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Horror and the Hays Code (Horror Through The Decades, 1920's-1930's)
9 Plays17 days ago
In this episode, Carly will be taking you back to some of the earliest days of cinema—the 1920’s silent films and the talkies of the 1930’s. The roots of horror go back to these early films, and this episode will uncover some of the oldest roots of horror cinema. You’ll also get to learn more about the motion picture production code, sometimes known as the Hays Code, and how that affected the horror movies being made in Hollywood.
Here is the link to the video podcast covering the Mad Scientist trope over time that I referenced in the episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4yEj6knGb0
And in other news, What Haunts You? can now be found on Youtube! Subscribe to the podcast there as well:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9RM3LDfzoYRwPBKGHa5PUQ
**CORRECTION: During recording I mixed up my movies and said that Nosferatu was released in Germany in 1920, but it was actually released in 1922.
Intro Music: Body in the trunk by Victor_Natas -- https://freesound.org/s/717975/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Outro Music: drum loop x5 by theoctopus559 -- https://freesound.org/s/622897/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
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Transcript
Introduction to 'What Haunts You'
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome to What Haunts You, a podcast about the stories that haunt our dreams. I'm Carly. Follow the show on Instagram at whathauntsyoupod. Tap the bell on Spotify to get notified when new episodes come out.
00:00:38
Speaker
Or, as of this episode, you can also find What Haunts You on YouTube. The link to the YouTube channel will be in the show notes.
Carly's Early Horror Experiences
00:00:47
Speaker
So my confession today is that I was not a horror kid.
00:00:53
Speaker
I was pretty easily scared by things in movies or on TV as a kid and not in a way that was fun for me and definitely not in a way that was fun for my parents.
00:01:04
Speaker
In middle school, I even saw Scary Movie 3 and was sleeping with my lights on for a while because I was so scared of it. So definitely was a late bloomer.
00:01:18
Speaker
But my horror origin story is really a time when I was homesick from school. And it was the days of Comcast On Demand, and I was allowed to rent movies because I was stuck at home by myself.
00:01:33
Speaker
And for some reason, I chose to rent Candyman and The People Under the Stairs. I'm not even really sure why I rented them. I definitely was not confident in my ability to watch horror movies.
00:01:47
Speaker
I think it was probably helpful that it was during the day because i definitely had no reason to think that I wouldn't be too scared.
Political Themes in Horror Movies
00:01:59
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that I thought Candyman was going to be a generic slasher movie, and I'm also pretty sure that I thought The People Under the Stairs would be a ghost story or something because the poster really gives haunted house vibes.
00:02:16
Speaker
And I suppose in some ways it is haunted house, but just not in the traditional sense. So I'm watching these movies back to back, and i like both of them so much that I'm actually watching them a second time before the rental period expires.
00:02:33
Speaker
And look, I grew up in the suburbs. I was pretty ignorant to issues relating to things like race or class. I understood that these were issues that had existed and maybe even still existed.
00:02:48
Speaker
but I definitely didn't have any sort of grasp on those issues in my teen years. But I did understand that that's what these movies were about.
00:02:59
Speaker
I mean, it was laid out directly enough to even be clear to an ignorant kid like me. Candyman is a movie that is unapologetically about race.
00:03:10
Speaker
Not just about race, but about the legacy of slavery in this country. It was also, in a way, about the unofficial segregation that was still going on at the time and is arguably still going on today.
00:03:27
Speaker
The People Under the Stairs, under the weirdness of it all, was essentially a movie about immoral and wealth-hoarding white landlords taking advantage of a community full of mostly people of color who just needed a place to live.
00:03:46
Speaker
So I'm watching these two movies that have all this important and interesting commentary, and it's not the subtext of the movie. It's just what the movie is plainly about.
00:03:58
Speaker
This is also why it's so interesting that today people will talk about how horror has become too political in the last 10 years or so, or people claim that it's too woke now, which we obviously know is a racist dog whistle anyway.
00:04:17
Speaker
But these kinds of themes have been present kind of the whole time horror has existed. and movies have similarly been affected by the oppressive systems and ideologies that have been dominant at different periods of time.
00:04:32
Speaker
But for me, since diving into the genre over the last 15 years, I have continued to appreciate the way that these themes have been a constant throughout horror.
00:04:44
Speaker
And that even though sometimes this had to be more coded and under wraps, it was really always right there waiting to be unwrapped. Horror has always been political, whether that is the political messaging it might have or the impacts of political issues on what is in the minds of directors and writers.
