Birth of the American Horror Film

Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D., currently serves as Postgraduate Director for Film Studies at the Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is the author of Lugosi (1997), White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film (2002), Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema (2012) and The Perils of Moviegoing in America (2012). Rhodes is also the writer-director of the documentary films Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004). Currently he is at work on a history of the American horror film to 1915, as well as a biography of William Fox.

In a remarkable work of historical research, Gary Rhodes provides what must certainly be the definitive study of the origins of the horror film genre. First, he traces the manifestations of “horror-themed” material well back into the 18th century, considering literature, theater, graphic arts, freak shows, lurid news stories—anything likely to raise a thrill of horror. He then turns to early cinema—the peep shows, the nickelodeons—covering its development from 1895 to 1915. Most popular of the horror figures were witches, ghosts, and devils, but almost all future familiar frights were represented—vampires, werewolves, mummies, monsters, mad scientists, mesmerists, somnambulists, aliens, sinister “others.” The only horror missing from the period was the zombie. Rhodes also enumerates the films based on the works of Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and—especially—Edgar Allan Poe. The sheer volume of films produced is astonishing. Most are lost, of course, but Rhodes does a magnificent job of resurrecting them, using advertising copy, publicity stills, trade magazines, and film criticism to recuperate plots and some notion of style.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1: LiteratureChapter 2: TheatreChapter 3: Visual CultureChapter 4: Moving PicturesChapter 5: DevilsChapter 6: WitchesChapter 7: GhostsChapter 8: Supernatural CreaturesChapter 9: Death, Murder, and ExecutionChapter 10: Evolution and DevolutionChapter 11: The Other(s)Chapter 12: The Powers of the MindChapter 13: Mad ScientistsChapter 14: American Literature OnscreenChapter 15: Exhibition and Reception