A strong argument could be made for King Kong being the most influential movie ever made. Kong’s progeny includes Mighty Joe Young, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, Ray Harryhausen films, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings, Avatar, many of the character-driven stop motion creations of the past ninety years, and dozens […]
The post The Eighth Wonder: Why ‘Kong’ is Still King 90 Years Later appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
No film of the Hays Code era revels in its own perversity quite like Mad Love (1935). Mad science, body horror, insanity, obsession, executions, gaslighting, sadomasochism—it’s all here and presented with unparalleled excellence of craft. Though it may seem tame compared to pre-Code fare like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Freaks, and Island of […]
The post ‘Mad Love’ – This 1930s Body Horror Classic Pushed the Hays Code to Its Limits appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Two films made in 1941 led directly to the making of Cat People the following year, The Wolf Man and Citizen Kane. Kane had become a fiasco for RKO when newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst condemned the film as a thinly veiled attack against him. Ultimately it led to the ousting of studio head George […]
The post Fear of the Dark: ‘Cat People’ and the Horrors of Repression appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Following the release of Frankenstein, Boris Karloff, at nearly 45 years of age and having spent twenty years as a professional actor, became an overnight sensation. As the film was still raking in its rewards, Universal signed him to a star contract and immediately began searching for a property for him. As it turned out […]
The post Monsters Among Us: Why ‘The Mummy’ Endures 90 Years Later appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Two of the greatest horror films of all time are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year. The first, and best known, is F.W. Murnau’s unparalleled vampire epic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. Not quite as well known but at least as influential is Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, also known as The Witch, a truly […]
The post The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: ‘Häxan-Witchcraft Through the Ages’ at 100 [Gods and Monsters] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Two of the greatest and most successful horror films made in the wave that followed the successes of Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1931 were virtually lost for much of the ninety years since their release. It is true that the black and white versions of Doctor X (1932) and Mystery […]
The post Death in Living Color: Rediscovering Lost Classics ‘Doctor X’ and ‘Mystery of the Wax Museum’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
After the success of Dracula in early 1931, several studios large and small rushed into production on their own macabre features. With the early thirties being the depths of the Great Depression, these studios were eager to make films on low budgets that could turn large profits. As has continued to be the case even […]
The post Are We Not Men? – ‘Island of Lost Souls’ and What It Means to Be Human appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Psycho is given a great deal of credit for redefining the direction American horror would take in the 1960s, and rightly so, but another film also deserves recognition for its innovations and influence. Like Psycho, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? signaled a shift from aliens, giant bugs, and atomic monsters to the more subtle […]
The post We Could Have Been Friends: The Prison of Bitterness in ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
It seems that every decade or so the horror genre is declared dead only for a groundbreaking film to come along and resurrect it. In the late 1950s, that film was The Curse of Frankenstein. The “death” of horror is always hyperbole, often merely declaring the end of a particular trend within the genre, but […]
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There is only a handful of films a hundred years old or more that are still preserved, watched, and acknowledged as masterpieces. A few from the early days of cinema endure as milestones and curiosities but works of cinematic art that have endured for over a century are rare—Georges Méliès’s “A Trip to the Moon,” […]
The post Creeping Shadows: Why ‘Nosferatu’ Still Holds Up 100 Years Later appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
When he was sixteen years old, Tod Browning ran away with the circus. Technically speaking it was a travelling show called the Manhattan Fair & Carnival Company which he joined after becoming enthralled with one of its dancers. He held several jobs in various carnivals, circuses, and sideshows including barker, escape artist, clown, and stable […]
The post One of Us: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of ‘Freaks’ [Gods and Monsters] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
1931 is the foundational year for the horror film. It is the year in which all the strands and experiments of the silent era crystalized into the genre we now know. Even the term “horror movie” was not in wide use before 1931. Four films in particular have had a lasting impact on the genre […]
The post The Enduring Power of Oscar-Winning Horror Classic ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ [Gods and Monsters] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
In Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Pretorius, played by the inimitable Ernest Thesiger, raises his glass and proposes a toast to Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein—“to a new world of Gods and Monsters.” I invite you to join me in exploring this world, focusing on horror films from the dawn of the Universal Monster movies in 1931 to the […]
In Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Pretorius, played by the inimitable Ernest Thesiger, raises his glass and proposes a toast to Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein—“to a new world of Gods and Monsters.” I invite you to join me in exploring this world, focusing on horror films from the dawn of the Universal Monster movies in 1931 to the […]
In Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Pretorius, played by the inimitable Ernest Thesiger, raises his glass and proposes a toast to Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein—“to a new world of Gods and Monsters.” I invite you to join me in exploring this world, focusing on horror films from the dawn of the Universal Monster movies in 1931 to the […]