00:05:08
Speaker
It concerns itself with the plight of the outsider, the fears of what can be done to humans by the unknown, and also what humans can be capable of at their most malicious or their most naive.
Exploring Horror Films by Era
00:05:22
Speaker
Horror has loved an underdog since before movies even really existed. Horror movies have also evolved over time in ways that reflect what kinds of messages were allowed to be addressed and what topics were restricted or off-limits to film creators at different times, either because of the production code, because of the studios, or just because of society in general.
00:05:46
Speaker
In this series of episodes, we're going to make our way through different eras of horror movies, starting a century ago in the 1920s. We'll discuss the kinds of pressure put on creators around taboo topics, and we'll discuss the political and social themes that were showing up in and impacting the horror genre.
00:06:07
Speaker
So I'm sort of starting in the nineteen twenty s a hundred years ago. But before I get into it, something that I think is important to name when
Racism in 'Birth of a Nation' and Its Impact
00:06:17
Speaker
discussing these very early days of motion pictures is that the first feature-length film made in the United States was Birth of a Nation.
00:06:28
Speaker
I have not seen Birth of a Nation. i don't think I plan on watching it at any point soon. But it is infamous for its racism, from the plot to the characters portrayed as racist caricatures by white people in blackface.
00:06:46
Speaker
and its glorification of the KKK. This being the first American feature film seems fitting for a nation with such an intense history of racism.
Early Horror Films and German Expressionism
00:06:58
Speaker
And while some found it offensive even at the time, for others it stoked their fears of Black men, portraying them as generally dangerous and as sexually aggressive toward white women, racist stereotypes that live on to this day,
00:07:15
Speaker
There is a pretty direct line that can be drawn from Birth of a Nation to the lynching of Emmett Till a few decades later, who was falsely accused of hitting on a white woman.
00:07:26
Speaker
That white woman has since admitted that she fabricated parts of her story, a choice for which she never really faced any consequences. Emmett Till is the most well-known story of this type of occurrence, but is certainly not the only one.
00:07:44
Speaker
And this still happens today, with white women eagerly calling the cops on Black men, knowing the danger that it puts them in. Film is a powerful medium, and while sometimes it can be a source of commentary that can be so constructive and create important conversations that feel like they could move things forward, it's also subject to the whims of society and can further racism and other types of bias and prejudice in this way.
00:08:16
Speaker
So I think with my thesis here about the power of cinema to express and process societal fears and anxieties, I also want to acknowledge that with great power comes great responsibility, and this power has not always been wielded responsibly.
00:08:34
Speaker
Birth of a Nation came out in 1915, and while I'm going to get into a few movies that are widely labeled the first horror movies, I want to acknowledge an idea that was discussed in Horror Noir, a History of Black Horror, which...
00:08:51
Speaker
If you haven't seen, I cannot recommend strongly enough that Birth of a Nation is actually overlooked as the first horror film. It wasn't designed to be a horror film, but from clips I have seen and the things I have heard about it, it is truly horrific.
00:09:11
Speaker
Moving into the 1920s, we start to see films that resemble horror movies as we understand them now. One movie that is a contender for one of the first horror movies would be 1921's Phantom Carriage.
00:09:26
Speaker
If you're interested in hearing about that film in more depth and to see some of its influences on later movies, you can check out the recent episode on that with my friend Kelly. Kelly had a lot of insight into the impact of that movie.
00:09:41
Speaker
I definitely recommend checking it out. Two of the most famous movies of the 1920s came from the German Expressionist movement. I am definitely not an expert in German Expressionism. I've read a bit about it over the years, but there is a lot of conflicting information on what it is and what it isn't.
00:10:03
Speaker
But one thing that is clear
00:10:12
Speaker
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu are each often credited with being the first horror film, but are also examples of German Expressionist film as far as I understand it, with Nosferatu also kind of having a sprinkle of romance in the mix too.
00:10:30
Speaker
These films both have little interest in realism, but in pretty different ways. With the sets of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari being so surreal and disorienting, and Count Orlok's stiff, dramatic, and really kind of just unnatural movements in Nosferatu, these films each are aiming way more for accuracy of emotion and tone than accuracy in any other sense.
00:10:58
Speaker
The goal is to evoke emotions like dread, anxiety, devastation. It uses not just the stories, but the tone, sets, and exaggerated performances to put inner turmoil on full display in a way that more grounded films, especially at the time, kind of struggle to do.
00:11:18
Speaker
German Expressionism came about at a time where Germany was heavily isolated due to World War I, and then worked its way into German cinema at a time when foreign films were banned and the demand for German-made films inevitably increased.
