THE DECAY OF MONSTERS: HORROR MOVIES 
THROUGHOUT HISTORY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
by 
STEPHEN LOUTZENHISER 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A THESIS 
     Presented to the Department of Digital Arts and the Robert D. Clark Honors College  in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of  Bachelor of Fine Arts 
 March 2016
An Abstract of the Thesis of 
Stephen Loutzenhiser for the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts 
in the Department of Digital Arts to be taken March 2016. 
Title: The Evolution of Monsters: Horror in Movies Throughout History 
Approved:_.,._..,~~~'ri-
Colin Ives 
In this thesis, I explore the rich history of horror films through their most 
popular and well-remembered entries. Using this analysis of why each individual movie 
is well-remembered, I examine them as products of their own time and as classic media. 
This thesis discusses the concept of the "other", what the monsters and protagonists 
represent, and why this was important at the time the film was made. Following this, 
the thesis examines modem films and series, and the huge gap of quality between the 
well-rated films and the high-grossing films of the more modem era. Horror seems to 
have become stagnant, drawing more and more from other film genres and losing less 
of it's own evolution and style in recent years. Reflecting on the past with this thesis 
will hopefully allow us to see ways to fix and continue to evolve the horror movie 
genre. 
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Acknowledgements 
I would like to thank Professors Ives, Hickman, and Lim, for helping me to fully 
complete and examine the multiple perspectives on horror films and media throughout 
the creation of this thesis. I am grateful to be part of a school that is so committed to its 
students to assist me even in times of crunch or strife. I would also like to thank Sarah, 
and my Mother and Father for encouraging and assisting me throughout this entire 
process. It would not have been completed without them. 
  
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Table of Contents  
Introduction: Horror, in Brief 1 
Chapter 1: A Short Introduction to the History of Horror Film 4 
Chapter 2: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Horror is Born in the 20s 11 
Chapter 3: Frankenstein and Freaks: Men are Monsters in the 1930s 16 Frankenstein (1931, Highest Rated) 16 Freaks (1932, Highest Gross) 20 
Chapter 4: Cat People and The Wolf Man: The Evil is Within us in The 1940s 24 The Wolf Man (1941, Highest Rated) 24 Cat People (1942, Highest Gross) 27 
Chapter 5: The War of the Worlds and Creature from the Black Lagoon: The Monsters 
Are Not Us in the 50’s 31 The War of the Worlds (1953, Highest Rated) 31 Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954, Highest Gross) 33 
Chapter 6: Psycho and Night of the Living Dead: The Monster Inside the 60s 37 Psycho (1960, Highest Rated) 37 Night of the Living Dead (1968, Highest Gross) 42 
Chapter 7: Jaws and Alien: Horror Returns from the Beyond in the 70’s 48 Jaws (1975, Highest Gross) 48 Alien (1979, Highest Rated) 51 
Chapter 8: Friday the 13th and The Shining: Our Monsters are Reused in the 80s 55 Friday the 13th (1980, Highest Gross) 55 
Chapter 9: The 90s and Onward: Horror in the Modern Age 61 
Chapter 10: Where we Are Now - Discussion 66 
Bibliography 72  
  
Introduction: Horror, in Brief 
Horror is a construct of genre that has been around for a very long time due to it 
being constructed around the real-life experience of fear. Fear is a basic human and 
animal instinct, which drives us to achieve and thrive; running, fighting, or reaching for 
new heights. It has its roots firmly grasped into our minds, as at any moment we must 
be ready for the fight or flight response a scare brings. 
Horror movies play off of this instinct to run away from things that can harm us. 
Death, the unknown, evil, and the afterlife have been themes of horror in classic 
literature, and with folklore and superstition fueling the flames, our fears are seen 
clearly in text and film, but presented in a way in which we ourselves identify 
emotionally. The audience inhabits various roles within film: the victim, the girl 
running from the serial killer, the detective investigating the bizarre crime spree, the 
person holding a camera to document the horrors they are presented. It is in this way 
that the horror genre seems to be unique: they are reflections of deep, primal emotions, 
pushing further inside the audience’s id to their subconscious feelings. Other genres like 
drama, comedy, and romance appeal to the audiences desires and wants - but horror 
plays the audience’s needs. 
Why, do we seek out these movies? Why do we wish to subject ourselves to our 
own fears and hallucinations and worse-case scenarios, when so many other forms of 
entertainment offer relief and escape from the pressures and fears of modern society, be 
they running in terror from an impending atomic bomb detonation or paying our taxes. 
The world of horror is so intrinsically tied to our animal side, why do we not just run 
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screaming from Norman Bates, shoving a knife into our faces, or a horde of zombies, 
wishing to possess our every action with everyday drudgery? 
These are the themes I wish to explore. A common theory is that societal fears 
rule our horror franchises, the ones that rise and fall, and the ones that are remembered. 
To this end I will be investigating and making a list of history’s most lucrative and 
critically acclaimed movies of any given decade in order to discover how they were 
influenced by societal fears and other movies that came before. As well, I am going to 
investigate the staying power behind critically acclaimed movies. Why have those 
movies stood out? Why do we still watch and analyze them today? How did they rise 
above their competitors to become classics? Why are they still enjoyed by audiences 
and relevant discussion even 50 or 60 years later? I also wish to investigate current 
trends in modern horror movies and how that relates to these previous films and why it 
seems like there’s no modern classics within the highly-grossing horror films. The 
degradation and gap between well-rated horror films and well-funded horror films 
seems to be growing ever more, and I believe that exploring how films of their own 
decades relate to each other will present an interesting insight into this idea. 
This project is both historical and speculative. I believe that American horror 
movies have entered a recent state of stagnation, and that there are many factors in this. 
While some films have achieved a level of critical success, there are many, many more 
that are panned by critics and audiences alike, leaving us with so many bad horror 
movies to sift through, it is difficult to see the diamonds in the rough. I believe that 
modern horror is seen as a checklist, an easy and fast way to make some money reusing 
tropes that were revolutionary in the 40s, but have since seen so much use in modern 
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media and parody that they simply are not effective. Modern American audiences are 
also highly individualized and each individual has their own personal fears and the 
societal fears of older films have become less and less universal, leaving our 
independent natures so varied that horror cinema has grown broader and more 
generalized until horror films are barely recognizable as unique from other genres. 
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Chapter 1: A Short Introduction to the History of Horror Film 
As long as there have been movies, there has been horror film. Although the 
term “horror” as a genre did not become common until the 1930’s, many filmmakers 
and artists often had interests in the macabre, filming skeletons dancing (Spook Tale by 
the Lumiere Brothers) and an adventure in a haunted castle with ghosts, demons, and 
other scary monsters (The Manor of the Devil by Georges Méliès), displayed a 
formation of the concept of gothic horror set pieces and narratives to be used in film, 
emulating real life demons such as serial killers and representing those found in classic 
literature. 
As movies became longer and more elaborate, German Expressionism took hold 
of the horror genre with force, the release of the classic and often hailed as the 
“grandfather of horror films” The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari in 1920 displaying 
revolutionary camerawork and cinematography, with harsh angles and strange 
perspectives adding to the unease and tension of the story. 
In the wake of World War I, however, Germany’s economy was not performing 
nearly as well as its innovation in cinema, leading many of the national film companies 
such as UFA (Universal Film AG) to near bankruptcy, or in the case of less solvent, 
independent film companies, disband altogether. The curtailing of importing German 
entertainment to America caused a drastic decrease in profits, and with the recent boom 
in popularity of their films, many filmmakers migrated to hollywood, bringing their 
unique style of film to the forefront of the changing cinema landscape. 
The biggest event, however, that changed the landscape of the horror film, was 
the advent of sound. While Universal Films did not have any theater holdings, they 
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were moderately successful in bringing horror to the small screen with films such as 
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). However, 
the usage of sound in their works became the beginning of the gothic horror cycle of 
movies, some of the most well known movie monsters and villains coming to life in 
sound and motion that audiences had never seen before. 
Films like Dracula (1930) Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), The 
Invisible Man (1933), and The Wolf Man (1941) were extremely successful adaptations 
of gothic horror literature, with sound lending them an extra unearthly and unsettling 
quality, via either the smooth seduction of Dracula, the monstrous roars and moans of 
Frankenstein, or simply the music used to build tension and suspense within the 
audience. However, eventually Universal’s pictures fell into formulaic and self-
parodying reproduction of these monsters, with The Invisible Man Returns (1940), 
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), and collaborations of monsters working 
together in movies, like House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945). 
All of this degrade in quality and formula came to a head in the popular comedy Abbott 
and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), which had the comedy duo interact with the so-
called “big three” of Universal’s horror movie monsters lineup, which also marked the 
ending of Universal’s classic gothic horror cycle. 
At the same time, RKO, a less financially successful film company, had begun 
their own string of low-budget horror movies, with the studio providing the titles for the 
movies, and the story being developed by Val Lewton, a story editor for David O 
Selznick. Because of the budget, the films relied more on using dark shadows and 
psychological scares to affect the audience, which was wildly successful in the debut of 
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Cat People (1942). This practically saved the studio and laid the groundwork for many 
of the later horror movies and concepts. 
However, between the post-World War II years and the 50s, horror films went 
through a period of lessened quality in both acting and writing. While many teens were 
still thrilled by the concepts and the wild conjecture brought on by suspicions of the era, 
horror films were pushed to the side as b-movies, as technologies allowed for more 
gimmick-heavy films to be made: physical interaction with the audience and 3D movies 
gained popularity and traction with low-budget studios. As well, television was 
becoming an evermore popular medium, with its reliability and convenience causing 
many theaters to shut down. This kept Hollywood locked in a war for viewers, saving 
most of their writing and acting talent for epics such as Ben-Hur (1959) and Spartacus 
(1960). 
Sci-fi and paranoid horror became the norm in the wake of fear that the Cold 
War wrought on the US, and movies like The Thing from Another World (1951) and 
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) gained a fair amount of popularity. Monsters and 
creatures from places we had no knowledge of took the screen by storm. However, near 
the mid-50s this sci-fi excursion began to die down, leaving a sea of mediocre, 
gimmick-based horror films in its place, with films like House on Haunted Hill (1959), 
which had a skeleton fly about the audience on wires) and Tingler (1959), which 
equipped seats in the audience with joy buzzers), relying on the short-lived curiosities to 
sell tickets. 
In the 60’s, while the studio system of Hollywood began to fall due to the cost-
effective practice of shooting in other countries, the Motion Picture Production Code, a 
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rulebook set down as a list of moral censorship guides had become archaic, and along 
with social changes of the times, began to be abandoned as a boycott by the Production 
Code creators no longer meant a sales suicide. The 1960s also led to horror films 
regaining prestige in the public eye, as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) proved that 
horror could be more than a gimmick, and continued to showcase different looks at 
horror than the general audience had seen - horrors rooted in the minds of serial killers 
like Norman Bates, or nature itself, like The Birds (1963). 
In Britain, horror films were having a big come back and advancing the genre 
with Hammer Films’ resurrection of the Universal gothic horror cycle, recreating films 
like Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Wolf Man, only in full color, with graphic and 
shocking depictions of sex, violence, and gore. Mirroring this shock treatment move 
was Roger Corman, a horror director in the US who moved in a similar fashion - quick 
and slapdash films that utilized sex and gore as selling points, leading to his most 
successful movement in the Edgar Allen Poe cycle, recreating classic tales such as The 
Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Raven (1963). In the highest drama with 
Hitchcock, or the lowest schlock of Corman, horror was being recognized as a versatile 
and worthy film style and genre. 
The Occult and themes involving demons, devils, and the supernatural began to 
appear at this time too, free from older restrictions. Films such as Rosemary’s Baby 
(1968) and The Amityville Horror (1979) began to take footing as popular genres in the 
late 60’s and 70’s. At this point, film schools were present in the United States, bringing 
a whole new generation of filmmakers to the field who began to inject inspiration from 
b-movie classics of their generation into mainstream creations. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws 
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(1975) showed that monster and creature horror could be highly lucrative, and Brian De 
Palma’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie displayed a resurgence of the “teen 
horror”, starring young characters escaping (or falling to) dangerous situations. Ridley 
Scott’s Alien (1979) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) also contributed to both 
monster horror and the renewal of older b-list films as highly profitable summer 
blockbusters. 
