019). "What 'Memory: The Origins of Alien' Reveals About the Sexual Metaphors in the 1979 Film [Interview]". Bloody Disgusting!. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
"What's the Meaning Behind the Sexual Imagery in "Alien"? | Watch | The Take". What’s the Meaning Behind the Sexual Imagery in “Alien”? | Watch | The Take. 19 May 2015. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
Hurley, Andrew Michael (28 October 2019). "Devils and debauchery: why we love to be scared by folk horror". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
Murphy, Bernice M. "Beyond Midsommar: 'folk horror' in popular fiction". The Irish Times. Retrieved 12 November 2019.
Ferrarese, Marco. "'New kinds of monsters': The rise of Southeast Asian horror films". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
Rithdee, Kong. "Into the devil's lair". Bangkok Post. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
McRobert, Neil (November 2015). "Mimesis of Media: Found Footage Cinema and the Horror of the Real". Gothic Studies. 17 (2): 137–150. doi:10.7227/GS.17.2.9.
Heller-Nicholas 2014, p. 4.
Hand & McRoy 2020, p. 3.
Hand & McRoy 2020, p. 1.
Hand & McRoy 2020, p. 2.
Hand & McRoy 2020, p. 5-6.
Muir 2012, p. 10.
Muir 2012, p. 11.
Curti 2015, p. 38.
Marriott & Newman 2018, p. 220.
Marriott & Newman 2018, p. 272.
"Natural Horror Top rated Most Viewed – AllMovie". Allrovi.com. Archived from the original on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
Gregersdotter, Hoglund & Hallen 2015, p. 32.
Muir 2012, p. 17.
Muir 2012, p. 19.
Muir 2012, p. 20.
Gregersdotter, Hoglund & Hallen 2015, p. 31.
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Shipka, Danny (2011). Perverse Titillation: The Exploitation Cinema of Italy, Spain and France, 1960–1980. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-4888-3.
Tsang, Raymond (2018). "What Can a Neoi Gwei Teach Us? Adaptation as Reincarnation in Hong Kong Horror of the 1950s". In Bettinson, Gary; Martin, Daniel (eds.). Hong Kong Horror Cinema. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-2460-8.
Tudor, Andrew (1991). Monsters and Mad Scientists : A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 063116992X.
Weaver, Tom; Brunas, Michael; Brunas, John (2007) [1990]. Universal Horrors (2 ed.). McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-2974-5.
Werbeck, Kai-Uwe (2016). "The State vs. Buttgereit and Ittenbach: Censorship and Subversion in German No-Budget Horror Film". Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 27 (3).
West, Alexandra (2016). Films of the New French Extremity. McFarland. ISBN 9781476663487.
West, Alexandra (2018). The 1990s Teen Horror Cycle: Final Girls and a New Hollywood Formula. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-1-4766-7064-5.
Willis, Andy (2018). "From Killer Snakes to Taxi Hunters: Hong Kong Horror in an Exploitation Context". In Bettinson, Gary; Martin, Daniel (eds.). Hong Kong Horror Cinema. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-2460-8.
Wynter, Kevin (2016). "An Introduction to the Continental Horror Film". In Siddique, Sophia; Raphael, Raphael (eds.). Transnational Horror Cinema. Bodies of Excess and the Global Grotesque. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 44. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-58417-5. ISBN 978-1-137-58416-8.
Withers, Ned Athol (18 January 2016). "The 10 Best Australian Films of The 21st Century". Taste of Cinema. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
Worland, Rick (2007). The Horror Film: A Brief Introduction. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-3902-1.
Further reading
Dixon, Wheeler Winston. A History of Horror. (Rutgers University Press; 2010), ISBN 978-0-8135-4796-1.
Steffen Hantke, ed. American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium (University Press of Mississippi; 2010), 253 pages.
Petridis, Sotiris (2014). "A Historical Approach to the Slasher Film". Film International 12 (1): 76–84.