00:11:34
Speaker
It is very much a product of its place and time, displaying themes of madness, mortality, fear of the outsider, and in the wake of the First World War, fears of the future and reckoning with the past.
00:11:50
Speaker
As the Nazi party continued to rise to power in the 30s, many Germans fled to the United States, bringing elements of German expressionism into Hollywood with them.
00:12:00
Speaker
And we see those same themes pretty immediately showing up in horror and crime movies in Hollywood. The release of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in Germany in 1920 and then in the United States in 1921 introduced film audience to this new kind of surreal movie-watching experience.
00:12:21
Speaker
The story opens with a man named Francis beginning to tell a tale of the ordeal that he has lived through. He and his friend Alan both are competing for the heart of Jane, a woman from their town.
00:12:34
Speaker
um They go to a local fair and see a tent for Dr. Caligari and his traveling psychic somnambulist, or sleepwalker, whose name is Cesare.
00:12:47
Speaker
Alan asks Cesare how long he will live, to which Cesare ominously replies, until the break of dawn. Alan is then murdered in his sleep, prompting Francis and Jane to suspect Dr. Caligari and Cesare, and they begin investigating.
00:13:07
Speaker
The sets of this film are amazing, and they are focused more on being effective than being convincing. Odd and kind of confusing angles and either a lack or a deliberate misuse of perspective in the sets disorient the viewer.
00:13:24
Speaker
Absurdly large stools that might be funny in another context are unsettling, putting us in a state of unease about the world we're observing and making us wonder what's wrong with it.
00:13:36
Speaker
Everything feels off to the characters about Dr. Caligari, and the visual elements of the film ensure that everything feels off to us as the viewers, too.
00:13:47
Speaker
The makeup in this film is unsettling and uncanny, particularly the makeup of Dr. Caligari and Cesare. The movie pushes the bounds of sanity from start to finish, starting from the sets and working its way into the plot and the dramatic twist ending that is actually kind of a double twist ending, which is pretty cool.
00:14:10
Speaker
Skip ahead if you want to avoid spoilers, but over a hundred years later, think I can tell you it's eventually revealed that Dr. Caligari is a doctor that runs an asylum where he has been trying to channel an 18th century mystic and losing his mind in the process.
00:14:30
Speaker
The end of Francis's story shows Dr. Caligari being imprisoned in his own asylum as an inmate. But it actually doesn't end there because then we return to our original shot of Francis telling his story.
00:14:45
Speaker
But the scene zooms out to reveal that Dr. Caligari
Cultural Significance of 'Nosferatu'
00:14:49
Speaker
is, in fact, a doctor running an asylum, but that Francis is an inmate of that asylum, as are Cesare and Jane.
00:14:59
Speaker
This kind of ending has become a staple in classic psychological horror, where asylums are a constant playground for storytelling, and questions abound about who is really the crazy one, the inmate or the doctor.
00:15:15
Speaker
Nosferatu, a symphony of horror, released in 1920 in Germany and not until 1929 in the United States, is another movie that often gets the title of first horror movie.
00:15:28
Speaker
This unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula tells the story of Count Orlok's move from Transylvania to Germany, his fixation on the main character, Thomas's wife Ellen, and and their discovery that he is an undead monster, a vampire inexplicably drawn to Thomas's wife.
00:15:48
Speaker
This movie is classic. Such a classic that it's even referenced in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. ah It wasn't the hash-slinging slasher flickering the lights. It was none other than Nosferatu or Count Orlok.
00:16:04
Speaker
If you know, you know. Nosferatu was written at a time of increasing antisemitism in Germany. The story divulges the societal fears of the time brewing in Germany.
00:16:17
Speaker
The fear of Count Orlach, this unknown other, infiltrating Germany from Eastern Europe with his strange customs and rituals that would freak out locals, mirrors fears of Jewish communities in Germany with their different customs and rituals.
00:16:34
Speaker
It actually goes a few steps farther than that, with Count Orlok even bringing the plague with him, connecting to how communities of Jews were often accused of spreading diseases, most notably the Black Plague in the 14th century.
00:16:49
Speaker
But this trope also continues to this day as bigots point to Jews as a potential source of the COVID-19 virus. The motif of rats throughout the film resembles the way Jews in Germany were thought of as vermin, even targeted for extermination not too long after this.
00:17:09
Speaker
Coupled with a nod to blood libel through making this character a vampire, a being who steals the blood of the innocent, the innocent being exclusively white Gentiles, the film has some clear undertones of anti-Semitism that I think are less indicative of the politics of the director than they are of just what was present in the zeitgeist of Germany at the time.