Horror, however, was not just for larger studios. It still remained accessible to 
lower-budget studios and creators, and as the cost of production began to sink, 
independent directors could imitate highly skilled suspense creators with ease. Bloody 
affairs such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) inspired an entire legion of 
slasher films to capitalize on its raw fear potential, and arguably one of the most 
successful independent movies of all time, Halloween (1978), launched John 
Carpenter’s older cult classic status into a legitimate filmmaker, as well as big budget 
versions of the same concept like Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm 
Street (1984). Horror could be seen as a place for all audiences, all directors to see and 
tell stories that reflect themselves. It’s a place for both creators and consumers to look at 
a reflection of their fears and their own self-doubts, their monsters and external demons, 
in a safe environment. 
In the 90’s, the slasher film was falling into parody, with films like Scream 
deconstructing their inner tropes and workings and attempting to close out the cycle of 
teen horror (ironically beginning a new cycle of films like I Know What You Did Last 
Summer (1997) and Final Destination (2000)), psychological and character horror was 
continuing to remain popular with films like Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Se7en 
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(1995). However, there are several new styles of horror that became popular in the 90s 
and 2000s. 
With a focus on body horror and gore, the radically named “torture porn” acts as 
a spiritual successor to the Hammer horror era, bringing intense, violent deaths, 
elaborate torture devices, and worse to shock audiences once again. This was 
epitomized by the Saw franchise, which sought to bring back splatter and gore from 
decades past and movies like Night of the Living Dead or The Texas Chainsaw 
Massacre to the horror industry with intense deaths and a cerebral mystery. 
Found footage movies like The Blair Witch Project (1991) have also found 
success in theaters and with audiences in the United States, and has become another 
low-budget way for independent directors to show their skill with suspense on a 
skeleton budget. This is also led to a strange cycle of higher-budget found footage 
movies like Cloverfield (2008) being created inside the big budget blockbuster system 
of Hollywood. 
Finally, the zombie movie has returned to the forefront of modern movies from 
four or five decades ago, with the release of 28 Days Later (2002) challenging the 
moviegoer’s perception of what zombies can represent, and how they can still scare us, 
as they did in George Romero’s zombie classic Night of the Living Dead (1968). 
Zombie films have not slowed in their intensity of creation, and are still being produced 
with regularity, with films like Shaun of the Dead (2004) and the very recent World 
War Z (2013). 
There is no disputing that as a reflection of any given era's cultural norms and 
concerns, horror is an important history for cinema fans to follow. Horror has heavily 
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influenced many aspects of contemporary film that we take for granted today. Studying 
and understanding historic film is sometimes overlooked as unimportant in discussions 
of contemporary entertainment. But the past is integral to the large body of works 
comprising the horror genre and recognition of this fact brings depth to not only horror 
film discussion but to the people of the societies who choose to be entertained by 
horror. 
While they cannot give the story in its entirety, the history presented here 
focuses on various elements that make specific films popular at certain times. Film in 
general, and horror specifically, is greatly affected by the world around it: societal 
norms, current political situations, pop culture, scientific progress all exert their 
influence. I believe that there is a greater story and reasons as to why certain films are 
more popular than others, and why certain films are remembered. While luck, history 
and climate are obviously factors, it is the audience, the people, the viewers of these 
movies that truly determine any movie's popularity. 
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Chapter 2: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Horror is Born in the 20s 
While most of the films on this list are American, and take their cues from 
American films, it is important to pay respects to the grandfather of all horror films. 
Commonly referred to as the first horror film ever made, its origin is Germany, from the 
ashes of the First World War. This ideal is present in all of its trappings, from both the 
heavy focus on authority controlling those who are weak-willed, and the dark, twisted 
scenery that draws heavily from German Expressionist cinema. 
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a story within a story told by Francis, the 
protagonist of the film. However, it is revealed at the end of the film that he is, in fact, 
insane himself and the story is just a delusion in his damaged mind. Symbolism and 
horror are deeply imbedded in this film from start to finish, discussing the nature of 
brainwashed conformity and a militarized government hypnotizing its forces to kill, and 
the conformists to follow these orders blindly, not even resisting the hypnotism and 
atrocities forced upon them. Alongside these themes, the framing device of the mental 
insanity that Francis has discusses both the shaky realms of perception and mental state, 
as well as unreliable storytelling and the duality of human nature, the chance to choose 
between conformity and revolution. 
All of these themes and allusions come in a brilliantly created piece of cinema, 
and, being one of the first true horror films, it is only obvious that films to follow would 
take on similar traits of societal metaphors and self-reflection. Indeed, most of the films 
on this list reflect those ideals of filmmaking to some degree, while those that do not 
still have some subconscious debt to pay towards Dr. Caligari. This symbolism and 
legacy influenced and led the art of horror filmmaking down a long and crooked road to 
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reach the films we know today as both horror classics and the sub-par state of existence 
that is modern horror. Just like the twisted streets of Holstenwall where the story takes 
place, this pathway may seem exciting, but it leads to a much darker place than it 
originally seemed. 
Obviously, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari takes place before the advent of 
modernization of classic horror monsters, which would not come to fruition for another 
decade. This left the monster of the film to be the mind - the insanities and personal 
pitfalls of both Francis and Dr. Caligari. While Cesare is a monster by the nature of his 
killing several people, including Francis’s friend Alan, he can easily be ruled out as the 
main monster of the movie - dying partway through and playing as a puppet, rather than 
his own instrument of destruction. This can be seen throughout movies that are released 
in the future - the true monster is often represented by intent to perform violent acts, and 
not the killing itself. 
The layers of the movie are thick and mysterious, clouding vision as to who the 
true villain is - indeed, most of those presented as villains in the story are misunderstood 
in some way, and - like many of its followers, Dr. Caligari contains an intense twist 
ending, which is led into with a series of less intrinsic twists - faking out the audience 
into believing the first twist, that Dr. Caligari is a director of a mental institution and not 
a patient, and then hitting them with the second, more shocking idea that Francis is 
actually a patient, and as Dr. Caligari was committed to his own institution, he is, in 
fact, free to commit Francis to the same cell that Caligari suffered in Francis’s 
delusions. 
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All of the possible villains are caught. All of the potential violence that could 
have escaped was contained, kept within the tight grasp of Caligari’s asylum, both in 
Francis’s delusion and within the real world as well. Unlike horror movies to follow, 
which often use the twist ending trope to hint that the villain is not really gone or the 
evil continues to prey outside of the film’s bounds, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari uses the 
endings to make sure that any perceived villain is caught, and on its way to being cured, 
in both versions of the story. Cesare is dead and gone, and the doctor is caught and 
imprisoned within Francis’s mind, while in the real world Francis and Cesare are both 
locked up as well - with the Doctor claiming to be well on the way to cure Francis’s ill 
mind. 
So why, then, was the twist used in this way? Given both the framing device and 
the outcomes are extremely positive within the context of the movie, how could this 
ending be perceived as horrifying? The most obvious one is that it is not meant to be. 
Coming from the end of World War I, the film could be used as a proponent of 
unification and defeat over the evils of the mind. The film’s writers, Hans Janowitz and 
Carl Mayer, both experienced the war firsthand, becoming disillusioned to authority and 
conformity afterwards and wrote this as a strict defiance of the policies present during 
the war. The idea of hypnotism and mental domination is directly opposed by the 
asylum, where the Doctor hopes to cure Francis of his affliction, just like curing 
Germany from its poor mental health after the war. 
On the other hand, the Doctor is very clearly an evil insane man throughout the 
film - even through Francis’s biased eyes, it is clear that he is evil and insane. The 
ending could be, in fact, implying that the evil has won - Dr. Caligari has completely 
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dominated Francis, Jane, and Cesare, leaving them helpless and at his beck and call. 
Francis is the only one actively resisting, and according to the Doctor, he will soon be 
fixed - to return to normal, just as the Doctor is normal. This is further supported by the 
idea that each of the inmates are individuals - individual in their madness, to be sure, 
but individuals nonetheless. Soon, however, that individualism will be washed away in 
the name of conformity, and they will return to proper society. 
The third option to take away from the ending is the most sinister, and it is 
possibly, easily the way that some of the general public could have taken it. This idea is 
suggested simply by the nature of the framing device, and can be seen as a very 
dangerous ideal, especially considering the rise of fascism in Germany after the first 
World War. This idea is that control and hypnotism of the public is actually a good 
thing - and that those who resist should be controlled, controlled by someone more 
benevolent than their own morals, or lack thereof. 
Francis is shown to be a radical danger to himself and others at the end of the 
film, attempting to abuse Dr. Caligari on sight, and is likely to have caused himself 
harm by doing so. In believing the idea that he is in control of his own destiny, and 
believing in the idea that control and conformity are both terrible things by viewing Dr. 
Caligari’s , he dooms himself to the asylum, and to be probed and hurt so that he can 
learn not to hurt others. By conforming willingly, others may avoid this fate. 
This ideal is also present in the asylum itself, which is constantly shown as a 
place of good and help within the movie, from both Francis’s and the ‘real world’s’ 
perspective. In Francis’s world, it is the final safe place to send Caligari, as he becomes 
delusional in his desire to control. The staff are helpful and kind, and there is a promise 
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that everything within the walls is safe. In the real world, the asylum is also a good 
place, attempting to save the minds of those who would otherwise be lost to society. 
The walls both contain and heal, and everybody who is ‘normal’ - everybody who has 
already conformed - are made safe from the revolutionists within. 
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is dripping with symbolism, which is why it is 
important to this list, and to horror films as a whole. Before this film, spooky things 
were filmed, but the stories didn’t mean anything - fear came from the situation, but not 
the subtext. There was no story, only scares. With Dr. Caligari, all of this changed. 
Horror could be more than just a momentary situation, it could be a message, an ideal, a 
fright for the intellect. It could be a terrifying reality not only present in the movie, but 
also reflecting real life and those who are affected by it. Most of all, it could be subtle. 
Movies have many subtle messages, but horror is drenched, as a genre, in the thick 
balance of subtlety and overtness, in every way in which the psyche is manipulated to 
experience the emotion of fear. As both a film, and a message, The Cabinet of Dr. 
Caligari’s message and influence on all films since its creation cannot be overlooked. 
 
 
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Chapter 3: Frankenstein and Freaks: Men are Monsters in the 1930s 
Frankenstein (1931, Highest Rated) 
Near the middle of the film, when Frankenstein’s monster first breaks out of 
imprisonment, it meets a young girl. This girl, in her innocence, invites him to play with 
her. Her innocence and unassuming nature leads to her death, however, as the monster 
mistakenly throws her into a lake (thinking it is a part of their game), where she drowns. 
This scene, originally removed due to its shocking nature, changes the entire feel of the 
film. While throughout the film we are shown, and it is hinted, that the Monster is 
simply a simple, somewhat good-natured beast, who doesn’t understand the world 
around him. This scene emphasizes his kindness and his pitfalls, making him appear 
much more human and much more tragic than many other monsters on this list. 
Victor Frankenstein is a scientist in a small European village, working with his 
hunchbacked assistant Fritz trying to piece together a human from various body parts 
and bring it to life. Frankenstein has engrossed himself in the work, and his fiancée, 
Elizabeth, is concerned about him. She and her friend learn that Frankenstein is 
attempting to create life, and rush to save him - however, they arrive just as his 
experiment is finished, and the creature rises from the slab, alive. However, due to the 
insane criminal’s brain that Fritz stole, the monster is a simple creature, with very little 
intelligence. As they chain it into the dungeon and discuss the implications of what has 
been done, Fritz tortures the monster and forces it to kill him and another of 
Frankenstein’s friends, and escape. Outside, he comes across a girl and accidentally 
kills her as well, thinking it to be part of a game. When the body is discovered, a mob 
forms and chases the monster (who has kidnapped Frankenstein) to a windmill, and then 
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burn it down with the monster inside. Frankenstein survives, and the film ends with the 
marriage between him and Elizabeth. 