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Celebrities & EntertainmentMovies
75 Horror Movie Villains Who Are Truly Terrifying and Totally Classic
I’ll sleep when I’m dead, it’s fine.
BY HUNTER LEVITAN, COURTNEY YOUNG AND THE EDITORSPUBLISHED: AUG 16, 2023
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WATCH: For the Love of Stitch Braids | The Braid Up
The horror genre is experiencing a reemergence, largely thanks to A24. With recent hits like Hereditary, Midsommar, X, and Pearl, the production company has merged high quality filmmaking with genuine terror. Even now, people are streaming the new Ari Aster horror, Beau is Afraid, and buying tickets to the scariest movie of the year, Talk to Me.
Be it a high production slasher film or a found footage manifesto, a horror movie lives or dies (but mostly dies a horrible death) by its villain. I don't know about you, but watching a deranged serial killer run, walk, slink, or crawl across my screen sounds like the perfect way to end a tough week. Here are the scariest horror movie villains to ever terrorize the big screen.
Mona Wassermann, Beau Is Afraid
beau is afraid
A24
Ari Aster’s surrealist horror Beau Is Afraid is a winding tale that will have you scared without even knowing what of. New horrors are around every corner in this film, but the most bone chilling performance comes from the legend Patti LuPone who plays Mona Wassermann, Beau’s mother. In flashbacks of his life, Mona is played by Zoe Lister-Jones, who is equally scary in the role.
Mia, Run Rabbit Run
run rabbit run
Netflix
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This new Netflix horror stars Succession’s Sarah Snook in her first project since the series wrapped. The film follows a single mother and her seven year-old daughter Mia who becomes attached to a stray rabbit found in their house. From there, things spin out of control, but we won’t spoil.
Bughuul, Sinister
sinister
Lionsgate
One of the best horror films of the last 20 years, Sinister stars Ethan Hawke as a true-crime writer who finds brutal snuff films in the attic of his new family home. A demonic presence named Bughuul appears in the shadows of each of these films, sending him on a mission to figure out what is happening before his own family befalls the same fate as those on the videos.
The Hand, Talk To Me
talk to me
A24
A24’s newest horror hit, Talk To Me, is currently in theaters, so far be it from us to spoil before it streams. Just know, the film follows a group of teenagers who communicate with the dead using an embalmed hand.
Jeremiah Sand, Mandy
mandy
RLJE Films
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Mandy is a 2018 horror film starring Nicolas Cage and To Leslie’s Andrea Riseborough. The film follows a couple living in the mountains who encounter a dangerous religious cult, led by Jeremiah Sand.
Max Cady, Cape Fear
cape fear
Universal
Did you know Robert De Niro has played a non-Mafia villain? He plays Max Cady in the 1991 thriller Cape Fear, a recently released convict who terrorizes the family of his former lawyer.
Clover, Cloverfield
cloverfield
Paramount
This found footage film features a villain that is far from human, a towering creature who decimates New York City.
Buffalo Bill, The Silence of the Lambs
silence of the lambs
Courtesy of ORION PICTURES
A horror flick so great it gives us two villains—Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill. The latter is a serial killer who targets young women and skins them.
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Count Orlok, Nosferatu
nosferatu
Prana Film
The 1922 silent film Nosferatu is one of the earliest iterations of vampire lore, aka the first Twilight. The main villain in this horror is Count Orlok, a vampire who targets the wife of his real estate agent, which is comical for 1922.
Slender Man, Slender Man
slender man
Netflix
This 2018 horror film brings the lore of Slender Man to the screen, so it's obvious who the villain is here.
Biological Essentialists, Clock
clock
Courtesy of Hulu
Fielding pregnancy queries at family functions is already a real-life horror, but this new film raises the stakes. Dianna Agron plays a woman who enrolls in a clinical trial aimed at igniting her dormant child-bearing instincts, "fixing" her "broken" biological clock in horrifying fashion.
