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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 ...
- Introduction
- Best Horror Movies from The 1930s
- More Horror Movies from The 1930s
- Why Are There Almost No Horror Films from 1936 – 1938?
- Further Reading
The 1930s were a tremendously influential decade for horror cinema and for paving the way for what would become modern Hollywood moviemaking. Perhaps what is most striking about horror films from the 1930s is that virtually every movie made during this decade is still recognizable today. Almost all the major films of the 1930s are still major films...
Frankenstein
This legendary adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel features Colin Clive as Dr. Henry Frankenstein, who is slowly driving away those around him with his maniacal fixation on creating a human being from dead body parts. He begins by experimenting with animals. Then, with the help of his assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye), Frankenstein exhumes a corpse from its coffin and steals the body. Perhaps the audacity of the entire project made it doomed from the start, but when Fritz drops the glass cont...
Dracula
Although F. W. Murnau’s silent horror classic Nosferatu (1922) is widely considered to be the first full-length feature film based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula, the 1931 version directed by Tod Browning and starring Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi in the title role is the first to actually use the title Dracula and is regarded as the standard-setter for all vampire films to follow, many of whom would also star Lugosi. The film begins in the foggy and creepy Carpathian Mountai...
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Fredric March won the Best Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of the mild-mannered and well-meaning Dr. Henry Jekyll, a scientist who postulates that there are two sides in every human—a good side and an evil side—and that it is possible via medicine to split the two sides and isolate the good side for the betterment of humanity. He develops a potion that he drinks which turns him into Mr. Hyde, a brutal and sadistic villain with an uncontrollable lust for a dancer girl named Ivy Pearson (...
Observant readers might notice that from 1936 to 1938 there were no horror movies on the best-of list. Why? As scholar Alex Naylor writes, it had to do with a kind of passive censorship. For decades, film historians have repeated the half-truth that British “censorship” of horror movies—which started in the mid-1930s when authorities in England beg...
Jul 9, 2010 · July 9, 2010. By. Chris Eggertsen. In Bloody-Disgusting’s second entry in our “100 Years in Horror” series, we take a look back at the horror films that grew out of some of the most pivotal ...
Apr 29, 2019 · Building upon the success of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "The Phantom of the Opera," Universal Studios entered a Golden Age of monster movies in the '30s, releasing a string of hit horror movies beginning with "Dracula and Frankenstein" in 1931 and including the controversial "Freaks" and a Spanish version of "Dracula" that is often thought to be superior to the English-language version.
Feb 7, 2024 · Key Takeaways. Freaks came out in 1932 and is more complex (and horrifying) than most modern horror films. The film tackles themes that feel at home in A24's modern works, with an absolutely brutal and horrifying ending. Freaks went through critical reappraisal many times over and remains one of Hollywood's most unsung horror classics.
- Senior Staff Writer
Because the Motion Picture Production Code (known as the Hays Code) began to be seriously enforced in 1934, horror films declined in the second half of the 1930s. Karloff worked in other genres, making two films in Britain, Juggernaut (1936) and The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936) which was released in the U.S. as The Man Who Lived Again .
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Jul 2, 2021 · We’ll be breaking them into a series, starting with the very beginning of horror in the late 1800s through the silent era, ending in the 1910s. Though the film industry began in the early 1800s, the horror genre officially got its start with Georges Méliès in the 1890s. Méliès was a french director and actor, who starred in the majority ...
