Chapter
II
Part
I
IT IS not wholly unfair to argue that early horror films, by today’s standards, are so tame that they evoke no fear whatsoever, and established ‘classics’ such as Nosferatu (1922) could even be regarded as rather dull and unintentionally humorous. Horror, it seems, belongs with its original and intended audience, perhaps more so than any other genre. It is bound to the general psyche of that society in which it was made. Once it becomes dated, and subsequently unbelievable, the fear evaporates (at least until it transcends into something so out of synch with our modern world that it becomes foreign to us, and ‘uncanny’). And what is a horror film without scares? It is redundant, a toothless monster. And yet, although we can no longer view Nosferatu as the blood chilling terror that it was intended to be, we can use it as a time machine to better understand the evolution of the horror genre, and how monsters have changed over the course of cinema history. Words: David Knight
46 ESSAYS