M3gan, M3GAN
m3gan
Universal
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The campy horror icon of the year, the people’s princess–welcome to the stage, M3gan. This self-aware AI companion is the It Girl of 2023, playing opposite another emerging horror icon, Allison Williams.
Maud, Saint Maud
saint maud
A24
Maud of Saint Maud is a hospice nurse who, fresh off of a religious awakening, becomes fixated on a patient in her hospital. Convinced that she must save the patient’s soul, Maud turns to increasingly dangerous (read: creepy as hell) tactics.
Peter Graham, Hereditary
hereditary
A24
Like any good possession flick, each character in Hereditary gets the chance to flex their horror skills. That said, the most bone chilling performance in the movie goes to Naked Brothers Band alum Alex Wolff, who–spoiler alert, but the movie is five years old so we don’t want to hear it–in the final moments of the film, descends to the kingdom of Hell as King Paimon.
Ernest Toller, First Reformed
a24 first reformed
© 2022 A24 Distribution, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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This psychological drama stars Ethan Hawke as the pastor of a church in upstate New York in the midst of a crisis of faith. Ernest Toller is not your typical scream-worthy horror character, but if you’ve seen that ending sequence, you know why he’s on this list.
Chef Julian Slowik, The Menu
the menu
YouTube
Filmmakers like Ari Aster, David Cronenberg, and Ti West, alongside talent like Mia Goth, have ushered in a new genre–“elevated horror.” The Menu, which comes from Succession director Mark Mylod, isn’t exactly bone chilling horror, but it’s in the elevated horror stratosphere. The ever-iconic Ralph Fiennes plays Chef Julian Slowik, a mysterious celebrity chef whose pretentious dining experience turns deadly. His mission? Death to foodies.
Pale Man, Pan's Labyrinth
pans labyrinth
Warner Bros.
Pan's Labyrinth’s Pale Man is certified horror camp. Have you seen the movie? Maybe not. Have you seen this image? Absolutely. Despite only being in a single scene, Pale Man is the movie. Pale of skin and hands of cornea, this iconic monster has a taste for children, devouring them in his lair.
The Woman in White, Insidious 2
insidious 2
Matt Kennedy//AP
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Any Nickelodeon kid will remember the biggest jump scare of 2013, seeing Amanda Cantwell, of True Jackson VP fame, looking ghastly and terrifying as The Woman in White in this hit horror sequel. Her name isn’t actually “The Woman in White,” it’s Michelle Crane if you’re nasty. Despite being unseen in the first Insidious film, this horrifying villainess is the main antagonist of the franchise.
The Predator, Prey
set in the comanche nation 300 years ago, “prey” is the story of a young woman, naru, a fierce and highly skilled warrior she has been raised in the shadow of some of the most legendary hunters who roam the great plains, so when danger threatens her camp, she sets out to protect her people the prey she stalks, and ultimately confronts, turns out to be a highly evolved alien predator with a technically advanced arsenal, resulting in a vicious and terrifying showdown between the two adversaries the predator dane diliegro, shown photo by david bukach20th century studios
David Bukach//20th Century Studios
This particular (fictional, whew) species of alien is also the villain of, like, half a dozen other Predator movies, but I gotta shout out the most recent, stripped-down entry set in the Comanche Nation with the absolutely fabulous Amber Midthunder in the lead as the heroine who goes up against the classic movie villain. Predators are almost scariest when you don't see them, because it reminds you that anyone (or anything) could be stalking you at any given moment.
Dean, Missy, and Jeremy Armitage, Get Out
horror movie villains
Get Out
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The entire Armitage family in Get Out is terrifying and freaking psychotic. They possess the kind of passive, manipulative creepiness that absolutely f**ks with your head and sends shivers through your whole body. That and the fact that they embody the insidious racism our country was built on.
Jean Jacket, Nope
steven yeun nope
Universal
Jordan Peele's latest spooky flick introduced a new kind of villain: an alien who is capable of being understood but might gobble you up before you have the time to figure it out. It's better to just, as the title suggests, say "NOPE" and turn around.