00:17:37
Speaker
Unlike later versions of Dracula, Count Orlok is absolutely terrifying to look at. He is not seductive and he is not charming. He is truly off-putting.
00:17:51
Speaker
His movements are stiff and exaggerated at the same time, and his appearance is much more monstrous than it is human. He is truly a movie monster, lurking in the shadows at times and just intimidating the protagonist.
00:18:07
Speaker
And here's another spoiler warning in case you haven't seen this 100-year-old movie. Count Orlok is eventually taken down by Ellen, who sacrifices herself in order to defeat him.
00:18:20
Speaker
That's some final girl energy before we had final girls. And although she didn't survive, she is kind of the hero of the story and saves the town from this intrusive evil.
Themes in 'The Phantom of the Opera'
00:18:33
Speaker
Nosferatu also added an important element to the vampire lore that became kind of ah staple in many vampire tales to come, being the first vampire story that doesn't have the vampire just become weakened by sunlight but actually killed by it.
00:18:50
Speaker
In 1925, Lon Chaney starred in The Phantom of the Opera. Not to be mistaken for his son, Chaney Jr., who would go on to become one of, if not the most iconic horror actors of all time.
00:19:06
Speaker
Strangely romantic and very dark, this movie centers around Christine, who the phantom lurking in the opera house has fixated on. He threatens a curse if Christine isn't given the lead role in the opera, and famously drops a chandelier on the audience when they don't comply.
00:19:26
Speaker
Christine eventually enters the underground of the opera house, where the phantom lurks and she learns more about who he is and witnesses his deformity in utter horror.
00:19:38
Speaker
a true outsider haunting the opera house and playing music in the catacombs beneath it, he hides himself from the world and he hides his face even from Christine, who he claims that he loves.
00:19:50
Speaker
As a side note, if your only reference is the musical, i highly recommend going and looking up what his mask looks like in this version because it is so much creepier to me.
00:20:04
Speaker
It is really in uncanny valley territory where it's a little too realistic and a little too unrealistic at the same time. It's very creepy and effective.
00:20:15
Speaker
just go look at it. But he takes Christine prisoner and then agrees to let her return to the opera house one more time to perform, under the condition that she doesn't see her suitor Raoul.
00:20:30
Speaker
While she's there, the Phantom is listening. He hears her informing Raoul of her situation and then proceeds to kidnap her during her performance.
00:20:41
Speaker
It's revealed by a police inspector that the Phantom has recently escaped from Devil's Island, a French penal colony where disease was rampant and the staff was violent.
00:20:53
Speaker
As Raul and his brother look for Christine, the Phantom traps them and is about to kill them when Christine offers herself as his bride in exchange for their lives.
00:21:05
Speaker
Women have truly been sacrificing themselves to defeat horror movie villains for a hundred years. but luckily this time, she gets to live, she gets to marry and go on her honeymoon with Raoul, the Phantom is thrown into a river by an angry mob, probably dead, but I guess who really knows for sure.
00:21:27
Speaker
The Phantom of the Opera is such an influential story. It has horror, romance, and mystery woven together to create such an iconic tale.
Impact of the Great Depression and the Hays Code
00:21:39
Speaker
There have been other spinoff stories based on the original book, another silent film lost to time, and references to the Phantom in other works of media.
00:21:49
Speaker
And then, of course, it went further in musical form written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which was then adapted again into another movie. When I was younger, I remember seeing the musical in Vegas and its own special theater with a chandelier rigged to drop onto the audience in time with the show, the lights going out just before it feels like it's really about to hit people.
00:22:16
Speaker
And i mean, talk about immersive horror. Even today, when we think of romance horror, we think of themes that showed up in Nosferatu and Phantom of the Opera.
00:22:29
Speaker
Themes of obsession, of ownership and control masquerading as love. And we think of the most extreme version of being willing to do anything to be with the one you love.
00:22:43
Speaker
In the 1930s, people were living lives of deprivation during the Great Depression, and people desperately needed a distraction. They needed something else to be afraid of for a little while.
00:22:56
Speaker
There were real existential threats in their lives that couldn't be avoided because the lack of resources was that severe. It's easy to think of people from 100 years ago as being so different from us, but ultimately they were just people living through really desperate times and trying to make the most of it.
00:23:16
Speaker
The Depression affected the movie studios too, which shows up in the type of movies that were being made. Production guidelines were in the works in the late 20s and early 30s, but there was little strategy for enforcing them, and films that ignored them often did well in American movie theaters, so the guidelines were usually ignored.