Firstly, it is important to discuss the adaptation, and how the changes and 
modifications to Mary Shelley’s original novel are reflected in many of the other 
modern adaptations of classic literature in this list. These differences reflect that the 
film is a product of its own time. For instance, in the film, the monster is a brute - a 
child at heart, while in the original novel, the monster speaks perfect english and is 
well-read. His violence in the book is a result of his own decisions, while in the movie 
his rampage is caused by the violence of those around him. Frankenstein also has help 
in the movie - a hunchbacked assistant named Fritz, who stands as an incompetent 
assistant to the doctor. In the novel, however, this henchman is absent, leaving the 
doctor to sow his seeds of science alone. These changes can be seen as a reflection of 
the century of change between the novel and the movie. They allow the film to adapt 
the themes of the novel’s time, such as the timeless ideal of the pursuit of science, and 
create their own metaphors and allusions that can be analyzed in a more modern 
context. 
Frankenstein - the scientist, not his monster - is easily a contender for the 
primary analysis of this film. Given that the monster does not appear within the movie 
for about half of it, it could easily be said that Victor is the monster, himself. Showing 
many of the traits that would come of human monsters in decades to come, as well as 
mirroring many of the traits of his predecessor, Dracula, it can be implied that this was 
the intent from the beginning. Not only is this theme of man being the real monster 
being continued from the previous works of horror in the past decade since The Cabinet 
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of Dr. Caligari, but it also vilifies the townspeople in a way that is similar to those 
themes discussed in Caligari. 
Firstly, there is his strangeness. Victor Frankenstein is certainly weird, as his 
actions lead him to an extreme isolation in an ancient, gothic tower, which he has 
retrofitted into a strange and twisted laboratory. Like Dracula before him, it is an easy 
lair to place a villain, and even includes a dungeon beneath the lab where he can store 
away his “deranged” creation. Secondly, his acts in the movie are far from good. His 
theft of body parts and desecration of graves is one thing, and his classification as a mad 
scientist only comes from his willingness to do anything and hurt anyone to complete 
his experiences. As he physically cows his assistant Fritz, he emotionally distances 
himself from his fiancée and anyone else that could care about him. Finally, his 
dictator-like pull over his own creation is not something to be left off the table. He 
imprisons it, Fritz harms it, and sows fear through it, wishing to have complete 
domination over the thing. And if he cannot, he will destroy it. 
That is pushing it a bit, however - he never orders Fritz to harm the beast, nor 
does he desire the beast to kill people throughout the community. In some respects, he 
could be looked upon as a failed protector. However, in keeping in line with the 
authoritarian and anti-conformity based themes in Caligari, Frankenstein pushes a 
similar envelope of the powers of a totalitarian state without strict rule. While it still 
pushes against the idea of conformity, it is leaning into the role that horror films soon 
take on in the wake of World War II. 
  
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Fritz is a great example of this. While he is still under Frankenstein’s rule, he is 
still above the lowest of the low (Frankenstein’s monster). This, combined with the lack 
of discipline from Victor, leads to torture and antagonization of the monster, that lowly 
nonconformist locked up in the dungeon - torturing him with fire. This theme is also 
explored in the procuring of a brain for the monster - due to his lack of discipline, he 
mentally handicapped the monster, forcing it into this position in the first place - and 
then tortures it for being there. 
Another good example is the townsfolk. The mobs the villagers form are rash 
and violent, stemming from a desire to kill and destroy, rather than necessarily bring the 
monster to appropriate justice. Again, like was implied in Caligari, violence upon the 
mentally ill is portrayed as the easy (and wrong) way to be a better conformist, but 
while that film ended in a slightly hopeful desire to fix what was wrong, this film looks 
to a more American form of removing the non-conformist: callously burning them to 
the ground. 
The monster, however, is the most important symbol in all of this. One of the 
most classic movie monsters, adapting the novel by Mary Shelley to film was certainly 
an important landmark in horror film history. Just 8 months earlier, Dracula was 
released, kicking off the genre of monster movies within Universal studios. For the 
purpose of analysis and discussion within this paper, however, it is far more important 
to look at Frankenstein. While Dracula is certainly a movie worthy of analysis and 
discussion, it places the blame with the movie’s titular vampire. He’s a monster in his 
own right, but he’s not forced into anything. He drinks blood to live, but he takes a 
 20  
perverse joy in the seduction and brainwashing of others. The monster is very clearly, 
the monster of the film. 
Frankenstein, on the other hand, is much more open and talkative about analysis 
of the monster and the horrors, both overt (drowning a girl, resurrecting a patchwork 
corpse) and subliminal (mob mentality and torture of the disabled). These messages 
have much more meaning and the film is almost more poetic in nature, discussing the 
tragedies and pitfalls of man, machine, and even science within its 70-minute runtime. 
The monster, with his disabled mind and his violent stature, with his submissive 
personality but nonconformist actions, leads to a discussion that is not often had in 
horror films up to this point, and that’s why it is innovative and important in the 30s. 
Freaks (1932, Highest Gross) 
Freaks takes Frankenstein’s original ideal of the mob vs. the monster and 
drastically turns it on its head. The heroes of this film, the things that are supposed to be 
viewed as the good and the exploited, are the freaks themselves, while “normal” 
looking people are viewed as the monsters present with their disdain for and 
exploitation of the freaks within the movie. For such an early horror movie, it is 
surprising, to say the least, that the conversation about conformity metaphors within 
horror films moves so quickly from the monsters needing to conform, and the monsters 
forcing others to conform. In the scene above, there is such an explicit line of “We 
accept you!” That line perfectly illustrates the monster’s ideals and the theoretical 
humor of needing to be accepted as a man amongst monsters. 
This film is about a woman (Cleopatra) who attempts to marry one of the titular 
“freaks”, and then kill him for his money - however, when her plan is found out by the 
 21  
other members of the circus, they attack and turn her and her conspirator (Hercules) into 
freaks themselves. The film’s themes can easily be seen, even by the layman, 
throughout its runtime. The basic premise is about the exploitation of a little person in 
order to steal his fortune and then murder him soon after. All of this despicable act is 
performed only by the two “normal”-looking performers in the circus: an acrobat 
(Cleopatra) and a strongman (Hercules). Along with their normal looks, even their role 
in the circus comes as an extremely physically fit contrast to the somewhat less capable 
outsiders, who take the role of a group of protagonists within the film. 
The most interesting aspect of this film is, of course, its controversy. There is 
little that remains of the negative backlash that the film had on contemporary audiences, 
the film gaining cult classic status and standing as one of the “freshest” horror films of 
the year on the aggregate reviewing website RottenTomatoes, but in its original release, 
it was fraught with criticism and disgust. Originally 90 minutes long, audiences at test 
screenings found the film to be impossible to watch and incredibly gross in nature, 
leading the panicked studio to cut out a significant portion of the film, which has since 
been lost to time. 
The final release version was just over an hour long, but it still had audiences 
complaining in disgust and bombed at the box office. Critics and audiences hated it 
alike, and unlike the financially successful Frankenstein, this film represents the first 
complete, financial failure on this list. Still, films persevered and found great cult and 
critical success later on in the decades, with Freaks being one of the earliest films made. 
Its themes of segregation and separation between multiple groups still strikes a chord to 
this day, and that’s why it is on this list and timeless. 
 22  
 
The film’s beginning and middle are continuously indicative of the theme of 
conformity and acceptance, as well as the nature of discrimination and exploitation 
(which is interesting considering the backlash about exploitation that this movie had 
during its release period). However, the so-called “freaks” in the film are shown to be 
exceedingly human, with many side-stories and vignettes about their personal lives and 
how they deal with their various physical impairments. On the other hand, the “regular” 
humans receive no such redeeming qualities, and are extremely unpleasant people 
throughout the film. 
Despite this, the film carries some big baggage when it comes to the fairly 
straightforward themes in the end. The extremely violent and tense scene of the circus 
slowly overtaking Cleopatra and Hercules is incredibly horrifying, leaving much of the 
movie in flux as to its morals, as well as attempting to find some semblance of rhyme 
and reason in this stormy, rainy madness. The complexity to the movie that this moment 
adds is not to be understated, even despite the movie’s added epilogue of Hans, (the 
man that the “normal people” were trying to scam and the “leader” of the circus) 
showing remorse and regret that he did not want the atrocities that were performed on 
the two schemers to be carried out. 
Still, the movie has an extreme root of realism in it that can easily resonate with 
many different classes of people. The desire to fit in amongst your own normal group, 
the ideal of accepting others who might be considered more normal or successful being 
allowed in, despite their differences to the group, the sense of betrayal from within the 
group, and the hope of revenge, either violent or simply emotional, can be applied to 
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many people and situations within the world. This very universal message combined 
with the complexity of the righteousness of revenge, the hatred of the conformist, and 
the conforming of the nonconformist, make this a worthy evolution of the horror movie, 
and a great piece for analysis on this list. 
 
 24  
Chapter 4: Cat People and The Wolf Man: The Evil is Within us in The 
1940s 
The Wolf Man (1941, Highest Rated) 
The Wolf Man is a continuation of Universal’s campaign to bring classic horror 
monsters to the big screen, and the movie that received the most financial success of the 
decade. A harrowing tale of evil being passed from person to person, causing each to 
grow the desire to maim and kill others, the film suggests many things about human 
nature and promotes messages of nonviolence and self-protection through incredible 
makeup and a classic story. 
The Wolf Man is about Larry Talbot, who gets bitten and then kills a werewolf, 
swiftly turning into a werewolf himself.  After he starts terrorizing the town, he is 
confronted and killed in his wolf form by his father. There is a significant theme of lack 
of control in The Wolf Man, in both human and werewolf forms. The werewolf itself 
has the killer instincts of a wolf turned up to maximum, and runs around attempting to 
kill those he encounters. This is completely unwilling by those who are infected with 
lycanthropy, and they are forced into these dreadful acts by their wolfen sides taking 
over their human minds. However, this lack of control, while being a part of the classic 
“outsider” or “nonconformist” narrative that is present in many horror movies, it is 
significantly different from many films before it. The lack of control is not brought on 
from an outward force, like when Frankenstein’s Monster is forced to be violent due to 
his circumstances, or when Cesare is hypnotized and forced to kill by Dr. Caligari. The 
Wolfman’s demons are internal and deep-set, with the only solution in the film being 
death. 
 25  
Death can represent a variety of things in this case. In its most obvious form, it 
could come from the idea that treating the mentally ill, like the Wolf Man, is 
impossible, and only a waste of resources, but there isn’t enough evidence within the 
film itself to prove that. It could also mean treatment in a less drastic sense, just as some 
madnesses are not as drastic as running around and killing people. If so, then this 
treatment is extremely hard to carry out, and somewhat difficult to pull off, as silver 
bullets are likely rare and expensive, and silver bludgeoning or slashing weapons put 
the user at a great risk of harm to themselves, as is shown when Larry Talbot kills Bela, 
but is bitten and infected himself. 
It is very reliant on what the werewolf, and by extension the disease, is supposed 
to represent to determine the metaphors, intended or not, present in the film. It is 
actually very easy to compare it to the zombification virus that appears in the 60’s and 
all that that implies, both being infections that are spread throughout the town through 
bites, creating more and more deadly creatures, but obviously, wolfmen have some 
significant differences to take into account when analyzing them. 
First is the lack of control, or the lack of lack of control. While in the first film it 
is never stated that werewolves only transform under a full moon, it is clear that the 
werewolf is only deadly when he is transformed, as opposed to a constant threat, like a 
zombie. The second is that the werewolf is a singular being, despite his propensity to 
spread his virus. It is often only because one is killed in an attack that another takes his 
place, as any bite can lead to lycanthropy. The final difference is that werewolves are 
much, much more dangerous: they are fast, strong, and merciless killers. Unlike the 
 26  
zombie’s slow inevitability, the wolfman is much more of an individual killer, who can 
only be outran or killed through luck. 
All of these differences make the mirror that the wolfman is a much different 
shape than the zombies’ societal reflection. A werewolf is the internal evil that rests in 
all men, just waiting to be brought out. The disease is simply the catalyst that creates the 
tension within him. In this case, the violence is, in fact, violence, albeit a subtler, more 
nuanced violence. It represents any sort of emotional or physical attack, the evil that 
bursts from man and demands subjugation. Even a good man can be turned into an 
unholy monster if the situation is right, and the propensity for evil can come from 
anywhere. 