Larry Talbot, The Wolf Man
the wolf man
Universal
Nowadays, werewolves are tragic and romantic figures—innocent humans who can't help the monsters they become, like a furry version of the Hulk. But while the classic movie werewolves were scarier than the ones teaching at wizard school or fighting a vampire for a teenage girl's affections, they were also sympathetic. This particular villain reminds us that sometimes the scariest monster.. is ourselves! OoooOOOOoOoOoOooooohh!!
Steve, Fresh
fresh “fresh” follows noa daisy edgar jones, who meets the alluring steve sebastian stan at a grocery store and – given her frustration with dating apps – takes a chance and gives him her number after their first date, noa is smitten and accepts steve’s invitation to a romantic weekend getaway only to find that her new paramour has been hiding some unusual appetites steve sebastian stan, shown courtesy of searchlight pictures
Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
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It's only my biggest fear that I'll hit it off with some guy only to end up chained in his basement (and not in a fun and/or consensual way). This movie just gets wilder, scarier, and more twisted as it goes on! Sebastian Stan is so much of a charming everyman that it makes his villainous turn that much more likely to haunt you for weeks.
Pearl, X and Pearl
mia goth pearl
A24
2022 gave us a new (and... kind of adorable?? but in a terrifying way) slasher played by Mia Goth in not one but two movies plus a third one on the way. We haven't seen the last of this lady killer yet...
Audrey II, Little Shop of Horrors
audrey ii plant from the film little shop of horrors
Murray Close//Getty Images
Don’t feed the plants.
Patrick Bateman, American Psycho
christian bale in 'american psycho'
Hulton Archive//Getty Images
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Nostalgia for the '80s hits differently when you’re watching one of its most iconic characters commit brutal murders with a Rembrandt smile. The fact that Bateman’s killing may or may not be happening in his head makes him somehow scarier. If even he doesn’t know what’s real…do you?
Frank-N-Furter, The Rocky Horror Picture Show
the rocky horror picture show
Movie Poster Image Art//Getty Images
Tim Curry is so campy, sexy, and entertaining in the cult musical that you forget he’s actually pretty friggin’ evil, tries to kill almost all of the characters, and is ultimately defeated at the end of the movie. Just because this twist on the “car broke down outside a spooky mansion” trope includes a dance-off doesn’t make the stakes any lower.
The Mother, Barbarian
barbarian 2022 georgina campbell
20th Century Studios
Most folks say not to learn anything about Barbarian before seeing it... so I won't tell you anything about the villain or how you may or may not feel about them at the end. Barbarian has a lot of twists that make it an instant classic.
Lucille Sharpe, Crimson Peak
jessica chastain crimson peak
Legendary Pictures
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Spoiler alert: though he’s played many villains in his career, Tom Hiddleston is not the villain Crimson Peak. It’s his character’s sister and her creepy incest vibes that you need to watch out for in Guillermo Del Toro’s film.
Godzilla and/or King Kong
godzilla v kong
Warner Bros.
They're such classic horror movies that we even love to see them fight each other!
Jennifer, Jennifer's Body
megan fox jennifers body
20th Century Studios
This underrated film is fuh-in-ah-lly getting the praise and recognition that it deserves. It's such a good campy horror movie. Megan Fox is incredible as the villain. It's funny and feminist and so freaking good. If you're a f*ckboy, you should be scared of her.
Men, Men
rory kinnear green man men a24
Kevin Baker/A24
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Okay, so there are actually a few specific and terrifying characters in the A24 film who would technically be classified as "the villain" in a more traditional sense. One of them is based on "The Green Man" from folklore, which also popped up in a recent-ish season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. But it's just men, right? It's always just men.
