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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.
An Essential Piece of Horror historyReviewed by James Simpson, 2008-11-21
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.
Thick as a BrickReviewed by Kevin Killian, 2008-07-22
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?
An excellent history of the American horror filmReviewed by J. Coffman, 2008-07-16
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.
First Half is Great! Second Half is Silly.Reviewed by Jesse M. Dunlap, 2008-03-31
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!)
The Madness of Movie MonstersReviewed by mrliteral, 2008-02-11
It sometimes seems that the history of horror films began with
Universal's Frankenstein and Dracula, with an occasional nod to
some silent film. It doesn't make much research to find out that
there is much more to this history, as David Skal illustrates in
The Monster Show. In fact, it is till almost the one-third point in
the book that these landmark films are really discussed.
What happened earlier were such crucial films as Nosteratu, The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Phantom of the Opera. Skal also
relates stories of early figures, including Lon Chaney and Tod
Browning and some of the literary and dramatic predecessors to the
horror film. Only after laying this foundation does Skal really get
into the iconic movies of Dracula and Frankenstein. There were
other horror landmark films in this era, including The Mummy, Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Island of Lost Souls, and between the
early 1930s and 1940s, others would appear as well, most
prominently the Wolf Man.
These films are quite tame by today's standards, but to many overly
sensitive and self-righteous souls of the era, these movies
practically heralded the end of civilization, leading to de facto
censorship. The genie, however, was out of the bottle, and like any
good movie monster, it could never be truly killed.
Skal zips from this era to the age of early television, when a new
audience got to see these movies (often introduced by figures like
Vampira) and the fan base expanded to a new, ardent generation.
Then it's on to the era of more modern horror, ushered in by
Psycho: not only is horror more gruesome (the result of better
special effects and more relaxed ratings standards). As earlier
films could be allegories for war or the Depression, newer films
could provide symbols for AIDS and birth control. And new or old,
sex and religion were always entangled in the themes.
This book is subtitled A Cultural History of Horror, but as
fascinating as it often is, perhaps it should be a Cultural History
of American Horror made by Major Studios. There is a lot that is
omitted here that should be found in any reasonable history of
cinematic horror. Val Lewton, the influential horror producer of
the 1940s, has only one of his movies really described (Cat People)
and only gets a couple pages of text. Roger Corman and his Poe
movies are hardly mentioned at all. Most glaringly, Hammer Films,
which reinvented horror in the 1950s (when American horror was at
its nadir), is discussed in little more than a couple of scattered
sentences (let alone any non-English films after the initial German
movies).
Despite these omissions, this is still a pretty decent book, but
the flaws keep it from earning more than four stars. If you're a
horror movie fan, this is worth reading. Skal is pretty
knowledgeable on the subject and can add an extra level of
appreciation for this film genre.