This comparison is most prominent within the poem, which is repeated many 
times throughout the film, and all of the metaphors present there can easily be applied to 
a werewolf (since the poem is about werewolves): 
Even a man who is pure in heart 
and says his prayers by night 
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms 
and the autumn moon is bright. 
It is clear that no matter how religious, good, and peaceful a man is, everyone is 
susceptible to this evil entering their body and running rampant. This new symbolism is 
very worthwhile and can be used in a variety of situations, the timelessness of it makes 
it a worthy entry on this list. 
 27  
Cat People (1942, Highest Gross) 
The 40’s introduced the beginning of new subgenres and subtext within horror 
films - though there are many experimental and violent films around this time, Cat 
People introduces a technique that directly counters many of those that were being 
created. While Universal was creating special effects masterpieces with their Wolfman 
film, and continuing with their goal of bringing classic horror creatures to the silver 
screen, Cat People marked a less direct approach to showing fear, with techniques that 
would live on long past its creation. 
Cat People thrives on mystery, with the plot being simple yet suspenseful. Irena 
is married to Oliver and despite their love for each other, does not wish to be physically 
close to him because she believes that she is cursed to become a vicious panther when 
she becomes passionate. He soon begins seeing someone else, Alice, who Irena stalks 
and eventually tries to kill in cat form, before killing herself out of guilt for murdering 
her own psychiatrist. The imagination and the mind are the things on full display in this 
picture, with very little of the main monster being shown within the context of the film. 
The director skillfully uses lighting, shadows, sound effects, camera angles, and even 
acting and props to successfully sow seeds of terror and fear within both the audience, 
and the characters within the film. While other movies take much of this technique of 
not showing the monster for long periods of time, and only hinting at its involvement in 
the plot, few do it as skillfully, or integrate it as fully as the brilliant Cat People. 
The first element that raises Cat People above its competitors is the uncertainty 
laced throughout the entire movie, creating tension through doubt and fear. The 
unknown and unseen are things to be feared, and it shows in every tense frame. The 
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doubt of Irena’s actual status as a transforming monster is kept at the forefront, and as a 
main centerpiece of the movie. Her actual status as villain is not present in the film until 
the end, and this allows the movie to have a dual status as both a psychological horror, 
and a monster horror film. 
For much of the film, there is little proof beyond the main premise that Irena is 
actually a cat person - it is, of course, heavily hinted at, through dialogues, interactions 
with animals and other supposed cat people, but all of this is just speculation. 
Sometimes animals don’t like people - some people look catlike - some people tell 
stories to their children to entertain them. There’s no real evidence of her status as a cat 
person. There’s never even been an instance, that she knows of, that a transformation 
has actually occurred - her transformation is related specifically to sexual arousal. 
This unknown may not be as unknown to us, the audience, but it is enough to 
cause some doubt, and the film takes that and runs with it, its famous “stalk” scene 
being a testament to the director and the actors’ ability to portray and project a sense of 
dread out into the audience simply by presenting them with an unknown - the unknown 
of what the noises are, the unknown of what is actively behind Alice, the unknown of if 
there even is anything there. There is simply no physical evidence until they find dead 
sheep the next day, and even that is circumstantial at best. Shadows, Jacques Tourneur 
proves, are just as effective as frightening makeup in producing fear. The doubt theme 
continues in the movie through the end, even when around the midpoint Irena discovers 
that she can transform into a panther. She never explicitly says so, and there are more 
convincing cat people, like the woman who asks Irena if she is her sister, who could be 
the stalking cat person. Still, as Irena follows Alice through central park and finds ways 
 29  
to disappear, it is still questionable if she has truly turned into a panther, or if it is 
simply another red herring for whoever the evil cat person is. 
Another theme in this movie that is worth exploring is sexuality. Entering the 
cusp of the age of exploitation, Cat People is provocative in its portrayal of sexually 
charged women, relationships, and infidelity - but despite this, it seems to be 
encouraging a more completely monogamous nature. When Oliver meets Irena, she 
warns him that she might be a cat person, but he laughs it off - it’s easy to not think 
about in this situation, even in a life where the threat of sexual stimulation is constant. 
However, it is not until he begins falling for Alice that the issues begin. While he never 
actually seems to be romantic with Alice, the ultimate fate is that Irena does threaten 
both of them, and all because he, after marrying her, could not accept her fears and 
begins to divorce her.  
This thought of unnatural love is continued when Irena’s therapist, Judd, kisses 
her and transforms her, again, into a dangerous beast. Despite her desire to be in a 
monogamous relationship, these desires lead her to a place of death and destruction. 
Still, that is a lesser interpretation of the film. There are also moments where the love 
between Oliver and Alice are seen as more pure than that of Irena, with Irena’s lack of 
desire to be physically close to Oliver leading her to lose him, and then get wounded, 
then killing herself.  
Cat People deserves to be on this list because it challenges the contemporary 
traditional way of showing a monster - by not showing it at all. Instead, it uses 
psychological torment of the audience and the characters to create an atmosphere of 
dread and mystery. It uses the traditional methods of suspense building as a clay, 
 30  
building around and with it more and more to bring greater scares and greater suspense 
into the film. It is a masterpiece of suspenseful filmmaking. 
 
 
 31  
Chapter 5: The War of the Worlds and Creature from the Black Lagoon: 
The Monsters Are Not Us in the 50’s 
The War of the Worlds (1953, Highest Rated) 
War of the Worlds, and the 50s in general, represent a marked change in the 
nature of popular movie monsters and their origin stories. Nowhere is this more 
apparent than in The War of the Worlds, the adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic book 
of the same name. The success of this film is related to its tense story, fascinating 
effects, and generous use of color. In fact, it is the first film with color that appears on 
this list. The colorization has the effect of allowing the aliens and atmosphere of an 
otherworldly nature to ooze from the screen much more easily than from a black and 
white film delivering a similar style. This is probably the film that is closest to not being 
horror, but due to the closeness of science fiction to horror during the 50’s, and the 
intense, unstoppable, and unseen nature of the monsters of the film, it seems reasonable 
to discuss - simply imagine that the invading army is a single killer, and the whole 
world is the babysitter who is home alone. 
The War of the Worlds is a story about alien invaders coming down to earth and 
exterminating mankind - however, after it seems like all hope is lost and it is impossible 
to kill the aliens, it is revealed that they have a substantial weakness. This weakness is 
something that all humans can overcome, but the aliens cannot - the air and microbes of 
our planet. Once the aliens breath our air, we are able to strike back, defeat them, and 
flourish. Given the leaning of popular horror films to lean away from domestic horror 
during this decade, it’s no wonder that this story was brought to the silver screen. This 
terror came from the stars, a distant land of mystery and the unknown, giving way to a 
 32  
popular new sub-genre of film that has its roots in science fiction. Despite the campy 
nature of the film (which is entirely a product of its time), it is extremely important to 
analyze this movie, given its introduction of a much grander scale than had ever been 
seen before - it’s not just a lone group of friends, of a single town that is being 
threatened; it’s the entire world. 
Much of this film’s iconicism and influence can be gathered from the ending, in 
which it is discovered that the aliens cannot actually handle earth’s bacteria - coming 
from a different world, it makes sense that this would happen. It’s a reverse of the 
invasive and killing European germ infections in the Americas on the indigent people's 
Obviously, the reason for this is due to the wake of World War II, and The War of the 
Worlds allowed Americans to see and fantasize about their own victory. 
In this film, the aliens are easily used as a metaphor for another invading source, 
such as the Japanese or the Nazis. Despite humanity’s initial difficulty in dealing with 
these new and high-tech foes, they stand strong against the invaders, attempting to fight 
back and dying with a patriotic spirit. Of course, this isn’t an action movie - horror is 
still steadily built due to the point of view, and the horrific sights that the protagonist 
experiences throughout his journey through the war zone that is the earth. The horrors 
of this seemingly un-winnable war reflect the nature of the war just past - the 
symbolism and metaphors present in this film allow people to face the fears of the time, 
with the Cold War’s steadily rising current at bay. 
However, with the film’s ending, it is revealed that the aliens have one tenable 
weakness that is incredibly easy to exploit - all you need to do is breath on them for a 
while. This represents the bounce-back, and despite the nation of the Earth’s initial 
 33  
puny struggles, they come back fighting, much stronger than their enemies, weakening 
those enemies with their own natural hardiness and stamina, and taking back the world. 
They know the aliens’ weaknesses, they know the way to beat them, and they do it to 
the tune of total decimation. 
But it’s not only their wits that save them, such as the Doctor’s ability to fight 
back against the seemingly unstoppable tide of aliens at the farmhouse - this movie is 
about boosting self-esteem, and despite its undeniably horrific doomsday potential, it 
ends happily - the smallest creature, that God in his divine wisdom put on earth, was 
enough to save the humans. It’s not just our natural toughness, our stamina, or our will 
that allows us to beat the aliens - it’s our divine right to stop them, and it’s God’s will 
that they lose. 
Despite this, the effects, the scale, and the subject matter are extremely different 
from many other horror pieces before. The film discusses war, atomic bombs, civilian 
life and death, dehumanization of enemies, and a relatively closed-book and happy 
ending. With everything new that this film brought to the table, and the mash up 
between science fiction and horror in a terrifyingly futuristic film topic marriage, this 
movie is a giant step forward to the development of horror. 
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954, Highest Gross) 
Creature from the Black Lagoon follows a similar narrative structure to The War 
of the Worlds, albeit from a closer distance to the action and the players involved - the 
scaled-down version of aliens invading earth, with a single strange creature playing the 
antagonist. However, it could be stated that man, in this context, is the invading creature 
- they have a greater technology than the creature, better intelligence, and are moving in 
 34  
on his territory, as opposed to the creature invading theirs. Still, discovery of a previous 
unknown, followed by violent reaction from that unknown, followed by our eventual 
defeat of that unknown through our wits and our enhanced intelligence after having 
fought the creature - the similarity if themes is striking. 
Creature from the Black Lagoon takes place primarily in the titular lagoon, 
where no one has ever returned alive. While seeking for proof of the missing link from 
fish to humans, a part-fish, part-human hybrid appears and attacks the researchers. 
Many die, but eventually the crew is able to get their guns and kill the creature and 
escape. Given that this was still the age of post-World War II/Cold War fear, this 
monster was alien in nature, but still a native of earth - he’s a missing link between 
humans and beast, an unfamiliar something falling in between the instincts of a man and 
instincts of an animal. However, despite the creature’s human-like nature, it is 
important to note that, within the symbology of this film, the creature was never 
actually a human, and was always viewed as something subhuman and deadly. It’s not 
even really considered a sad death when he is finally killed, but instead a triumph of 
humans over nature and a happy ending for all. 
Because of the context clues of the movie, it seems like the idea of the creature’s 
death not being a tragedy is correct. Like King Kong, the creature is subhuman, deadly 
and destructive to mankind even though its motivation may be interpreted as only 
defending his native lands. However, the human’s motivation for going there is so 
drastically different from King Kong, that it is fair to say that the message is warped in 
the translation. It is also worth noting that King Kong does not fit as neatly into a horror 
movie classification even though some still classify it as horror. Undoubtedly, King 
 35  
Kong was an incredibly important movie as a whole, but to horror specifically, it didn’t 
bring innovative new contributions to horror on film. Creature From the Black Lagoon 
takes many ideals and cues from Kong and warps them to its own twisted vision, 
allowing the same themes to be used as an actual horror film. 
The first theme is that of invasion. In this particular plot, the invading creature is 
not the monster, but the humans. But again, following in the wake of World War II, the 
symbology is clear - the humans only go after the thing after it initiated contact with 
them on the surface. Clawing and killing several human researchers, it forces more 
violent humans to follow and capture or kill the beast. While some humans are more 
bloodthirsty or monetarily motivated than others, they are all there to defeat a beast that 
has threatened their sphere of influence, and their quality of life. 
The second theme is that of humanity - while this theme is very dulled in the 
film, it is still present - the idea that something is less than man but more than beast 
permeates much of our culture, and the scientific nature of the beast (scientifically, it’s 
something that is created by nature) means that it was not created by humans, but is a 
stranger in our lands - unaware of our customs or our ways, it finds itself with a 
dilemma of killing us before we kill it, which is what the humans want, albeit inverted. 