The Facility, Cabin in the Woods
cabin in the woods
Lionsgate
Monsters and jump scares are a dime a dozen in this spooky comedy, and any one of them is likely to shake you to your very core. The film’s “big bad” is an organization of corporate types who gleefully sacrifice young people and bet on which gore-filled horror will get them first. Somehow these heartless dweebs are the scariest of all. (That said, special shoutout to the Merman, always.)
Vivian Tyrell, Vampires vs. The Bronx
vampires vs the bronx
Broadway Video
Well…*pushes glasses up nose* the real villain is gentrification, but who better to represent that than the white girl who is new to the neighborhood and just so happens to be a bloodthirsty vampire? It's not as subtle as Get Out, but since when has horror ever aimed for subtly?
Mama, Mama
horror movie villains
Youtube
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A possessed, demonic, and spidery creature, this controlling mother is none too pleased when her two young daughters are adopted—even though she abandoned them in the woods for, um, five years. So she does what any mother would do: she terrorizes and tortures everyone, including her! own! children!
Carrie White, Carrie
horror movie villains
New York Times
You could argue that Carrie White is actually the victim in this story. But just because her murdering rampage is kinda warranted doesn't mean it's not also horrifying as hell.
The Thing, The Thing
horror movie villains
Machine Mean
No one knows exactly what the Thing is in John Carpenter's 1982 classic sci-fi horror film. Because there's really no better name for a slimy conglomeration of limbs and hands and teeth than the Thing.
Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
sweeney todd
Warner Brothers
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Not gonna lie, any time a movie shows someone getting shaved by a straight razor my blood turns to ice. It's 100 percent because of this musical.
The Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
elizabeth olsen as wanda maximoff in marvel studios' wandavision exclusively on disney photo courtesy of marvel studios ©marvel studios 2021 all rights reserved
Marvel Studios
Now, do I love that Elizabeth Olsen's Marvel hero made such a dramatic villainous turn after seemingly getting closure in WandaVision? Not really! But that's where we're at, and I was delightfully spooked by all of the gruesome ways she magically murdered people in the movie.
Seth Brundle, The Fly
horror movie villains
Bloody Disgusting
Seth Brundle was just your typical crazy mad scientist trying to impress a girl with a supposed breakthrough invention. Until the experiment took a very different course...one that involves Brundle slowly morphing into a human-sized fly creature that's just as gross as it sounds.
Henry, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
horror movie villains
Filmmaker Magazine
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Michael Rooker's harrowing performance as serial killer Henry Lee Lucas is deeply, deeply disturbing. You know this is based on a true story of a real-life murderer, right? Do not, I repeat, do *not* watch this alone at night.
Anna Ivers, The Uninvited
horror movie villains
Tumblr
I don't want to give away too much butttttt the movie revolves around Anna, who has been in a psych ward for nearly a year following the death of her terminally ill mother. In this psychological thriller, it's unclear what's real and what's a hallucination until the very, very end—at which point, one last twist awaits you.
Brahms, The Boy
horror movie villains
Bloody Disgusting
Why do we let little kids play with dolls and pretend like they aren't the scariest things ever?!?!? Brahms is a creepy, life-like doll who terrorizes anyone who comes in contact with him. Thanks Hollywood, but I don't need another reason to harbor ridiculous paranoia about dolls!
Esther, Orphan
horror movie villains
Deadline
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Listen, obviously little kids can be super cute and adorable, but they can also be freaking CREEPY. Exhibit A: Esther, from Orphan. Esther epitomizes Evil Child Syndrome, which is a real thing, apparently.
Lestat, Interview With the Vampire
tom cruise lestat
Warner Bros.
Of course, Lestat is only really the villain from Louis's POV. But just because we fantasize about being on his good side doesn't mean we wouldn't want to be on his bad side. Antiheroes can be friggin' terrifying too.