00:23:38
Speaker
But these guidelines were starting to exist and were later solidified into the Motion Picture Production Code, commonly known as the Hays Code. These guidelines consisted of two lists, the don'ts and the be carefuls.
00:23:53
Speaker
Let's go through these lists a little to give you a better understanding of what kind of topics had the most pressure around them and what topics were of the most concern. First are the don'ts, the things that were deemed generally inappropriate to be shown on screen, things that were to be totally avoided.
00:24:11
Speaker
And they included, quote, pointed profanity by either title or lip. So things like taking the Lord's name in vain, but also including words like hell or damn, which have religious meanings, even though a lot of the time today we use them pretty far removed from that context.
00:24:30
Speaker
It also includes, quote, every other profane and vulgar expression. It forbid things like nudity or implied nudity, drugs, and sex perversion, which at the time would include things like same-sex couples, someone implied to be having multiple sexual partners, or non-procreative sex or sex acts.
00:24:54
Speaker
This would also include interracial relationships, which were not allowed to be shown sexually or otherwise. Further don'ts included white slavery, sex, hygiene, and venereal disease, childbirth, children's sex organs, ridicule of clergy, end quote, willful offense to any nation, race, or creed.
00:25:17
Speaker
Given the time frame, although guidelines advised against highly explicit racism, many groups were still subject to racism or other bigotry in films, and the groups actually protected by this guideline were likely the ones who needed protection least.
00:25:33
Speaker
And then we have the be carefuls, which were not off-limits but were recommended to approach with extra caution. This included use of the flag, arson and firearm use, theft, robbery, blowing things up, quote, having in mind the effect which a too detailed description of these may have upon the moron.
00:25:57
Speaker
These are not my words. Those are the actual words from the code. people were instructed to, quote, avoid picturizing in an unfavorable light another country's religion, history, institutions, prominent people, and citizenry, which again primarily protected white and Christian nations.
00:26:19
Speaker
Further be careful's were brutality or gruesomeness, technique of committing a murder, or methods of smuggling, third degree methods, so extreme interrogation methods that could be considered too violent or disturbing for general audiences.
00:26:36
Speaker
Actual hangings or electrocutions as legal punishment. Sympathy for criminals. Attitudes towards public characters or institutions. Sedition, so inciting people against the government or creating a disturbance against civil authority.
00:26:53
Speaker
Cruelty to children or animals. Branding of people or animals. Quote, sale of a woman or a woman selling her virtue. Rape or attempted rape.
00:27:04
Speaker
men and women in bed together, marriage, deliberate seduction of girls, drug use, first night scenes, meaning the first night between a newly married couple, anything having to do with law enforcement or officers, and quote, excessive or lustful kissing, particularly when one character or another is a heavy, heavy being old school Hollywood for villain or antagonist.
00:27:35
Speaker
Although these guidelines were starting to be created in the 20s, it wasn't until the mid-30s that they were being enforced. So looking back on pre-code films from what is now 100 years later, they obviously seem tame to us.
00:27:50
Speaker
But we have to take them in the context of their time, and for their time, some of these movies were quite boundary-pushing. Stories of madness, murder, and haunting figures were starting to pop up.
00:28:03
Speaker
and along with those, we started to see some of the elements of horror that would remain iconic and lay the groundwork for movies for years to come. It was in 1934 that the Production Code Administration came into existence, and films were required to receive a seal of approval before being released into theaters.
00:28:25
Speaker
This was also the time when movies were becoming talkies and silent films were falling out of fashion. So this was a really big time for film history and a lot of changes were happening all at once.
00:28:39
Speaker
The production code was not government-created, but was more like an effort to avoid any government censorship that they could receive if movies continued to push the limits of societal acceptability.
00:28:52
Speaker
Bearing in mind that such government-imposed censorship could be even more extreme and, to put it simply, be a pain in the ass. The Code was meant to deal with what were considered the lowered morals in Hollywood, which many prominent figures of the time associated with the Jewish creatives that were finding success in early Hollywood.
00:29:15
Speaker
Joseph Breen, the Catholic head of the Production Code Administration, said in a letter to the editor in a Jesuit publication, quote, These Jews seem to think of nothing but money-making and sexual indulgence. 95% of these folks are Jews of an Eastern European lineage.
00:29:35
Speaker
They are probably the scum of the earth. Yikes. The longtime association of Jews with monetary greed and sexual perversion loom large over the concerns about the movies being made in Hollywood at the time, and the Code's guidelines seem to be at least partially focused on maintaining what are considered Christian values.