Comparing this film to something like Frankenstein is pertinent, given the 
monster’s human-esque form and attachment to the human species. However, whereas 
Frankenstein’s Monster is created from humans, by humans, this creature is the creator, 
in a way, of humans and humans are intangibly linked to it through evolution. It’s less 
of creation killing its creator, however, than a brother killing his brother - we are linked 
to this animal, through violence, growth, evolution, and blood, but we refuse to see it in 
 36  
that way. In killing the creature, we are killing that part of ourselves, the part that we 
fear and respect, the part of us that we choose not to admit is there. 
The creature and humans are inexplicably linked, and the movie shows how 
subtle the evolution of the genre, and the stories it tells, can be, from the creation of the 
monster, to the way it is an amalgamation of various other themes and metaphors from 
other recent films. It deserves to be on this list because of its ability to mix together the 
link between man and monster, and the separation of monster and man, the 
uncontrollable powers of nature, and the inexplicable powers of violence that only men 
can drive other men to. It is, in and of itself, a missing link that combines many 
different horror movies past. 
 
 
 37  
Chapter 6: Psycho and Night of the Living Dead: The Monster Inside 
the 60s 
Psycho (1960, Highest Rated) 
When Marion Crane takes a policeman’s advice to find someplace that’s not her 
car to sleep, her fate in Psycho is sealed. While fleeing from the law with a wad of 
stolen cash, Marion Crane finds herself at the Bate’s Motel, sharing dinner with her 
future killer. There’s no way the Policeman knew what was going to happen, but his 
orders and Marion’s decision to follow them directly leads to her death. The year is 
1960, and Psycho is released. This movie changed things for horror. Of course, 
Hitchcock had already proven himself as the master of suspense, with dramatic thrillers 
like Vertigo and Rear Window being met with critical acclaim. But Psycho is different. 
Psycho is a movie with a killer, a monster in human skin, and a protagonist killed off in 
the first 15 minutes of the movie. 
Psycho begins just as Marion decides to steal a large amount of money from a 
wealthy client at the bank where she works as a secretary. This is so that she can afford 
to get married and live a good life with her fiancée, Sam. She then packs and drives off 
to get to her boyfriend in California to give him the money, but is stopped by a sudden 
rainstorm, driving her to the Bates Motel. There, she meets Norman Bates and learns 
about him and his mother. Norman’s lust causes anger in his mother, who comes and 
kills Marion in the shower. A week later, Marion’s sister, Lila, attempts to investigate 
where her sibling has disappeared to, and hires a private detective who investigates 
Norman Bates, but then quickly dies at his hand after informing Lila and Sam of his 
suspicions. Lila and Sam go to investigate themselves, and Lila finds that Norman’s 
 38  
mother had been dead the whole time, and together the pair manage to subdue him, 
dressed in his mother’s clothes. The film ends with Norman trapped in his mother 
personality and locked in an asylum. 
Psycho is a film with many twists and turns, with a woman stealing a bunch of 
money from a rich bank customer, and staying at the Bates’ Motel during her escape.  
There, Norman Bates becomes infatuated with her, but she is killed by an unknown 
assailant.  Over the course of the film, the real killer and villain is revealed to be 
Norman Bates’ mind, where he has a second, violent personality. Eventually, he is 
caught and put into a mental asylum. A vast gulf of difference separates this film from 
the horror and Hitchcock films before it. It returns the monster to the human, the nature 
of man itself, rather than creatures from out of space or man-made horrors. Norman 
Bates represents the fear within our own nation and within our world as a whole. 
Considering this decade gave way to much of the internalized doubts of the USA’s 
strength and beliefs of superiority among the nations of the world, along with the 
movie’s unprecedented skill with suspense and horror, it’s no doubt that this is one of 
the the most critically acclaimed movies of the period. 
Analyzing Psycho as a product of its time would be doing a bit of a disservice to 
the entire decade, of course, as it still came out on the cusp of the Vietnam War, with 
little less than a hint of what was to come. Still, it is easy to discuss the monster’s 
change of face to one more human. The narrative of the “outsider” is still present, as it 
always has been, but returns to the very near outside, rather than the very distant. Gone 
are the aliens from War of the Worlds, as their influence is random chance, an unknown 
attack upon us that was ended simply by our own strength of will. Gone is The Creature 
 39  
from the Black Lagoon, a mystical superman of evolution, hidden in a faraway land, 
that was easily dispatched with our military might. Now all there is is Norman Bates 
and his mother, two perfectly normal people, who, at a glance and a short conversation, 
could easily go years without being found out, hiding the monster underneath. 
Norman Bates’ form of horror stems entirely from that unassuming facade, his 
creepy, yet pleasant smile hiding whatever wickedness lies within him. Even his 
mother, his other personality and the true metaphor for internal desire to do evil, puts on 
those masks. With her last line, she simply states, “Let them see what kind of a person I 
am. I'm not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching... they'll see. They'll 
see and they'll know, and they'll say, ‘Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly…’”. This line 
is, like many “last lines”, truly meaningful, and speaks to what a lot of the intent behind 
the film seems to be. She knows that she’s evil, and does terrible things. Her 
wholesome, family son is just a victim and a puppet in all of this, forced to do 
unspeakable things by an external force of evil outside of his control. 
However, the difference between this force and the forces in movies past relates 
back to the “near outsider”. She is (or was) a human. One of us, as it were - whatever 
force she held over her son is still there, past her death, and her influence is clear in the 
desire to kill those that she doesn’t deem worthy. It’s easy to see her as a Nazi allegory 
in that sense, the idea that even though the seed of evil is gone, its roots can remain 
implanted in the ground, or the fruits that it grew during its lifetime. However, given the 
characteristic of her reign of terror, in that it was completely domestic in nature, it 
seems more likely that the evil was a return to the same sort of horror that is related 
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more to the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, which uses a similar sort of hidden monster-
among-us madness as its twist. 
The most important thing to note about Psycho, however, is that it resurrected 
the sort of incurable illness of monsterism as a horror trope from the 30’s and 40’s. At 
times, Norman Bates is a bit of a sympathetic monster, to be sure. He brings to mind a 
twisted, modern Frankenstein’s Monster sort of narrative. Like Frankenstein’s Monster, 
he’s cursed by the very nature of his birth to be feared by others. However, this fear lies 
under the surface and can only be mongered and cultivated through the gradual peeling 
back of the layers of both his past, and the madness that lives there. Frankenstein’s 
Monster was immediately seen and feared for what was readily apparent on the outside 
(a frightful looking monster with very bad hair, easily capable of killing that must be 
destroyed), and due to this idea implanted in the civilians, they feel threatened,he is 
demonized and driven to be a monster - forced to kill by external forces, rather than his 
own innate cruelty. Norman Bates’ exterior, on the other hand, brings nothing but at 
most, an unsettling calm to those who meet with him, while his capability of murder is 
brought from a place deep within him (literally, due to his psychotic madness). 
This internal horror brings across one of the biggest renewals of this decade - the 
monster within men. As mentioned before, the monster in this movie is not Norman 
Bates per se, but his internal propensity to kill. He goes about his business like anyone 
else would, and doing quite well at it. But that killing risk is always there, lurking 
beneath the surface. From the first time we see him pick up a knife, to the last scene 
where he is sitting silently in his cell, his deepest, even subliminal thoughts turn to 
murder and death - the thoughts of killing,the subtle tinges of throwing away his other 
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personality so that the “mother” personality is not convicted, implies so much, about his 
own personal desires to wield the cold hand of death again. 
The mother becomes a metaphor for that desire to kill, and the internal anger of 
anyone who is, like the movie suggests, a psycho. Human beings are innately capable of 
death-dealing and knife-wielding. It is the nature of our violent evolutionary path. For 
the majority of us, those killing instincts are suppressed- by society, the law, religious 
rules or even just self-control through the superego, as it were. In Norman's case he 
displays a gentle soul, and at even the thought of violence, he shrieks with terror - “Oh, 
God, Mother! Blood! Blood!” But, he allows it to subsist - deep beneath the skin, he 
hides it, but cannot or does not rid himself of it, cleaning up after his mother’s killings, 
but keeping her body close by. He is trapped by his mother in his hotel, her house, but 
he, in turn, does not allow her out to the general public. 
This sort of beautiful symbiosis is a theme that runs to the core of the movie, 
and is one of the two reasons it could be found truly terrifying, as well as its place in 
horror movie legend. Things are not as they seem and the loss of trust we have in 
appearances frightens us. We fear that invisible evil lurking within which we cannot 
escape from in ourselves - the anger, rage, and the capability of destruction; or, we fear 
that which we cannot see in others - the unassuming friends we know so very well and 
we wonder if any one of them is capable of subversive evil. Shocking us with a surprise 
attack of previously unrecognized horror and threatening everything that we, as 
humans, hold dear: whether bringing the close, personal horror of murder as the movie 
portrays, or something even more large-scale atrocious and world-shattering  
 42  
Night of the Living Dead (1968, Highest Gross) 
As Psycho implied that everyone had a killer inside, Night of the Living Dead 
begs for you not to associate with them. While zombies had been present within cinema 
for a long time in name, the modern zombie owes most of its existence to George 
Romero’s freshman film. Night of the Living Dead, and most of its sequels, are already 
entrenched in the politics and influences of its time. With dozens of analytical papers 
and videos created about the film, along with its innovative monsters, cultural 
commentary, and enormous setting, it’s no wonder that Living Dead has remained a 
highly-rated film. 
The film is about a small group of survivors hiding out from a zombie 
apocalypse in a house. Slowly they find out more about the zombies, but are picked off 
one by one. Eventually, only one man is left, Ben. When he hears people coming to 
investigate the house, he is hopeful, but they end up mistaking him for a zombie and 
tragically killing him. Zombies are, by their very nature, a blank canvas. A husk of 
something that used to be human that allows filmmakers to place whatever views or 
ideologies that they have on society. It’s easy to do, with their blank expressions, mob-
like behavior, and varying degrees of intelligence allowing for metaphors ranging from 
simply the effects of mob mentality and mindless consumerism (Dawn of the Dead), to 
the dangers innate to blindly following a single goal and religious extremism (28 Days 
Later). In the zombie sub genre of horror, Zombie movies have evolved horror into a 
platform that is a figurative gold mine of social commentary. 
Given their status as pack animal, zombies could easily and quickly be seen as 
an outside force. Indeed, many zombie movies could easily be swapped for war movies 
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that heavily feature guerrilla tactics - Red Dawn could easily be made into a zombie 
movie if the invading Russians had been changed into flesh-eating monsters. However, 
Night of the Living Dead and the zombies that they spawn hit several other, much more 
personal notes that make comparisons to the decade’s earlier horror success very 
apparent. They both discuss internal war, domination of the human body and spirit, 
insanity, and control over one’s own emotions. The film could almost measure a 
reaction to Psycho - the lack of trust in others, and the escape and protection against 
anyone who might be capable of death and destruction is necessary - any interaction 
with those violent people could lead to either your violent death, or even an awakening 
inside yourself to become violent and murderous, following the “infection” by another 
monster. However, the deepness to zombies, cannot be understated. They are easier to 
project ideas onto than probably any other monster in this thesis, so exploring what 
those ideas might be and what, at their core, the zombies represent, can be a harrowing 
task. 
First, the most important thing to consider is their attributes - every monster and 
villain has specific characteristics that are exclusive to them, and in this respect, 
zombies could almost be considered boring. They have no strength, no grace, no 
intelligence, no ability to plan. The unfortunate zombies in Dawn of the Dead, display 
A fear of fire and of course their lack of intelligence, which ultimately leads to their 
downfall. So where does their fear come from? Romero effortlessly answers this 
question within the movie: they’re relatable. Like Psycho, but perhaps to a more 
extreme degree, the killers are entirely human. The only thing that separates them from 
us is a small bite, and a few boards on the door. And according to the movie's storyline, 
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for people surrounded by hordes of them, it’s nearly impossible to avoid that small bite 
and become one of the horde. 