Griffin, The Invisible Man
'the invisible man', 2020pinterest
Universal
This 2020 retelling of H. G. Wells’s classic novel of the same name modernizes the evil Dr. Griffin by making him a super-possessive ex-boyfriend/inventor who fakes his own death and makes a techy suit that turns him invisible so he can terrorize his ex-girlfriend Cecilia. His hobbies include sneaking into Cecilia’s room and pulling off the bed covers while she's sleeping and tackling her from behind, ya know, just stuff that makes everyone around Cecilia question her sanity.
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The Shark, Jaws
'jaws', 1975pinterest
mptvimages
This circa 1970 shark might look kind of fake, sure. But if you’ve ever been afraid of the deep blue sea, this massive great white villain—with his rows of razor-sharp teeth, hankering for human flesh, and a not an ounce of remorse—will only confirm your fears. You’ll definitely want to say “no thanks” to any cruise or boat trip opportunities forever.
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Pelle, Midsommar
'midsommar', 2019pinterest
Gabor Kotschy
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Incoming *controversial* take! Can we just talk about the fact that Pelle—as good as he thinks his intentions might be—literally took all his new “friends” on this trip to Sweden to visit his ~cute~ cult family and subjected those same “friends” to human sacrifice, bad shroom trips, and general gory chaos. Like? IDK? Sounds pretty villainous to me. Also, he is just waaay too ready to comfort Dani. And his smile? It’s creepy.
Ghostface, Scream
This content is imported from Giphy. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Fact: Ghostface is terrifying. I get that most people, at this point, associate Ghostface with things like their little brother’s Halloween costume or Scary Movie and maybe don’t find him that scary. But no. Literally, LOOK at that mask. The eyes are too empty and the mouth is way, way too long to be natural.
The Xenomorph, Alien
This content is imported from Giphy. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
There are countless iterations of this parasitic and murderous alien monster, but there’s nothing quite like the OG Xenomorph from the first Alien movie. This guy comes out as a weird crab-like creature that pops out of an even weirder fleshy egg that latches on to your face and falls off before a little demon-alien baby (think: Bella’s vampire child but scarier) bursts out of your stomach and grows into a human-size killing machine with an extra jaw. Need I say more?
Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley
matt damon
Jim Smeal//Getty Images
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This may be more of a thriller than a horror movie, and half of the stuff that Matt Damon does feels kiiiiiiiiind of aspirational until you realize that he's a sociopath. But like some of the other villains on this list, it's the quiet ones you need to watch out for. The so-called "nice guys" you don't see coming.
Michael Myers, Halloween
Jamie Lee Curtis In 'Halloween H20: 20 Years Later'pinterest
Dimension Films/Getty Images
Ruining Jamie Lee Curtis’s trick-or-treating and otherwise harmless sheet masks since 1978. You might want to hide all your sharp knives after this one.
The Entity, It Follows
Event, Tourist attraction, Art, pinterest
Dimension
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If you haven’t seen It Follows, allow me to explain the setup: You have sex with someone infected by the entity. The entity, which can take the shape of anyone, including people you know, starts following you. The entity follows you until it kills you or you pass it on to someone else through sex. If the entity kills that person, it comes back for you. You can never go anywhere with only one exit, you can never trust anyone, and you can never sleep again. Basically, you are f**ked for all eternity. Good luck! (Bonus: For a good three or four days after watching this movie, you will believe every single person you see is a sex demon coming to murder you.)
Annabelle, The Conjuring and Annabelle
Face, Head, Eye, Lip, Mouth, Fiction, Smile, Fictional character, Costume, Doll, pinterest
Warner Bros.
Annabelle certainly isn’t the first villain to prove that dolls are horrible and should never be allowed in the hands of human children, but she does hold the distinct honor of being based on an IRL doll believed to be responsible for the death of at least one person. Having met that doll, I can confirm that she is just as scary in real life as she is onscreen, if not more so.
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Jason Voorhees, Friday the 13th
Fiction, Ghost, Outerwear, Adventure game, Digital compositing, Fictional character, Cg artwork, Darkness, Games, Illustration, pinterest
Warner Bros.