00:30:00
Speaker
Once the Hays Code went into effect, the Hollywood studios had to make horror movies that could fit into the code enough to be approved and shown.
Rise of Monster Movies
00:30:10
Speaker
And with the enforcement of the moralistic production code, this means monster movies where the monsters are always taken down in the end.
00:30:19
Speaker
I'm not going to get too deep into the Universal Monsters because I may just make that its own episode at some point because there are so many of them and so much to talk about. But the point is, Hollywood wasn't ready to allow monsters to win and the supposed good guys to lose.
00:30:37
Speaker
Despite having to kill them off, some monsters were still shown a lot of sympathy by filmmakers at the time. Movies like Frankenstein and The Wolfman are particularly sympathetic to their monsters, with Frankenstein not really understanding humanity or his own strength.
00:30:55
Speaker
And in The Wolfman, he doesn't really want to be violent. He just can't help it because he is a werewolf. Neither of them really wanted or asked for their situations.
00:31:08
Speaker
In addition to all of the monster movies, in the aftermath of the success of Frankenstein, mad scientist movies take off running. Even today, Hollywood loves to cash in on a good idea and see how many ways it can reshape an idea while still being successful.
00:31:27
Speaker
And you can really see mad scientist movies following this pattern around this time. In the wake of the First World War, people had seen the horrors that science can bring, and this worked its way into the films of the time, like The Island of Lost Souls, Dr. X, and Invisible Man.
00:31:47
Speaker
I love the mad scientist trope, And maybe that's another thing I can come back to as its own episode in the future because I can't get all the way into the weeds on it right now.
00:31:58
Speaker
But I am going to put a link in the episode description to a video podcast about the evolution of the mad scientist beyond just this time period and that goes into way more depth than I have time for today.
00:32:12
Speaker
In the 1930s, movie mad scientists were focused on human experiments. Sometimes they are trying to do good in the world and their intentions lead them to horrific actions in the name of science and progress.
00:32:27
Speaker
Sometimes they are driven mad by performing tests on themselves, leading them to further horrific actions against their communities and the people they love.
Pre-Code Horror Films and Their Influence
00:32:38
Speaker
Sometimes existential fear is driving them to find ways to stave off death, but since death is always inevitable, these experiments have unexpected consequences.
00:32:50
Speaker
Sometimes these mad scientists are nefarious, and other times they are simply egotistical. Then there were some other movies around this time that don't fall into either of those categories, but are really amazing movies that you can trace a lot of horror elements back to And the ones from the pre-code 30s are pretty dark, even by today's standards.
00:33:15
Speaker
One of my favorite movies from this decade is Todd Browning's Freaks from 1932. I'll probably do a whole episode on this eventually too, but I can't talk about this decade without talking about this absolute masterpiece of a film.
00:33:31
Speaker
This movie follows around a traveling circus and sideshow and the community that is established within that world. There are some characters that are able-bodied with no physical differences who have different circus acts like Cleopatra, the kind of sinister trapeze artist, Hercules, the strong man, and Froso, the clown.
00:33:53
Speaker
There are plenty of other characters like this, too, who have different types of acts in the show. And then there were the people who were famous sideshow performers in real life, such as siblings Harry and Daisy Earls, who were little people, conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, and what they used to call a pinhead but is a person with microcephaly named Schlitzie, and several other famous sideshow performers with various limb differences.
00:34:21
Speaker
This movie shows a lot about the relationships between the different performers and what their community is really like. Despite its outdated and weird language, it's actually a really sympathetic view of people that most Americans at the time had only ever seen in actual sideshows because they were often kept from being seen much in public outside of that.
00:34:46
Speaker
It's kind of an ensemble movie with a couple of different plot lines happening at the same time, but the central story is the story of Cleopatra finding out that Hans, played by Harry Earls, is waiting on a large inheritance from a recently deceased relative.
00:35:04
Speaker
She manipulates him into buying her lavish gifts and tricks him into marrying her, intending to poison him and inherit his money. This is all while she is sleeping with Hercules and making plans with him for when she gets her hands on the money.
00:35:20
Speaker
They laugh and make fun of Hans' size and the fact that he thinks she could really love him. Then Cleopatra drunkenly humiliates Hans at their wedding.
00:35:32
Speaker
Hans starts scheming with the other so-called freaks to catch her trying to poison him. At a time where people with physical differences were so incredibly ostracized, we actually see them as the good guys who are forced to take justice into their own hands because they're not a group of people that anyone is particularly interested in standing up for.
00:35:56
Speaker
The film highlights the humanity of these so-called freaks and the inhumanity of the people that society deems normal. The villains are not the freaks, nor the able-bodied people who are close with the freaks and care for them, but the quote-unquote normal people, who are not just selfish but violent.
