The Origin of Horror Films: a Horrifying Reality

I'm reading a fascinating book called Monsters from the Id (later retitled as Horror, a Biography) by E. Michael Jones about the origin of horror films. He considers Mary Godwin Shelley's Frankenstein the first of the genre and connects it to the "enlightenment" rejection of the moral order and the widespread acceptance of lust as culturally desirable. Jones also discusses Bram Stoker's Dracula in relation to the horrors of syphilus, a disease Stoker himself had contracted from his immoral lifestyle. Syphilis had no cure until the advent of penicillin and was a devastating disease that not only infected the sufferer, but affected the next generation as well. (The sins of the father were, indeed, visited on the children.)

In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein's monster is the creation of a scientist who makes himself like God, the author of life. Unlike God, however, his creation is monstrous, a life he then cannot control. In Stoker's novel, the vampire, like the disease of syphilis, contaminates the blood of his victims destroying the innocent.  Syphilitic husbands infected their innocent wives with the dread disease. It was the scourge of Europe for hundreds of years.

Jones makes a strong case that horror tales arise from the guilty consciences of the lustful. It is a well-documented and chilling study. Jones illustrates that truth is often more horrifying than fiction. Like the "monster" illustrating this post, a person suffering from syphilis, is deformed by the disease. And like other venereal diseases it is completely avoidable. Those who are chaste until marriage and faithful afterwards never have to worry about contracting a sexually transmitted disease some of which remain incurable.

Check out Avenging Monsters: The Origins of Horror Fiction by Chuck Coulson which discusses Jones' book. There's more to horror films than what you see. The genre, Jones claims, is the subconscious attempt to deal with guilt by those whose actions destroy the innocent as surely as the fictional monsters. The authors chose a false catharsis through fiction rather than a real transformation through repentance and resurrection.