The Horror of it All

An important conference was held late last year in the New York, executive offices of 20th Century-Fox. Under discussion was a new title for a recently completed Western movie. A Dorothy Parker devotee had come up with Enough Rope, but the Powers said no. Not enough B.O. appeal. Insufficient bazazz. "It just lays there." Other titles followed: Rope Law, The Hell-Bent Kid, Fast Draw at Fort Smith, Quick Draw at Fort Smith and, finally, just plain Quick Draw. Charlie Einfeld, Fox' Eastern publicity chief, shook his head. "Westerns," he said, "are doing lousy business. Can't we get something a little flashier?"

A few more How Abouts followed, then a nameless assistant snapped his fingers. "How about -- The Fiend Who Walked the West?" he suggested.

An awed and respectful silence, of the type usually reserved for births, deaths, treaties and decisions of international importance, fell upon the little group. Cigars were removed slowly from mouths. Smiles replaced worried frowns.

"That," said Einfeld, at last, "is a million-dollar idea." He was (continued on page 74)Horror(continued from page 68) wrong. It was, if we are to believe the trade papers, a two-million-dollar idea. The phony title, together with an equally phony ad campaign (which turned handsome Robert Evans into a monster by means of painting him green and giving him Orphan Annie eyeballs), allowed the producers to palm off a Western as a horror movie. And there is no surer road to success in Hollywood today than horror.

Horror -- a category understood by exhibitors and audiences to include sciencefiction, fantasy, the weird and supernatural, and even psychological suspense dramas -- is the biggest thing in the entertainment business. It has been the biggest thing in the entertainment business for nearly five years. Far from faltering, as everyone predicted it would, it has gained steadily in strength and is going stronger than ever. Year before last, 52 horror films were made. Last year, 75. Over 100 full-length features are planned for the 1959 season. If they are all actually produced, and there is no reason to imagine they won't be, horror will account for over one third of all U.S. motion picture output. It will offer employment to three thousand men and women. It will use up 72,000 feet of film, reach one hundred million consumers (counting repeats), account for 150 hours of continuous entertainment, cost $10 million, and, unless the world ends, will show a profit of $100 million. Which means, statistically at least, that horror is now one of the basic American commodities, like breakfast cereal and soap. In terms of finance, it is bigger business than the whole of hard-cover book publishing. In fact, if a single concern controlled all of the merchandise, that concern would be blue-chip.

The horror film per se, in its purest form, consists of certain standard ingredients, and is as formalized as a Hoot Gibson Western or a classical ballet. Of cardinal importance is the presence of a Monster. This can be (1) a fabulous animal compounded of brute and human shape or of the shapes of various brutes, as a centaur, a griffin or a sphinx; (2) an animal or a plant of abnormal form or structure (as from marked malformation, the absence of certain parts or organs, etc.); (3) a person who excites horror, as by wickedness, cruelty, etc.; (4) the whole Undead class: vampires, mummies, zombies, werewolves, scientifically reanimated grave-findings; (5) any animal or thing abnormally huge.

The Monster, preferably man-made (though extraterrestrials seem to be getting a tendril in the door), must be, either consciously or unconsciously, a menace. It must be ugly as hell, at least twice as strong as 10 healthy men, and awkward. No one knows exactly why, but there has never been a successful Monster which did not stagger, shamble, lumber or crawl. Most Monsters crave people: as food, usually, but often as sex partners (more about that later), and always for general crushing, tearing-apart and tossing-around purposes. These people need not, contrary to popular balladry, be purple (if only because these epics are customarily filmed in black and white).

The second ingredient for the classic horror film is The Mad, or Misguided, Professor. Generally in his late twenties or early thirties, a nice chap and handsome to a fault, he either innocently Creates The Creature or Lets It In, or, as in latter-day productions, Turns Into It. He ought to be basically likeable though inclined to a certain bookish attitude, which annoys and frustrates the third ingredient: Beauty. Beauty, who must combine the qualities of the girl next door and the star performer at a Moroccan bagnio, is either The World's Foremost Authority On Phytogenesis or, simply, A Good Friend.

At some point in the picture, it is necessary for Beauty to be threatened by The Monster and for The Professor to save her. Shortly afterward, the Earth itself must stand in peril of its existence, and The Professor must, in collaboration with the Army or by himself, rout The Monster.

That is the basic mixture; but even the garnishments have become ritualized. Dialog, for example, is machined so that the parts are interchangeable from film to film. In each horror film you will almost certainly hear (Assistant, to Professor): "You must stop these monstrous experiments before it is too late!" Or (again The Assistant): "There are some things best left to God!" Or (The Professor, to himself): "Good Lord, it's alive!" And a horror flick without "You call me mad! [insane chuckling] That is what they said of Galileo, of Newton, yes, even of Einstein!" is unthinkable.