Perfection. When it comes down to it, the zombies and the movie, (at least, 
without any political or social commentary put onto them) are about perfection and 
imperfection. The zombies are easy to escape from, but they don’t stop. They are easy 
to kill, but there are always more of them. It is possible to never come in contact with 
them - but you are doomed to from the moment you see them. To survive, one must be 
perfect, never allowing yourself to be touched or grabbed, never overreacting, but never 
letting your guard down. Vigilant. Keeping emotions in check while staying cognizant 
of others, in case they might turn. This delicate, perfect balance is the most important 
thing in Night of the Living Dead, but as the movie portrays, maintaining this balance 
without being punished for it is nearly impossible, it is next to impossible. 
This punishment, as mentioned above, can be delivered in two ways - 
conformity or death. As conformity is the true power behind the zombie’s metaphorical 
might, this is the much more dangerous and painful option - at least with death, you 
don’t have to live with yourself and what you’ve done. Conformity turns those who are 
infected against their previous friends and allies, along with forcing the conformist to 
commit similar atrocities to their dominators, creating a vicious cycle of violence and 
misdeeds. Committing atrocities against humans who, once upon a time, were friends 
and family. The movie, it seems, discusses this briefly with the apocalyptic narrative, 
while still being primarily about the mistakes and imperfections that cause these 
conformist/deadly punishments in the first place. 
 45  
Of course, the film thrives on the fact that it is not just about the apocalypse by 
itself. Given the shoestring budget that it was created with, the ability to make it feel 
like an enormous plague is truly an achievement. However, it does end up focusing the 
narrative on the characters - their reactions to each other, and their reactions to danger. 
Some, like Ben, take it on with a focused calm, while others like Barbara are completely 
in shock, and lose control of themselves. The zombies’ behaviors extend to the lucid 
characters, and each of them must abandon a part of themselves to prevent losing all of 
themselves. 
Ben, the closest thing to a protagonist that the film has, Barbara, the character 
who has the second longest lifespan in the movie, Tom and Judy, and the Coopers make 
up the sort of main group of Night of the Living Dead. In this case, even with the 
incredibly iconic creatures being introduced, the characters, and the interactions 
between them are very important to the movies. While they exist in the same space as 
characters from slasher movies and all other films on this list - things to be fed to the 
monster - they are important when it comes to understanding the creatures. The zombie 
film tropes often involve the comparison of men to monsters - the zombies are just 
doing it because they have to, but the humans choose to do it - despite the narrative of 
conversion and perfection that is ever present beneath the monster’s existence. 
However, few seem to compare directly to the monsters, allowing the audience to 
understand the killers through these mirrors of the monster’s personality. 
Each of them seem to have aspects of the zombies that attribute to their deaths. 
Barbara is a follower - lost in shock at Johnny’s death, represents the zombie’s 
mindlessness. She stays silent for most of the movie after Johnny perishes at the hands 
 46  
of the first zombie seen, then shows up near the end, having been conformed - this is 
part of the reason Barbara dies, choosing to follow her brother into death and 
conformity, rather than separating from the pack and choosing to stay with Ben. The 
Coopers represent the zombies’ tenacity and violence, with an extreme will to get their 
own way, and the desire to hurt those that disagree - despite Mr. Cooper’s cowardice, 
when he is berated for his fears by Ben, he turns violent against him, ignoring all 
rational just as a flesh-eater looking for its next meal. 
Tom and Judy, the young teen couple, are similar in nature to the Coopers' 
irrationality but their irrationality manifests itself differently. However, the manner of 
their death - instantly killed in a car explosion due to clumsiness - seems contrary to the 
other killings in the film, which are very deliberately gory in nature. It is possible that 
they represent the hopelessness of a life with a lack of any possible escape in life and 
the fact that escaping zombification and conformity is only possible through death - 
their haphazard plan immediately backfires as they attempt to drive away. However, in 
their instant and painless-yet-spectacular death, they have instantly found release from 
the most terrifying situation in their life - one that was likely to end much more 
painfully than a car explosion. Ben is a very non-stereotypical black leading man during 
a time where that role was very rare, offering the narrative of his non-conformity being 
the reason he survives so long through the film. Indeed, it is not because of any non-
perfection that he doesn’t survive, but because of this non-conformity, and because of 
his senseless death that ties the entire narrative of the human group being aspects of the 
zombies’ traits and conformity together. He is killed by humans who believe him to be a 
zombie. Ben is the zombies’ humanity and their recognizability, allowing them to get 
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close to those that are still on the "human" side of the "other" their most deadly weapon. 
The thing that killed Barbara, the thing that caused the Coopers to get eaten by their 
own dead daughter, and the thing that allows the zombies to offset your perfection and 
conform you - they look just like us albeit dirtier and in rags He is the arbiter of 
perfection, and if you fail the test that he and the zombies pose, you die. 
 
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Chapter 7: Jaws and Alien: Horror Returns from the Beyond in the 
70’s 
Jaws (1975, Highest Gross) 
With Jaws, a new precedent is set within the horror film genre. Following in the 
familiar footsteps of films like Psycho and Frankenstein, adapting a classic horror book 
into a suspenseful and frightening horror film, Jaws steps away from working 
specifically with symbolism and monsters in films to create fear, and into the ideal of 
flawless technique; its power comes not from the monster, but from the fear. Its themes 
break away from those that were temporarily renowned in the 60s as character studies, 
and returns to the classics of the 30s and 50s, with unthinking, unfeeling monsters 
becoming a surge of death and horror from the underworld, the places that humans dare 
not and should not tread. 
 Jaws begins, like many horror films, with a comfortable beach party with 
many sun-tanning, swimsuit-clad tourists and their children. Soon after it begins, 
however, the party is broken up by a monster (in this case, a shark). The next day, a 
coroner determines that the person killed was, in fact, killed by a shark, but changes his 
mind at the suggestion that it was actually a boating accident. The sheriff doesn’t 
entirely agree, and his suspicions are confirmed when the next day, another shark attack 
kills another visitor to the beach resort. Quint, a professional shark hunter, and Hooper, 
an oceanographer, team up with Brody to go out and find the shark that’s been attacking 
people. After several false starts, they find the shark, but Quint refuses to go back or 
call for help despite the shark being far bigger than first imagined. The shark keeps 
attacking the boat and kills Quint, with Hooper unable to help. Brody manages to shoot 
 49  
an air tank that the shark has swallowed, blowing up the shark and killing it for good, as 
he and Hooper slowly begin to paddle back to shore on the wreckage of the ship. 
Jaws is a film that draws from many other classic “stalking” horror films. It 
begins with an attack from a monster (the shark), and a group of people investigating 
and hunting the shark, all the while trying to avoid giving the shark the advantage to kill 
them. Some of them die and the boat sinks, but in the end, the sheriff and the marine 
biologist manage to kill the shark and escape back to the beach with their lives. 
However, unlike the films that it draws from, it introduces a technique that, while not 
unfounded in the horror movie archives, is rare to see when the design and execution of 
a specific, horrific monster is still kept mostly to the shadows and to the mystery. While 
this is primarily due to a glitch within making the movie, the result is truly 
extraordinary, and offers a new perspective when creating horror films that was not 
used as often before this film: building tension through the use of perspective. 
Specifically, the perspective of the monster itself, and how the choices of the 
protagonists are the things that get them into trouble. 
This technique works for many reasons, and while the act of not showing the 
monster relates back to the classic Cat People, that film does not utilize the first person 
view in order to create tension and imply intent through its filmmaking. This is a huge 
change in the monster stalking scenes that permeated films before, and a reason why the 
film morphed into a behemoth hit in its time.  The secondary factor was the basic 
premise and execution of the film’s themes. As was mentioned before, the themes of the 
film are much more simplistic than other films before it, but they still have an active 
role to play in both the decade and the fear that the movie brings. 
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Like Psycho before it, the fear in the movie is also partially a part of the 
normality of the situation that it portrays - taking place at a summer resort, a place 
anybody would go to vacation or relax, killings taking place in the ocean where anyone 
could be going at any time, by a creature that is far more familiar and stealthy than 
anything else people could imagine, but deadly enough to kill in an instant, with no 
possible chance of defense and but the smallest chance of retribution. 
This fear is something that defines the film. While most of the other films on 
this list lean on the improbability of the creature's existence, Jaws brings the reality to 
the forefront. In this way, it emphasizes the realness of the probability of death, the risks 
that humans take by being alive, and the capability of nature herself taking a specific 
interest in removing you from the planet. If necessary, it will do it by force. However, 
nature demands respect and there is no stopping this deadly swimming force of nature - 
at least, in the beginning. 
A very strange aspect of this film’s setting is the idea of the hunt - an important 
symbol in the film, emphasized by both the large amount of time in the movie spent 
hunting the shark, and the many references to other hunters and predators, both human 
and non, throughout the film. Unlike a more traditional horror film, the plot is actually 
to kill the monster. This has been explored in previous films, but rarely in the close-up, 
one-on-one fight that take place throughout the second half - it is simply the hunter’s 
wits vs. the predator’s brawn. It is even implied that the shark possesses some strategic 
acumen, though this idea is very dim and not incredibly forward when relating the shark 
to the men. 
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As a theme of the movie, the hunters and the act of hunting is very apparent. Of 
course, there are the obvious notes of comparing hunting scars, and the actual act of, 
well, being a conquering hunter. But, there are subtler interjections within the film and 
the hunt that seem to portray some deeper notes about hunters and their personalities. 
The noblest of the trio that hunt the shark is Brody, due to his motivation for protection 
and peace. Quinn, on the other hand, is made to be more psychotic and proud in nature, 
being motivated by money and chest thumping, egotistical acclaim. This ends up 
causing his downfall in several scenes, given his refusal to use tools other than his own 
(“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”), his refusal for outside help by destroying the 
radio, and his eventual death. 
For its revolutionary re-introduction of the stalking method into horror, and its 
use of incredible scare and survival tactics that evolved from and redefined previous 
movies from other decades, Jaws certainly belongs on the list. Its influence has been 
long and varied, with multiple references and success stories following it -not to 
mention it's near universally recognized theme song.  For two years after its release 
(until Star Wars premiered in theaters), it even held the title of highest grossing movie 
of all time, an unprecedented success for the horror movie film genre. All of this was 
due to its fantastic direction, score, and storytelling. 
Alien (1979, Highest Rated) 
Aliens is a film of fantastic and masterful direction, bringing in elements of 
science fiction, Lovecraftian horror, and survival horror films to create an intense and 
nail biting film. This film, like Jaws, brings a deep and well-crafted atmosphere to the 
screen, while taking a step back from deeper messages and symbols within the horror 
 52  
film industry, focusing on well-crafted props, makeup, editing, and sound design. While 
this is not to say that it completely removes itself from a message, the message is not as 
important as the genuine fear and admiration of human courage that Alien brings. 
Alien is a movie about so-called “space truckers”, who find a strange planet with 
a strange alien that attaches itself to one of the crewman’s face, hatches, and then goes 
about killing the crew members one by one. Eventually, there is only one survivor, 
Ripley, who actually manages to defeat the alien and escape through luck and 
perseverance. The first thing to note about the film is the titular “alien” itself. Called a 
Xenomorph outside of the film, it represents a vastly different direction that the monster 
in Jaws takes, while operating within a similar sort of space. It is vastly different from 
the shark in terms of both its MO and its looks. It is otherworldly, like nothing we 
would find on earth. Its design was so important to its fear, that it was kept a secret from 
the general public, with original trailers and posters containing no hint to what the 
monster looked or acted like. The tagline, “In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream” 
being the only hint as to the plot of the film. 
This reveal is so important to the film’s scares and technique, and is a big piece 
of innovation for the pre-Internet time - the alien, in its mystery of identity, allows it to 
be the driving factor of the film until it appears - unlike Jaws, with the shark being on 
prominent display from the poster, and imaginable to anyone who had a picture of a 
shark, the unknown in Alien presents much more fear and tension than other films of the 
time. It comes across as a true outsider within the film, being impossible to define or 
describe without images, preventing even people who have seen the movie from 
spoiling the true fear of the reveal. 
 53  
This unknown “other” keeps its tension building, even in ways that as a re-
watching audience might not expect - not knowing what the alien looks like, people 
could assume that the facehugger form is the alien - a bit boring, but who knows what 
it’s going to do? Then, at the dinner scene, when the alien grub explodes from Kane’s 
chest, it is possible that this is the big reveal of the alien - scary yet a bit 
underwhelming, but it adds to the building tension. But after escaping, in the scene with 
the chains and water, when the alien finally reveals its true form, the tension has built to 
such a high level that it all comes crashing down upon the crew and the audience feels 
their apprehension. 
