Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie

by Andrew Tudor

In Monsters and Mad Scientists Andrew Tudor presents a systematic history of the horror movie genre, discussing individual movies in detail, while also drawing out the more general patterns in the genre's development.

The author explores the basic narrative strategies of the horror movie, and looks at the distinctive horror traditions based on 'mad science', on supernatural monsters and on psychotic killers.

Although derived from detailed research into almost one thousand films, this book is written in an accessible style and retains a vivid sense of the fascination of the movies themselves.

Genres: Horror, Nonfiction, History, Film, Media Tie In

239 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1989

Reviews

[Bill Weaver · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is the power it gives the audience aka ‘the folk’. There is an attempt here by an academic to understand horror films at least in part as the audience does, “to consider the audience’s implicit conception of the ‘language’ of the genre”, though not with surveys but by high-level categorization of the films into popular categories of understanding or as the author calls it - “practical consciousness”. (pp. 4-5) An adequate takedown of the ‘psychoanalytic’ method of film analysis, this book also suggests difficulties with psychoanalysis of ‘folklore’. I admit that I don’t agree with some of his assignments of certain films into his categories, but the author at least is willing to admit that there is some flexibility, especially with regards to the “contrast between supernatural and secular”, as “[s]ome narratives hinge on an ambiguity about precisely this distinction, while others may seek to create tension by treating a notionally secular threat as if it were an instance of the supernatural.“ (p. 9) This brings us to the difficulty that some academics seem to have with the supernatural or non-material world. This is like the Native American ghost story folk narrative experiments where observers (selected from a pool of available and essentially rational/materialist grad students) cannot help but retell the story without the supernatural elements, as if they can’t even bring themselves to consider the option of a ghost story, because it is told as a matter of fact. This is a difficulty in the study of folklore as well - how to reconcile historical/rational analysis with fantastical/irrational elements. To cite my favorite current example of this functional problem with the academic social system, it seems peculiar that so many of the academics I’ve read on this topic appear unable to grasp the simple notion that Michael Myers is all about the supernatural. Michael Myers *is* the boogeyman. Similarly, most genre fans I think understand that Jason Vorhees is ultimately shown over the course of the sequels to be a revenant (a type of vengeful ghost). For Jason of course these sequels fall outside the time period covered by this book, but for Michael Myers, the supernatural element is really that simple, yet I have read multiple academic books that cannot get basic textual analysis correct, even going so far as to misquote the Halloween climax where authorial intent and internal plot confirms this supernatural element to be correct. Here too the author of this book, despite many strengths to his approach, lumps these ghost stories together with the ‘psychotic’ films. I don’t see the movie Psycho and the film Halloween in the same bucket at all. Is it even possible for academics to accept that the audience might know more than they do about these movies? Or at least that audience understanding is as valid a method of analysis as any academic critique? (Here is exposed perhaps in part the paradox inherent in academic study of any social subject.) Thus, it seems that this statistical analysis might be skewed by manipulating somewhat subjective boundaries, between both the categories of films and the time periods in his analysis. For example, why is 1960 such a firm boundary? Why not 1955? Or 1947? Or 1967? Or 1968? And is the analysis even that deep though? Who doesn’t understand that the sixties are seen as a turning point? Who doesn’t understand that after so many ‘cultural revolutions’, there is a weakening of classical narrative and a ‘delegitimation’ of authority? So popular horror movies reflect the popular cultural moods of the audience and the times. What does this really say? It seems painfully obvious in final analysis and from a variety of angles. Why not merely plot films released during a given year and graph all his categories over time so we get a sense over time rather than suggest these arbitrary time periods? He suggests to avoid confusion but perhaps confusion is the point. He also suggests that a given category increase may indicate increasing concern with that type of film but yet he fails to explicitly plot the financials - how popular the films were (and in comparison both within and outside the genre boundaries) - which seems a better indicator of audience mood than anything else. Are these horror movies fringe or mainstream? He suggests that these are watched mostly by ‘genre fans’. Some of course may ‘cross over’ to the mainstream but he maps both the blockbusters of the genre and the more obscure fan ‘hits’ onto his theories about broad cultural developments in society. There is some difficulty in making this leap without additional analysis. And why does he mostly discount the outliers, those films that for reason of subject matter or technique do not quite fit within his schema? Outliers it seems might be worthy of greater attention. And how do we decide what is an outlier? Is it only subject matter? Or should box office receipts also play a part? And as I suggest with the mainstream/genre distinction, are horror movies an ‘outlier’ themselves? Sometimes the author suggests that the films he is describing were financially successful, but the details of how this measure interplays with his analysis are obscure. Producers of films may become interested in certain areas by mistaken assumptions about audience taste. How do these films compare at the box office year to year? For example, why did Hammer films, if it represented important cultural changes of a given period, collapse within a relatively short period of time? All in all though I like this book and there is more to like than dislike. Even my concerns are essentially additional areas for research rather than outright failings of this particular book. Additionally there is the idea that this is all still in flux, which the author also points out in his conclusion. The historical sample and analysis essentially stop in the mid eighties. This book is both a history and in a sense historical. The most important question might be whether these types of narratives recur in cyclical form in society, as for example the second of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films features essentially a closed knowledge narrative with Doc Ock as the mad scientist - does this mark a mainstream return to the closed classical knowledge narrative form!??? How do we predict (or know) when a given form becomes again popular?! The only real difficulty I have is that we have no way to independently evaluate his statistics as he lays them out, but rather become entirely dependent on his higher level analysis and must trust that his numbers and categories are correct. Without access to the underlying data, this is difficult to verify.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

An early study of the phenomenon of horror films, Tudor approaches the question as a cultural historian with a healthy dose of sociology. He classifies films according to various forms of threats: internal, external, dependent, autonomous, supernatural, secular, and then goes through a history of the films released in Britain from the 1930s to 1984. His analysis is somewhat statistical and he follows this up with a look at narratives, settings, plots, characters and other important features of the genre. This is then supplemented with a discussion of science, supernatural, and psyche.

The analysis is difficult to dispute as it is backed up by numbers, but one gets the sense that there is more to it than Tudor can address in this small book. It is insightful and sets the study on the topic on a firm theoretical base. I especially liked his thesis about how science falls away as super nature grows and that in the most recent period (for him) psychological threats predominate. If the same study were done today the results would likely be vastly different. A good historical source on the subject.

For those interested, I say more here: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.