The formula is a dangerous thing to monkey with, Hollywood has found, for it is the backbone of this new multimillion-dollar business. When a producer tries to cash in on the craze while attempting something a little different (as Walter Wanger did some years ago with The Body Snatcher,) he runs a risk. He may do all right or he may find that variations on the theme are both costlier and more difficult than the standard melody. Besides, who asked him for originality? Who needs it?

In this respect, as in others, the horror field may be compared to that of the Western. The Western has its own narrow and inflexible set of rules, and no one in his right mind would try to break them. Bend them a bit, yes -- but never break them. Even High Noon had the classic treatment; and the much-lauded Shane might have been written by Max Brand. Good or bad, old or new, the Western contains a Hero, a Heroine, a Villain and a Fight. Put chaps and a 10-gallon hat on The Mad Professor, give The Incredible Crawling Crud a black horse, and switch the scene from Alamogordo to Tombstone, and you have very nearly the same thing. In fact, when Universal-International was grinding out horror films back in 1956, a studio spokesman was quoted as saying, "Horror, schmorror -- we're still makin' Westerns."

Perhaps the one branch of the industry that displays a crumb of creativity in regard to monster movies is Exploitation. The posters, publicity campaigns, newspaper ads and Coming Attractions trailers are often more exciting, and done with more imagination and creative zeal, than the pictures themselves. Who -- after watching the swift, mounting montage of pulsating hearts, disembodied eyes, bandage-swathed monsters, cleavage-flaunting screaming-Mimis and ghoulishly-grinning, leeringly-lisping Boris Karloff that served as trailer to Frankenstein 1970 -- would have guessed the film itself was so dull and listless? The artfully selective editor of the trailer possessed more know-how than the maker of the picture. Macabre was one long yawn, but the publicity build-up was inspired. William Castle, who produced and directed the film, offered to insure every member of the audience against death by fright. He received several letters of protest from young filmgoers because the movie was about relatively real people being buried alive -- no monsters at all. The picture wasn't scary enough to kill anyone, the kids complained. No one had even fainted. Castle, a veteran producer of mystery and honor pictures, hadn't expected to kill anyone. He had merely hoped, with his insurance policy, to call attention to his picture. When asked what would happen if some susceptible person actually collapsed during a performance of the movie, he regretfully said he thought it would help business. However, in the small print on his $1000 policy was a clause to the effect that cardiac sufferers and people with known nervous conditions were not covered.

Castle's gimmick worked fine. Quite understandably, he became incensed when United Artists used a similar approach to publicize The Return of Dracula. The film was so terrifying, UA stated, that 12 insurance companies had refused to cover those who saw it. Castle's attorneys put United Artists on notice to cease and desist. The firm agreed, but for its next horror package, which included a movie called I Bury (continued overleaf)Horror(continued from page 74) the Living, it offered the brave film-goer a "legally executed deed to a free burial plot," should he be terrified to death. No one as yet has accepted the offer.

Universal's gimmick for Horror of Dracula was to arrange for theatre patrons to fill out legal last wills and testaments in the lobby. Theatre lobbies have, in fact, become chambers of horrors. It is standard practice to have horror movie premieres take place at midnight, and the lobbies are decorated for the occasions with skeletons, gravestones, and coffins in which lie lady vampires, their black satin skirts slit thigh-high. In the lobby, too, is a nurse with first aid equipment dispensing a "courage cocktail" -- tomato juice laced with Tabasco. The exploiteers, who become gleeful little boys when given such a movie to sell, unwind extravagant lengths of gauze bandage, soaked in blood-red ink, that lead through the streets to the local cinema. Once, a hired actor, calling himself Count Dracula, registered at several hotels, and even managed to get himself a table at New York's "21" the day Horror of Dracula opened in the city. He looked longingly at the necks of nearby lovelies and ordered a raw steak for lunch.

• • •

The economic element is, of course, a big factor in the honor craze. It was discovered a few years ago that people were going to horror films as a habit. With rare exceptions, no picture was preferred over another, so long as certain ingredients were promised. And whereas Westerns had to go to the expense of at least one recognizable star, it appeared that no one paid any attention to the human actors in creature films: the monster was, and is, a sufficient draw. According to Steve Broidy, head of Allied Artists, "It doesn't have to be a fancy monster, or expensive, or even particularly well done. Just about anything will do, provided it's on-screen a lot." Thus it became possible for undercapitalized independent groups to make pictures for absurdly low figures. The average "cheap" quickie-Western at Universal-International cost $500,000 four years ago; today, the average horror film is brought in for substantially less than $100,000. Bert I. Gordon, now an important producer, claims to have spent under $15,000 on his King Dinosaur -- which grossed in excess of one million dollars. "I borrowed the equipment," he says. "I got friends to act for me, deferred payments, and did the special effects myself. We shot the whole thing in a week at Big Bear. Of course, the locale was supposed to be another planet; but I got around that by having one of the characters say, 'Strange! This planet is almost identical to Earth!'"