00:36:17
Speaker
They are the real monsters of the movie. Even this far back, horror movies were focused on the worlds of outsiders and showing the humanity of people who were usually seen as less than human in those days, and still sometimes are seen that way today.
00:36:35
Speaker
This wasn't all that well received at the time. People were not really ready to accept quote unquote freaks as protagonists. And the film was recut to make the ending a little bit less disturbing.
00:36:49
Speaker
This didn't help the reception much at the time. And the longer cut of the film has since been lost, which is so unfortunate because I would really love to see it personally.
00:37:01
Speaker
But eventually, Freaks was embraced as a cult classic in the horror and counterculture communities. It was even heavily homaged in the American Horror Story season Freak Show.
00:37:13
Speaker
I don't think that season ranks among the least popular seasons now, but it definitely seemed like the least popular of the four seasons that were out when it came out.
00:37:24
Speaker
I can't really say what I would have thought had I not already been such a fan of this movie, but I was thrilled at the way the show was honoring one of my favorite movies of all time, and a pretty unexpected movie at that.
00:37:39
Speaker
This might be a controversial opinion, but I'd say if you're only going to watch one of the movies that I talk about today, i would say make it this one. Another classic movie from this decade is the 1931 German film M, which laid the groundwork for serial killer cinema as we know it today.
00:37:59
Speaker
M follows the story of a child killer. We recognize the murderer in the first half of the movie not through his face, but through the tune he whistles, which indicates his emotional state and warns us when he might strike next.
00:38:14
Speaker
This movie includes a lot of police procedural stuff that resembles not just movies like Silence of the Lambs, but also shows like Criminal Minds or Law and Order.
00:38:26
Speaker
It also gives us a specific victim to witness despite her not being the first victim, making it feel more personal and emotional than simply giving us the numbers would.
00:38:37
Speaker
Just like how most episodes of Criminal Minds start with a victim we can emotionally attach to, so does this movie. In addition to seeing the police work on the case, we actually also get to see the local criminals, frustrated by the increased police presence the serial killer is causing, trying to identify and deal with the killer as well.
00:39:00
Speaker
It isn't really until about halfway through the movie where we actually meet the killer, Hans, who ends up being a little different than we expect him to be. This movie challenges us to sympathize with the killer, but also continues to remind us just what kind of person he is.
00:39:17
Speaker
Peter Lorre gives the performance of A Lifetime, where he breaks down and desperately argues that he is unable to control himself, unable to stop himself from his own actions.
00:39:29
Speaker
He talks about being haunted by the ghosts of the children he has killed and the mothers they left behind. And you want to believe him, but then you also have to stop and wonder how much it matters if he can control himself.
00:39:43
Speaker
The reaction shots of the audience during his argument are as effective as his own performance, and the whole scene really gets under your skin. Even today, we still love a monologuing serial killer.
00:39:56
Speaker
This movie has a lot of what we expect from serial killer movies, but is almost worse because he targets such young children. We rarely even go there today with serial killers or slasher movies.
00:40:09
Speaker
But we also get those incomplete glimpses of him, and because of his whistling, he has kind of theme music that accompanies him wherever we see him.
00:40:20
Speaker
And we follow him as he chooses and kills a child, and we follow the police officers looking for him. We also follow the other criminals looking for him, which is a pretty interesting addition.
00:40:33
Speaker
And the serial killer performance is so good. I would honestly put this performance of the serial killer psyche right up there with Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter or Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
00:40:50
Speaker
In 1932's Most Dangerous Game, we get Another Kind of Killer. Similarly to the way parts of M are carried into more modern Hunt a Serial Killer movies, this movie laid the groundwork for the kind of cat and mouse movie where the killer makes a game of killing.
00:41:07
Speaker
When I rewatched this movie for this episode, I actually watched a restored colorized version of the movie, which was pretty cool to see because I had only seen the black and white version before.
00:41:18
Speaker
In this movie, a shipwreck strands big game hunter Bob Rainsford on what is thought to be an uninhabited island. He soon finds Count Zaroff living in a chateau on the island.
00:41:32
Speaker
And he is not the only shipwreck survivor. It seems that this is a common occurrence for the island and a common occurrence for Count Zaroff. Eve, one of the other castaways on the island, reveals to Bob that two of the previous men that had been there have disappeared.
