The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror; Revised Edition with a New Afterword

Illuminating the dark side of the American century, The Monster Show uncovers the surprising links between horror entertainment and the great social crises of our time, as well as horror's function as a pop analogue to surrealism and other artistic movements.

With penetrating analyses and revealing anecdotes, David J. Skal chronicles one of our most popular and pervasive modes of cultural expression. He explores the disguised form in which Hollywood's classic horror movies played out the traumas of two world wars and the Depression; the nightmare visions of invasion and mind control catalyzed by the Cold War; the preoccupation with demon children that took hold as thalidomide, birth control, and abortion changed the reproductive landscape; the vogue in visceral, transformative special effects that paralleled the development of the plastic surgery industry; the link between the AIDS epidemic and the current fascination with vampires; and much more. Now with a new Afterword by the author that looks at horror's popular renaissance in the last decade, The Monster Show is a compulsively readable, thought-provoking inquiry into America's obsession with the macabre.

This study of the visual horror genre from Dr. Caligari to Dr. Hannibal Lecter starts with a discussion of Diane Arbus's photographs of freaks. David Skal then suggests that he will seek to "explain why the images resonated in the culture ... [and] why so much of our imaginative life in the 20th century has been devoted to peeling back the masks and scabs of civilization, to finding, cultivating, and projecting nightmare images of the secret self." Whether or not you agree with his thesis that horror is a symptom of society's ills (war, disease, poverty), you will find much of value in this thorough, highly readable history--especially the detailed accounts of the work of filmmaker Tod Browning, and of how Frankenstein and Dracula made their way from books to plays to films. The book is handsomely designed (hardcover has dust jacket by Edward Gorey), with illustrations, footnotes, and index.

Superb analysis of how horror films, books and others show the cultural changes and mores of specific decades. It starts out in the early 1930s with "Dracula" and (in the revised edition) goes up to 1998 with the movie "Gods and Monsters" being its stopping point. It concisely details how certain books and movies changed or mirrored the events of their times. It shows how the movies "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" in the 1930s were direcy contrast to the Depression that was gripping the nation at the time. It's also amusing to notice how many people thought the films were TOO scary at the time (they would get G ratings today) and tried to ban them. Then he goes into the horror films of the 1950s (the 140s didn't have many) and the horror comics from EC comics which started the CCA (Comics Code Authority). It goes all the way to the 1980s and the more explicit blood and novels and shows illuminating parrellels to society. It may sound heavy and dense but its not. It's written in a casual, easy to understand style that draws you right in. For horror fans like me this is an absolutely fascinating book. Highly recommended.

David J.Skal's The Monster Show is one of the most important works on the cultural impact of horror ever written.

His book follows the roots of our fascination from the beginning of the twentieth century,through the silent era,Universal pictures in the 30s,World War 2,the 50s,60s and into today.

The symbolic links the genre has to our own history is underlined throughout,and it's amazing how much is uncovered.

Skal does not just provide a history of the growth of human culture throughout the twentieth century,but also alot about the horror film.

His research into the early horror cinmema was groundbreaking and has been imitated greatly ever since.

This recent reprint adds an excellent afterthought by Skal on the meaning of Horror today,taking a quote from the film,"Gods and Monsters" to sum up it's endless appeal to the filmgoer.

If any criticism must be made,it's that Skal does get too "Freudian" sometimes,and seems to lose topic,but his points are made and for the horror intellectual this does indeed,make a very good read.

Reccomended.

David Skal writes like a genie on acid, his mind a stack of tottering file drawers in Bartleby's littered office. His magnum opus, THE MONSTER SHOW, piles on the gore and, in addition, tries harder than Freud to make sense of our need for ritual bloodletting as entertainment. Though it's clear his forte is old Hollywood, particularly the great Universal horrors of the 1930s and 1940s, he knows just about everything on a range of other allied topics. I found his section on the French theatrical phenomenon of Grand Guignol to be the best short account I have ever read of it.

His judgments on individual films and performances are always on the mark; whether or not you agree with his grading system, you must bow to his expertise and the felicity with which he makes his points. He takes his examples not only from mass media but from the fine arts, explaining that the feminist slogan "Your Body is a Battlefield" made famous by Barbara Kruger had its cinematic enactments in any number of 1970s and 1980s child/birth/mutant films from CHILDS PLAY to IT'S ALIVE and DEMON SEED.

I actually think there's not much point discussing Universal's FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA movies without considering the studio product as a whole, for what kept Deanna Durbin from acting in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, but for Skal, horror is a ghetto into which only rhe big events intrude--the Depression, the fleeing Weimar emigres, the Cold War, the Bomb.Skal doesn't have much of a sense of humor (maybe that's why he has, as so many have noticed, so little stomach for Hammer horror), but he has all the gifts of a born researcher and popularizer. THE MONSTER SHOW is rich and dense as a chocolate cheesecake, and it's a little crazy too, so what more can you ask for?

I felt compelled to write a review to counter some of the complaints by other reviewers that Skal leaves out the work of many influential European directors. This is true, but I think largely misses the point of the book, which is mostly a history of the development of the *American* horror film. The first part of the book is a comprehensive history tracing the roots of the Universal horror films from book to stage to, finally, their classic film versions. Given so much of the book is devoted to the establishment of the earliest film horror, it's inevitable that the other, oh, SEVEN DECADES won't get quite the same amount of attention. Whether or not you agree with Skal's politics or approach to the cultural history of horror, I still think "The Monster Show" is a must-read for any horror fan and a great place to start for the fan who wants to learn more about the history of their favorite genre.

This book starts out great! It was so interesting to read about the old fashioned horror films and the people who created them. The author made it so easy to read, and I was flying through it all! I could tell that the book was very well researched, and it was nice to see how the author made connections and observations of his own. It is a very good beginner book for anyone interested in historical horror cinema.

The second part of the book is ridiculous. It goes on about silly people who think they are vampires, dumb connections that the author just threw in, and the writing starts to get really silly. It is almost as if the author was told to make the book longer, and he stretched it as far as it could possibly go. It wasn't exactly boring, but unresearched and juvenile.

I would recommend this book for people who are just starting to read about the history of the horror movie. It was really easy to read, and the first half was great! Although the second half let me down, I still think this book is worth the read. (Maybe from the library, though!)