This is where the style similarities to Jaws comes in - with the alien playing the 
role of the shark in a domain that it can freely move about in, while the protagonists 
cannot. Under equipped (though not by choice) and outmatched, all the crew can hope 
for is a miracle, of the alien not being able to eat all of them before someone can make 
it out. Of course, with the enormous casualty count and terrifying speed and strength of 
the alien, this seems impossible. 
This is another difference between the alien and the shark - the alien is 
completely unknown. Its capabilities are strange and odd, and the crew is unable to 
discern its strengths, or weaknesses. They have no idea what they are going up against 
or how to kill it. While this is similar to the situation in Jaws, in that they have no true 
idea about what the shark is, its massive size and strength, the plan does not change, and 
they don’t need to gather more information about it to form a new idea on how to defeat 
the beast, and their goal is always to kill or beat the shark. 
 54  
This all culminates in the movie as a lack of control. While obviously a heavily 
used theme in horror movies past, the amount of control lost in this film is greater than 
most of its predecessors. The film begins with them losing control of the ship - forced to 
land somewhere that they have no desire to. The alien forcibly latches onto Kane, and 
refuses to release itself. Then, it forces its way out of him, with no ability from the crew 
to stop it, at a random time and place. 
After this, the crew struggles to do anything, with the corporation that has 
essentially enslaved them preventing them from fighting back for the first part of the 
film, and the alien attacking from the other side at random, stalking and killing them 
one by one in the dark. Feelings of confusion and helplessness permeates the movie and 
is a major theme in both killing the monster and how the monster acts. Even in her most 
intense moment of defiance, Ripley cannot escape the ship and self destruct the alien 
inside - it continues to force herself onto her and the only plan that finally works in 
disposing of it is forcibly removing it from her increasingly shrinking bubble of 
protection. 
This film deserves to be on this list because it has gone where no other movie on 
this list has gone before - space. While other films like The War of the Worlds brought 
space to earth to torture its humans, Alien brought humans to space, to achieve a level of 
isolation that has never been seen before in horror films - lightyears away from any 
possible help, there is never any hope of rescue or survival in this movie. Beyond this 
new and fresh location, it used space as a strong foundation to place block after block of 
terror onto the concept, until it finally created a truly horrifying experience. 
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Chapter 8: Friday the 13th and The Shining: Our Monsters are Reused 
in the 80s 
Friday the 13th (1980, Highest Gross) 
Friday the 13th, despite its lukewarm reception from critics, is a film that 
represents a lot about the horror stylings of the modern age. While the slasher film had 
existed for a long period of time before this film, Friday the 13th changed the formula 
to a more recognizable and predictable piece that we know today, with multiple 
characters of similar ages but wildly varying and stereotypical character traits being 
slowly but violently killed as the killer goes about his rampage. While this movie was 
made in the reaction to Halloween, it did not contain as many of these elements that are 
so popular today, and the popularity of Friday the 13th quickly led to a string of slasher 
franchises, with Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday, and even Halloween receiving a 
lengthy list of sequels. 
Friday the 13th involves teens returning to Camp Crystal Lake several decades 
after it closed down due to multiple deaths. The teens are councilors, there early to get 
the camp set up, but suddenly, they start to get picked off in gruesome ways by a 
mysterious killer. Eventually, only one of the councilors (Alice) is left, and with some 
luck, they manage to escape and kill the killer, Mrs. Voorhees. Unfortunately, her son 
Jason (who drowned in an accident) is shown to still be alive in a twist at the end of the 
movie, still out in the lake and waiting for another batch of victims. Similar to the 
Grindhouse movies of years past, Friday the 13th was awash with blood, violence, and 
nudity. Often these would take place within the same scene of each other, and the 
shocking nature of the violence can easily be seen being taken from movies like Psycho. 
 56  
This film is much more of a roller coaster ride than previous films on this list, which 
makes it a bit dubious as to the nature of its inclusion. It was picked to be the most 
financially successful film of the 80’s, and later generations have been kind to the film, 
and it is popular for its pulpy horror, but in making its themes and metaphors more 
subtle and less apparent, and its influence much more of a direct appropriation rather 
than an inspiration and evolution, it’s hard to place it here. 
Its awards seem to come from its formulaic approach to the horror and slasher 
genre, and while it is an appropriation, its iconic imagery and its high body count puts it 
ahead in the running. As well, with it mostly borrowing from Halloween before it, 
which was beat out due to the many other fantastic horror films in the 70s, it represents 
a marked change in the formula of the slasher, stalker, horror film. 
This is not an alien spaceship, or even a beach resort. While Jaws had 
relatability due to the beach location of the killings, even the monster had its limits - the 
water was the only place of fear that could be found in the film. There was no risk of 
being attacked on land. Halloween was clear that killings could happen in suburbia, or 
anywhere that people lived. Like Psycho before it, it found fear in the normality of 
everyday life. Friday the 13th took this idea and ran in a bit of a different direction. It 
focuses much more on the isolation and dread that can come from being out on the open 
ocean, or trapped on a spaceship, but put it in an even more relatable place - in a 
summer camp, in the woods. More than that, it takes place in an innocuous, unassuming 
area - camping is an activity that can be performed by anyone, but it is even harder to 
leave, to escape, than Jaws was. 
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Friday the 13th, in the end, is on this list because it shows us the direction that 
films have been going, especially according to the hypothesis of this paper - 
appropriation of popular elements blended together to create a franchise-worthy film 
capable of many different sequels and prequels - and the franchise is representative of 
this idea than the film ever could be, with its steadily declining ratings and direct-to-
video sequels, Friday the 13th is the truest example of the decline and lack of creativity 
present in horror films as they were being produced. 
With ridiculous situations and locations being one-upped each time that Jason 
and his mother took to the screen, there seems to be a fond memory for the first film in 
the series. It takes a concept and simply changes its location, adds a few more children 
into it for a rehash of even more creative murders, but is still well directed. It is exciting 
and tense, and always horrifying at times. Even while its ending is becoming trite, with 
the implication that the story isn’t over (with over 10 movies in the franchise, this was 
proven correct), the first lives on as a sort of monolith, a representation of some effort 
put into the creation and execution of the film. There is creativity underlying the film, 
with the revenge plot, which wasn’t present in Halloween, and the location being a 
hotbed of different murder tools and creepy places to hide, there is effort being put into 
this movie. Still, as we continue down the pathway that this film left behind, it becomes 
more and more apparent that this film is the start of a decline of representation of 
quality and effort placed into the horror movie genre.  
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The Shining (1980, Highest Rating) 
Two weeks later, the counterpoint to the above idea was released. The Shining, a 
dramatic horror film from a masterful director (Stanley Kubrick) brings unsettling and 
horrific psychological terror to the screen. Like so many classic horror films, this was 
adapted from a novel, although the differences between the film and the novel are 
extremely varied - it draws just what it needs to and little more from each chapter, 
adding in its own twists and turns to make the film its own, more original work, while 
playing homage to the original novel in some of the base ideas and the imagery. 
This film is almost a series of spooky vignettes, with Jack, his wife, and their 
son looking after a hotel during its off-season. Each of them experience strange 
occurrences in the hotel, and eventually Jack goes insane and begins trying to kill his 
family (though he only manages to kill one of the other workers at the hotel), before he 
freezes to death chasing after his son. In a position that could almost be called an anti-
slasher, with only one murder (that is performed by the antagonist, Jack) and intense 
psychological torture put upon the extremely small cast of characters being the real 
horror core of this film. As well, the use of a mundane environment in a psychologically 
scary way is a more modern recollection of movies like Jaws or Psycho. It serves to 
illustrate the fear of a location that is ordinary, but strange. Like many films before it, 
the other is a mysterious and imperceivable entity, but still takes a physical toll on the 
main characters of the film. 
Throughout the movie we can see the effects of the entity of the hotel on the 
characters slowly grow, using Jack as some kind of avatar to further their agenda, and 
familiar themes begin to play across the film. The themes we have seen so many times 
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on this list take on new shades and tones within the context of this lonely, yet full, hotel. 
It takes advantage of dozens of tropes played out all within the same body, combining 
and recombining them from decades of cinema to again, create something new.  
It pulls the insane main character from Dr. Caligari and places them into a serial 
killer position like Psycho. The uncontrollable nature of monsters from Frankenstein, 
the strange entity that slowly takes over and destroys human souls and lives in a lonely 
environment from countless films. It elevates these themes through powerful and 
spooky imagery, without resorting to outright jump scares, building an atmosphere of 
dread, decay, and possession with the resources brought forth in horror films past. It is 
an example of how modern cinema can still pull interesting and horrorful ideas and 
twist them into new ways - rather than rehashing them and coming closer to directly 
copying them like Friday the 13th did earlier this decade. It gives them their own 
agency and character, rather than being based on sales. 
While this film is based on a book, many of the events are excluded or changed 
for the movie, with the end result being mostly unrecognizable except for the location 
and a few of the characters. This is an important note as it echoes many of the elements 
of previous films drawn from literature, from Frankenstein to Psycho. While many of 
these have varying amounts of changes, it is important to note that often the ones that 
drastically diverge from the source have an easier time of creating a horror atmosphere 
within the medium of film. 
Many of these films make these changes because of the boundaries set by 
movies, and looking back on them from a modern perspective reveals that often the 
films are better remembered than the books they were based off of. Despite being a fan 
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of horror films for years, I personally did not know of novels that these films were 
adapted from until much time had passed since I first watched the films. 
The Shining is an important note on these adaptations, as it is arguably the film 
on this list that takes the most liberties from the book on which it is based. This allows 
several things to work in its favor, in the interest of making money and becoming 
iconic. While it is not the highest grossing horror film this decade, it is still successful 
with both audiences and critics. It allows the director, Stanley Kubrick, to work with the 
material in a much freer manner, as well as letting the audiences who read the book and 
watched the movie to experience the unsettling nature of the overlook hotel in different 
ways. It also allows the film to deliver on haunting imagery and dialogue-lite segments, 
while also letting the talented main actors to deliver performances through interesting 
and creepy monologues, more akin to dialogue in a book. 
The film really does act as a counterpoint to Friday the 13th in this decade. 
While the former is made entirely as a film, the latter adapts an already spooky and 
interesting story with big twists and sweeping changes to utilize the best parts of both 
novel and screen. Friday was successful because it mimicked an already-successful 
movie, but The Shining was successful because it took on the characteristics of 
successful franchises and mixed them into something new, interesting, and horrifying. 
 
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Chapter 9: The 90s and Onward: Horror in the Modern Age 
While I have done research towards defining movies later on this list, it is 
difficult to look back on them and analyze them with more of an objective approach, 
due to them all being released while I was alive and watching. The films that would 
take the place of the 90s are The Blair Witch Project and The Silence of the Lambs. 
While both are serviceable movies, Blair is a polarizing film due to its new style of 
camera work and storytelling method (While technically not the first in the “found 
footage genre”, it was the film that caught everyone’s attention), and Lambs barely 
scrapes into the horror genre with a few creepy moments with the serial killer in his lair 
- it is certainly not as much of a horror movie in the traditional sense, but more of a 
detective thriller. The closest film I could compare it to would be psycho, but the sense 
of isolation and fear is interwoven throughout the entire film in that movie’s case, rather 
than simply being one element of the whole. 
The 90s did prove to be an interesting time for horror cinema, with many of the 
top-remembered and grossing films not being based off of any preexisting works - 
while most of the films on this list are based on books, films that came out in the 90s 
like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Se7en, or Army of Darkness were 
sequels, subversions and criticisms of classic horror tropes, more realistic crime films, 
or mostly comedies with horror elements. It seemed as though filmmakers sought to 
escape the fantastical and otherworldly nature of the past decade’s horror, in favor of 
more local and present attacks on the general populace - in the rare occasions that 
serious horror did escape the bounds of the earthly, non-magical plane, they had to have 
some sort of gimmick or interest-grabbing tagline to justify their existence, like the 
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Blair Witch Project’s “this is a real found-footage tape” or Event Horizon’s appeal to be 
a scary movie in space with religious elements (despite it falling flat at the box office). 