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Jason wants revenge for getting drowned in a lake, and I get that. I really do. But did he have to drag his mother into it? The only thing worse than a serial killer hell-bent on destruction is one who has to get his mother to do it for him. Does he ask her to wash his underwear too?
Helmet, Sports gear, Personal protective equipment, Mask, Goaltender mask, Headgear, Hockey protective equipment, Costume, Fictional character, Fiction, pinterest
Giphy
Minnie Castevet, Rosemary’s Baby
Ear, Headpiece, Screenshot, pinterest
Paramount
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In Minnie’s defense, she’s not the only resident of the Bramford who conspired to get Rosemary knocked up with Lil Satan, but she’s definitely the one you’d least expect—and that’s what makes her terrifying. She might look like an innocent elderly neighbor who just wants to help calm your pregnancy nerves (for the love of god, don’t take the herbs!), but in reality, she’s a devil worshipper determined to make sure your newborn ends up in a black bassinet designed for a hell spawn. He has his father’s eyes!
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"The Beast" a.k.a. "The Horde," Split (and Glass)
james mcavoy glass
Universal
Deranged James McAvoy and it's secretly a sequel to Unbreakable???? Yes please.
Mister Babadook, The Babadook
Art, Font, Black-and-white, Visual arts, Street art, Illustration, Drawing, Fictional character, Graffiti, pinterest
IFC
As was established with Esther in Orphan, children are terrifying, but they’re even worse when they start hallucinating a character from a kid’s book and crafting homemade weapons to defend themselves from said character. It also doesn’t help that the Babadook looks like your childhood vision of the bogeyman.
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Face, Black, Darkness, Black-and-white, Head, Beauty, Nose, Monochrome, Lip, Eye, pinterest
Giphy
Pinhead, Hellraiser
Head, Illustration, Human, Art, Fictional character, pinterest
Getty Images
I mean, hello. Look at him.
Freddy Krueger, A Nightmare on Elm Street
Musical, Performance, Fun, Singing, Event, Art, Singer, Stage, Performing arts, Pop music, pinterest
New Line/Getty
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Everyone’s had nightmares, and everyone knows they’re awful. Freddy Krueger is what happens when those nightmares come alive and actually start killing you. Sweet dreams, suckers!
Head, Chin, Forehead, Human, Headgear, Hat, Fictional character, pinterest
Giphy
Annie Wilkes, Misery
Picture frame, Houseplant, Lamp, Barber chair, Living room, Service, Personal grooming, Hairdresser, Patient, Beard, pinterest
Columbia Pictures
Before she was killing it on American Horror Story as formidable villains Delphine (Coven) and the Butcher (Roanoke), Kathy Bates ruined lives as Annie Wilkes, a psychopath who takes the word “superfan” too far. She’s the single reason Harry Styles doesn’t respond to your daily Twitter mentions.
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This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Candyman, Candyman
Room, Photography, Smile, pinterest
TriStar
Pour one out for all the ’90s kids who saw this at the video store and mistook it for a sequel to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. If this guy offers you an Everlasting Gobstopper, do not take it under any circumstances.
Samara Morgan, The Ring
Samarapinterest
Dreamworks
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Actually, forget what I said about "super cute and adorable." Children are terrifying. This is a fact. Even in real life, they talk to people who aren’t there, they think a fairy comes to their rooms at night and hands over money in exchange for lost teeth, and they could accidentally kill themselves at any moment.
Nature, Forest, Woodland, Natural environment, Tree, Black, Monochrome photography, Black-and-white, Old-growth forest, Natural landscape, pinterest
Giphy
But no child, real or imagined, is more terrifying than Samara Morgan, a monster so nightmare-inducing that after I first saw The Ring, my mom offered to take my television out of my bedroom lest Samara crawl out of it and strangle me. May Samara fall down that well one more time and never slink out of it again.
Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs
Cap, Headgear, Peaked cap, Costume accessory, Law enforcement, Military person, Official, Costume hat, pinterest
20th Century Fox
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He could have just been a serial killer with a talent for uncomfortably compelling conversation. But nooo, he had to be a cannibal too. Have the lambs stopped screaming, Clarice? No, Hannibal, and they never will as long as your face is visible on cable 40 times a month.
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Jack Torrance, The Shining
Event, pinterest
Getty Images
No matter how many times you see The Shining, the image of Jack Nicholson’s face popping through that door after he bashes it in with an axe will never stop being bury-your-face-in-the-couch terrifying. Side note: This movie makes a great case for never marrying a writer.
Lighting, Room, Lighting accessory, Sitting, Living room, Furniture, Lampshade, Lamp, Interior design, Light fixture, pinterest
Giphy
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Norman Bates, Psycho
If a boy tells you his best friend is his mother, run.
Psychopinterest
Archive Photos//Getty Images
Pennywise, It
Clown, Performing arts, Animated cartoon, Nose, Animation, Fiction, Smile, Fictional character, Mime artist, pinterest
Warner Bros. Pictures
As Carrie Bradshaw so wisely said, “Nothing’s scarier than a clown,” and no clown is scarier than Pennywise, who is not even really a clown but an evil otherworldly entity that just takes the form of a clown so he can more easily murder children. (TBT to the infamous clown epidemic of 2016!)
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Clown, Performing arts, Wig, Smile, Costume, Art, pinterest
Giphy
Pazuzu, The Exorcist
What, you thought it was gonna be Regan MacNeil on this list? You can’t blame her for all that green vomit and floor pee! It was all Pazuzu’s fault. (Although, technically, none of this would have happened if she hadn’t been playing with that Ouija board in the first place.)
exorcistpinterest
Warner Brothers
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This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Leatherface, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Grass, Backlighting, Photography, Sunlight, Happy, pinterest
Dark Sky Films
Spoiler alert: That’s not really leather.
Black, Skin, Brown, Darkness, Nose, Hand, Close-up, Neck, Finger, Wood, pinterest
Giphy
Dr. Heiter, The Human Centipede
Eyewear, Dress shirt, Sleeve, pinterest
IFC
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This dude gets off on sewing people’s mouths to other people’s buttholes. What else could you possibly need to know?
The Nun, The Nun
Black, Face, Head, Veil, Darkness, Outerwear, Eyewear, Photography, Hand, Glasses, pinterest
Warner Bros. Pictures
The only thing scarier than the Nun is the fact that she’s based on an IRL nightmare of a true story.
Black Phillip, The Witch
Goats, Goat, Horn, Barbary sheep, Mountain goat, Argali, Black-and-white, bighorn, Aries, Wildlife, pinterest
A24
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Who wouldn’t want a talking pet goat, right?!
Darkness, Portrait, Human, Photography, Adaptation, Flash photography, Fiction, Black-and-white, Smile, Fictional character, pinterest
Giphy
Unless you’re all alone in the middle of nowhere with your family and that goat is actually Satan. Then, I guess, no one?
Chucky, Child's Play
chucky child's play
Universal
He's only just the reason that people are scared of dolls. Well... him and Anabelle. Also his wife Tiffany. Dolls are scary, ok?! If one came to life IRL it would be freaky AF, not fun and cute like Toy Story!!
Joker, The Dark Knight
heath ledger joker
Warner Bros.
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Christopher Nolan's second Batman movie is not a horror movie, but Heath Ledger's Joker definitely thinks he's in a horror movie. That's what's so scary and chaotic about him.
Alex Forrest, Fatal Attraction
glenn close fatal attraction
Paramount
The new Netflix movie Do Revenge asked us to embrace our Glennergy in homage to this classic, so let's give it the frighting shoutout it deserves. Fatal Attraction's villain is scary on her own and scary how she convinced men IRL that this is how "crazy" girls get when they have a crush. Forgive us for having feelings, Hollywood!!
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