The Art Of Horror
Movies: An Illustrated History
Edited by Stephen Jones
Applause hardcover $40
***** (5 stars)
review by Christopher Geary
Since the beginnings of cinema, horror on screen has been
troubled and distinguished by the difference between the explicit and the
merely suggestive. Whether purveyors of generic imagery intended to scare
audiences with atmospheric settings and lurking menace, or shock them with raw
terror and gory displays of special effects, the results might be just as
impressive and quite artistically valid. Perhaps even strong enough...
provocative enough in its vicarity to promote catharsis. Celebrating the
contributions of painters, illustrators, and creature designers, to a century
of delicious frissons and ghastly disgust, this companion to The Art Of Horror (2015), that was also
edited by Stephen Jones, delivers the very goodies and nasty baddies in a
beautifully presented hardback packed with a stunning range of colour and
B&W pictures.
Writers, directors, and actors made a considerable impact upon
horror movies, but it must be acknowledged that genre cinema would not exist
without the essential works of visionary artists. After the foreword by John
Landis on the iconography of horror, standout chapters are Christopher
Frayling’s exhumation of sinister expressionism in the silent era noting the diversity
of influences, including romantic literature, theatre, and crazy carnival
traditions, upon a veritable onslaught of surreal gothic portrayals.
Noir of the 1940s is revisited by Barry Forshaw, who notes
the decade’s filmmakers’ imagination and ingenuity overcoming the strict
limitations imposed by Hays code censorship, by “subverting the permissible” in
pursuit of the macabre. Even as horror is almost crippled by parody, the rise
of lurid colour cinema as a new standard saved the genre.
Studios with style in the 1960s, championed by psychedelic
pop culture remixed with fetishistic gore, are charted by Kim Newman. Shifting
from period settings into more contemporary scenarios distinguished urban
horror from traditional source material, and the gruelling spectacle of warfare
on TV prompted an escalation of shock as new zombies arrived, straight from
hell, in George A. Romero’s groundbreaking Night
Of The Living Dead (1968).
After the creators of major special effects became iconic stars
in their own right in the 1980s, when a video nasty scandal and genre revisionism
dominated works by horror auteurs, Anne Billson considers the 1990s' offerings
that were often driven by pre-millennial anxieties leading a transition
from B-movie fun to a fearsome mainstream. But that was before the dismal
end-of-century trend for ‘found footage’ threatened to turn genre cinema and
no-budget media into a cultural dystopia. As usual with this type of art book, texts and captions provide
the chronicle’s broad sweep, while images deliver the depth. And, really, this is worth buying as an Xmas gift for any fans you know if only for its gallery of eye-catching portraits... Dorian Gray, included.