Looking back at these films after examining the history of the genre reveals 
quite a bit of the trend of recent years, with films that are similar to Alien (and even 
Alien 3 coming out this same year) doing poorly in the box office, and films that are 
closer to Psycho, but with even more gritty realness or films that subvert classic tropes 
doing very well. Scream is a big example, despite it not being directly added to the list, 
because it was a slasher film meant to stop slasher films - it pointed out all of the cliches 
associated with the film and then played them out within the movie, with a somewhat 
interesting twist at the end. However, it seemed as though this revitalized the sub-genre, 
with multiple sequels to Halloween, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and even 
Scream itself coming out that decade. 
These films are all accompanied by mixed or negative reviews, and in my 
attempt to add films to the list that are not sequels or prequels, I found that many of the 
films I would have had to choose from are much further down the critical ladder than I 
would have hoped. While films like The Shining and Alien are placed in the 90% ladder 
of the aggregate review site Rotten Tomatoes, the films on this decade all fall below the 
mid-80s (with the exception of The Silence of the Lambs, which just barely qualifies to 
be on this list as it is). While it is not as drastic of a fall as I would have expected going 
into this thesis, it is a present element of the decay taking place in the horror genre. 
The 2000s present even more of a problem with making this list - while I tried to 
keep this list primarily American-made films (with the exception of Dr. Caligari), many 
of the higher-grossing and higher-reviewed movies of this decade are imports from 
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other countries. The Grudge, Rec, and 28 Days Later are all very iconic films for this 
decade - but in terms of American-made movies, there seems to be very little to choose 
from in terms of critical acclaim. The films that would take the spots at this point on the 
list are The Ring and Paranormal Activity. The Ring is an American remake of the 
Japanese film Ring, and Paranormal Activity is, again, a somewhat mixed bag in terms 
of reaction (though it does garner an 83% on Rotten Tomatoes). 
The 2000s also seem to begin the rise of a genre of films in America that has 
been colloquially named “Torture Porn”, though the genre itself does not really exist 
within classical classifications. The film series’ of Saw, Hostel, and Final Destination 
both launched and had sequels in this decade, bringing an unprecedented amount of 
gore to the screen. While they were extremely panned by critics, they had decent box-
office grosses of around 60 million (according to the Box Office Mojo site), and the 
sequels each garnered even more money and more gore. 
The current decade of movies has, however, created the largest gap between the 
highest rated and the highest grossing film yet, however - while the decade is only half 
over, it is still quantifiably interesting - many of the higher-rated films this decade on 
Rotten Tomatoes are not american made, with the exception of It Follows, which has an 
aggregate score of 96% - extremely high for the decade, but only garnering a gross of 
about 17 million. World War Z, on the other hand, is both the highest grossing horror 
film this decade, and possibly of all time, with a gross of 202 million domestic, but only 
a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes. This is a huge difference, not seen since the difference 
between the films Cat People and The Wolf Man in the 40s, and it is definitely worth 
discussing in relation to where horror is headed for the rest of the decade. 
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Ironically, World War Z is the first film on this list since the 80s that is based on 
a book - many of the previous films were based on books and make drastic changes to 
the story and characters to serve the medium of film - however, the changes made with 
World War Z seems to have missed the point of the book in the first place. The Shining, 
while drastically changed from the book, was still about the main character’s descent 
into madness - Jack’s alcoholism and violent natures expressed through the supernatural 
and the unsettling nature of a once-populated but now isolated and lonely place. These 
themes are present in both book and film, but presented in different ways because of the 
requirements of the medium. 
World War Z on the other hand, seems to just be focused on the action of 
shooting zombies - even to the point of being closer to an action film than a horror film. 
The book is methodical and journalistic in nature, discussing the natures of man and 
their reactions to the zombie apocalypse in a semi-realistic way, transferring the story 
from character to character to best serve the narrative. While the film also uses a similar 
technique, following a single character around the world to see different reactions to the 
zombies, it focuses on hyper-adrenaline action, from the very first beats of the story. 
While the monsters in the novel are slow and methodical, in the movie they are speedy 
and reckless. These monsters, in a way, create a relevant and ironic contrast between the 
two pieces of media - while one is slow and interested in telling a story, the other is fast 
and interested in getting to the action as soon as possible - and the thing is, it worked 
out (money-wise) 
It Follows is an extremely methodical movie, and takes place in that area of 
constant tension because of it - like a zombie, the entity in the film slowly follows the 
 65  
protagonist, and while she can easily avoid it, she is always in danger of being killed if 
she makes one mistake. It’s a haunting and spooky tale, but due to its limited marketing, 
lack of a name-recognition, and other factors, it made only a small fraction of World 
War Z’s money - just the same as the Saw franchise, which saw more income with 
bigger and better set pieces, the trend of money moving towards those who have more 
visually appealing films is truly apparent the more these films are examined. 
 
 
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Chapter 10: Where we Are Now - Discussion 
As I have discussed, the films of the past are no stranger to big, explosive pieces 
of story. Alien, Jaws, The Wolf Man, War of the Worlds, Frankenstein - all have big 
shows of creatures and aliens, settings, action scenes, and suspense. But they draw from 
this well rarely, often at the close of the films, when it feels deserved and earned 
through the survivor’s actions and reactions to the monsters - the catharsis at the end of 
the long and dark tunnel. These pieces of story absolutely have their place in horror 
media, providing much-needed resolution to the stories that we need resolution to. 
Despite many of these having sequels and reboots, however, the catharsis still remains a 
vital part of the first movie in the series. Bates is ALWAYS locked up. The Alien is 
always dead. The shark has been thoroughly killed. 
This complete catharsis, however, seems to have stopped in recent films, 
particularly with Friday the 13th having an ending that hints at a sequel and allowing 
the unsettling feeling to follow the viewer out of the movie, and with the moment of 
catharsis stolen back from the audience and the film’s survivors, the film doesn’t seem 
exactly complete - but it makes it an easy and open target for a sequel. This takes place 
in most of the slasher films of the time, like Nightmare on Elm Street’s inability to 
defeat Freddy, or Halloween's Michael Myers being continually reincarnated for 
multiple sequels. For some reason, the catharsis was removed in favor of constant 
suspicion. Even in highly rated modern films this happens, albeit occasionally subtle - 
at the end of It Follows, for example, it seems as if they might have defeated the entity, 
but something is following them in the background of the final shot - which very well 
could be the entity again. However, it is unclear and not something I personally noticed 
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on the first time I watched the film. While I do not disagree with this practice for horror 
films, it does seem odd that many of the films that do not include the full cathartic 
release are also some of the lower-rated but higher-grossing films. 
This disconnect becomes more apparent while looking at the evolution of the 
high-grossing film, vs the evolution of the well-rated films. The high grossing films 
become more violent and explosive - the higher rated films, in comparison, stay 
relatively low-key, and search for closer to home ways of relating to the audience. War 
of the Worlds is a huge affair, with battling spaceships and running for cover, while 
Creature from the Black Lagoon is slow and stalking from the shadows throughout. 
Jaws is suspenseful and builds off of its lonely atmosphere, but the shark attacks are 
violent and long. Alien is similarly slow to build, but uses long cuts and short, violent 
attacks to kill off members of the crew - many of these deaths are not even seen on 
screen. And of course, World War Z is full of running and gunning, while It Follows is 
full of stalking and slow death. 
We can also see the trends of the movie monsters becoming more explosive 
overall throughout the years - Early on with Frankenstein and Freaks, the villains are 
misunderstood, with depth and character to their actions. As we grow through the ages, 
however, the monsters become less understandable. Night of the Living Dead, Jaws, 
Alien, and The Shining all have creatures with very little reasonability or character - 
they may have a small reason for killing, or some outside influence, but they cannot be 
reasoned with or stopped short of killing them. They are mysteries that are never 
explained. 
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The final comparison that is important from modern to classic horror is the 
presence of well known actors and directors - specifically, directors from other genres. 
The Shining has Jack Nicholson and Stanley Kubrick working together off of well-
received works, Alien and Jaws both have big-name directors attached (Ridley Scott 
and Steven Spielberg, respectively), and World War Z has Brad Pitt, arguably one of the 
biggest male stars around these days. While many of the movies on this list, even the 
modern ones, still have relatively unknown actors and directors, I think that the 
anonymity of the creators has become less and less of a feature in recent years, and as 
more people who work on movies solely for money begin to realize that horror can net 
quite a bit of money, it seems that big names become attached to these projects solely 
for that purpose. The same goes for the multitude of sequels to horror movies, such as 
Friday the 13th’s 10+ or Saw’s 7 sequels all having rising and falling profits. 
It seems as though these big names or frequent sequels, in recent years at least, 
have a supremely detrimental effect on the quality and rating of the films - often sequels 
are rated lower than their primary films, even as they garner more money at the box 
office. This links back to the feeling of catharsis that was discussed previously, as the 
catharsis has ceased to be to make room for the seemingly endless amounts of sequels 
and remakes in recent years. And while there have certainly been bad sequels and 
horror films in the past, most of the higher grossing films had at least some semblance 
of a good rating (at least in the upper 80s, with the exception of Cat People). It also was 
not entirely difficult to find a new franchise piece in the top grossing spots, unlike 
recent years (since the 80s) where I had to dig through several sequels and remakes to 
find an original movie. 
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I think that this comparison is important to understanding the declining of horror 
films and the amount of films that get made specifically with money in mind - while 
they are always about making money in the end, there was a craft and symbolism to 
earlier movies on the list that I am struggling to find in my analysis of later movies. 
Whether it be the sequel and copy driven movies or the movies that try to make a big 
name for themselves by picking a big-name story, but changing it to appeal to the 
general public, rather than to fit the medium of film better, it seems as though horror has 
degraded immensely. over just the past few years. 
Even more so, it seems as though classic horror films are escaping their roots 
and fleeing to a more potentially profitable location, showing the effort that is being put 
into making new movies with the same monsters but a more relatable style - these twists 
on classic monsters result in movies like I Frankenstein, Van Helsing, or Twilight, 
which are often financially successful, but again, critically panned. They seek to escape 
the genres of horror for whatever reason, and it is causing the genre to deteriorate in 
form. The highest-budget movies are sequels and leaning outside of the horror genre, 
and the focus is being pulled away from these classic horror stories, and simply leaning 
on the characters in another genre for profit. 
This thesis is meant to be a list of horror films for the purpose of exploring and 
expanding upon how American horror movies have evolved throughout the years, and 
while I went into it with a small sense of negativity, I am primarily pleased with the 
way they have evolved. While as of now, horror movies rely on explosive jump scares 
and shooting action, there are many films that borrow more from much older ancestors 
than from newer box office blockbusters. Smaller films like It Follows seem to hit the 
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mark regularly, despite their low income, and it is likely due to their independent 
nature. 
In essence, it seems as though while the big budget horror films do tend to lean 
towards the lowest common denominator (and are right in doing so, money-wise), films 
that have true quality come from independent or less controlled sources. Films like The 
Shining where the director is in full creative control, or films created when the R rating 
wasn’t something horror films could avoid and they could lean on the line between 
ratings without crossing it, allowed a kind of creative freedom that is rare, but not 
extinct.  
With more modern films, the bigger budget creations seem to focus more on 
effects and popularity, big-budget affairs that lack the depth of character the monsters in 
earlier films has had. Ironically, despite its “torture porn” way of doing things, the early 
Saw films actually did have a unique monster, with motivations lined up with the idea 
of avoiding decay and living life to the fullest, striking a cord against the idea that 
millennials are wasting their youth, and their lives. This theme is present, but it doesn’t 
flourish, with the villain’s story dying out in later films and being replaced with thinly-
veiled excuses to kill more people - even the new villain specifically makes traps with 
which there is no escape - only death. I think that dilution rings true throughout modern, 
big-budget horror film. With every new thing that becomes popular, new movies try to 
make it as much of the popular thing as possible, removing character and finesse for the 
lowest common denominator. 
Suspense is still hiding, for sure, in other films. Less popular or lower-budgeted 
films, but they have such a distance between the higher rated films and the highest-
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grossing films of the past decade, it seems as though the two are repulsed away from 
each other - but the glimmer of hope for that gap to close is there.  I don’t think that the 
art of suspense is dead - it is just hiding, waiting for the right time to spring out again 
into a bigger picture.
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