00:41:52
Speaker
The two of them snoop around and eventually discover the trophy room, which is full of human heads. Upon discovering them sneaking around and impressed by Bob's big game hunting experience, Count Zaroff offers Bob to hunt with him, to which Bob replies, I'm a hunter, not an assassin, which I think is partially what the movie is about, the ethics of big game hunting or trophy hunting.
00:42:20
Speaker
Since he refuses, he becomes the game. And because he's a hunter, he really is the most dangerous game. It is now Hunter vs. Hunter. The movie title serves as a double meaning, referring both to game as in what it is that you hunt and game as in literally playing a game, because according to Count Zaroff, quote, hunting is as much a game as stud poker.
00:42:46
Speaker
He gives Eve and Bob a head start after assuring them that he will not kill Eve because, quote, you don't hunt a female animal, and calls it a game of outdoor chess.
00:42:59
Speaker
And it kind of is outdoor chess. Bob sets a trap during his head start. Count Zaroff does not fall for it, and then eventually Bob tricks Count Zaroff into thinking he's been shot and then returns to the chateau.
00:43:15
Speaker
Zaroff pretends to accept defeat but tries to ambush Bob with a gun and a fight ensues. Zaroff is wounded and falls into a pack of his own hunting dogs and the hunter finally becomes the prey.
00:43:29
Speaker
This movie, similar to Nosferatu, has an Eastern European villain. It's about the kind of depravity that man can be capable of, but it's also about the fear that Americans and some Europeans had of people who were different.
00:43:45
Speaker
When I watch Most Dangerous Game, I see in it elements that are present in two subgenres of horror that I consider to be two sides of the same coin. On the one side, we have House of Horror-type movies, where unsuspecting people end up in a house where they are targeted by the people who live there.
00:44:04
Speaker
Movies like House of a Thousand Corpses and Texas Chainsaw Massacre come to mind. In both cases, the killers are very blatantly hunting their victims.
00:44:15
Speaker
Leatherface and his family are easy to see as hunting because they are actually planning to eat their victims, but the Firefly family in House of a Thousand Corpses is hunting their victims in a similar way as Count Zaroff,
00:44:30
Speaker
in the sense that they are treating it as a game and they are trophy hunting. Even dressing up one of the girls as a rabbit and releasing her into the wild to be hunted.
00:44:42
Speaker
These are both movies where the victims stumble onto these homes and then face the consequences of the families inhabiting them. On the other side of the coin, home invasion movies often feature a similar type of motive for the killers, with movies like Hush showcasing a killer who keeps his body count carved onto his crossbow.
00:45:05
Speaker
or funny games where it is again literally referred to as a game. I find these types of movies particularly scary because it's grounded enough in reality to really freak me out, and there is clearly no real bargaining with someone who makes a game of murder.
00:45:24
Speaker
These three movies all came from before the Hays Code was being enforced, and I think the darkness they show is a lot more explicit for that reason. i mean, M is about a serial killer who targets young children.
00:45:37
Speaker
That is pretty intense. Most Dangerous Game is about a man hunting humans for sport, and Freaks is a movie where the people that society considers monsters actually got to win, and like rightfully so.
Legacy of Old Horror Movies
00:45:53
Speaker
It was only a few years after these movies that the movies took a turn to the more typical Universal Monster-type movies, where at least people could consider it to have a relatively happy ending.
00:46:07
Speaker
This kind of stuff is part of what makes watching old horror movies so much fun. You can really get a feel for what was going on wherever and whenever the movies were made.
00:46:18
Speaker
And you can see the seeds that would grow into the genres and tropes that we still love today.
Conclusion and Future Episodes
00:46:45
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the first episode in my Horror Through the Decades series. I hope this inspires you to watch some old movies and see what you think. If there aren't enough for you in this episode, you can also check out our recent episode with my friend Kelly about the Phantom Carriage.
00:47:04
Speaker
We will keep moving forward in this series into the 1940s and explore the impact of World War II on horror films. And don't forget that What Haunts You is now available on both YouTube and Spotify, so give us a follow on both platforms and feel free to leave a review as well.
00:47:22
Speaker
Before we get into the horror movies of the 1940s, we are going to have our first episode covering a book! um I'm really excited for this one. My friend Kayla, known online as Oy Veitskay, is going to be coming on to talk with me about Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Basterica, a dystopian story about a world where human beings are farmed for meat.
00:47:48
Speaker
The book is really dark, and I recommend looking up trigger warnings before reading it, but the conversation we had about it was truly interesting, especially with Kayla's perspective as a vegan and food systems writer.
00:48:03
Speaker
Until then, I hope you're taking care of yourself, getting rest, getting some sunshine, and also getting scared. I'll talk to you next time.