It is true that some films are more ambitious; but the bright young men know that horror need not be expensive. It's the gimmick that counts. William Kozlenko, producer at MGM, explains the economic situation this way: "The movie business can be compared, in a sense, to the city of New York. Only very rich or very poor people can live in New York. Only very expensive or very cheap pictures can succeed here."

Low cost is made necessary by voracious demand. And how does one explain this demand?

Twenty-five years ago Arthur L. Mayer was known as Broadway's Merchant of Menace because of the large number of zombie, mummy and vampire pictures he ran at his Rialto Theatre. He was happy then, because the popularity of his bills seemed to have no sinister significance. Today he is worried. It's strictly young people who support the gruesome-twosomes, he avers, and offers a theory:

The kids, he says, "are in no mood to enjoy homey little pictures of family life, sweet adolescent love stories, or gallants dueling in doublet and hose. They do not even like brisk, sophisticated comedy with smart dialog over the martinis. What they want, entertainmentwise, is red meat. If self-identification is the secret of box-office popularity, they find it easier to identify themselves with the sons of Frankenstein, or the granddaughters of Dracula. than with Lindbergh soaring across the Atlantic, or a well-constructed young lady of 20 pursued by a 60-year-old wreck of a once-popular leading man."

Mayer regards this absorption in the more repulsive aspects of life as a reflection of the age in which we live. "With justifiable lack of faith in the wisdom of their elders and the competence of their contemporaries, the young people are frustrated, purposeless, bitter." However, even Mr. Mayer, if forced to choose between horror films and the rash of sadistic quickies about juvenile delinquency, would choose horror. The monsters in the latter are less recognizable, he says, and the blood is more likely to be obviously ketchup.

"The real horror," said Arthur Knight in the Saturday Review, "is that these pictures, with their bestialities, their sadism, their lust for blood, and their primitive level of conception and execution should find their greatest acceptance among the young. It is sad enough as a commentary on our youth, but even more so on the standards of our motion-picture industry. In England, where films are not censored but rated as to their suitability for various age groups, these pictures invariably receive an 'X' -- suitable for adults only. Such a scheme, rigidly enforced over here, would soon see the disappearance of blobs, monsters, beasts, and ghouls from Hollywood's production schedules."

But all this seems more a description of the patient's illness than an examination of its causes. "The age in which we live" is a causative factor, certainly; but only one of many. The others may prove surprising.

For the first of these, we must make another comparison with Westerns. In both genres, the audience can become directly involved with a clear-cut, understandable situation. The Rustler and The Monster are bad, they must be thwarted; The Cowboy and The Professor (despite his idiosyncrasies) are good, they must triumph; The Cowgirl and Female Botanist are virtuous, they must be saved. Challenges are to be met, risks to be taken, rewards to be gathered. In both genres, the audience assumes the identity of Nobility saving Virtue from Evil. And there is no shade of gray to spoil the chiaroscuro.

The world today is a confusing place for most of us. The great issues are not clear, as they once were. Bad, we now discover, is not always bad, nor is good invariably good; indeed, bad is quite frequently, under certain conditions, good, and good bad. We cannot hate evil, for evil has become a form of sickness. We are not sure that it is wise to be brave or brave to be wise. Heroes are now corporations, or machines, and villains are countries. The individual is fast disappearing. And we can be certain only that we are being undone, doomed, destroyed, or carried on to technological heights of which we never dreamed, by frightening, incomprehensible forces, and that there is little we can do about it.

In this sense, the Modern Age hypothesis is acceptable. Horror films provide up-to-date escape from an overwhelming, always changing world; they are a panacea for what Edmund Wilson calls "an instinct to innoculate ourselves against panic at the real horrors loose on the Earth"; and if they are undesirable, as some psychologists have stated, then it is for this reason. The escape-universe of the Western is positive: it stresses certain virtues and evils and ends on a solidly up-beat note. The world of the horror film, in its present form, is negative. It panders to the basic ignorances and prejudices of the movie-goers. By suggesting that scientists (i.e., people smarter than the audience) are untrustworthy lunatics who will kill us all some day with their unholy experiments, it suggests also that science and progress are bad. It takes the stand, common in Pythagoras' time, that too much knowledge is a bad thing and that well enough ought, by God, to be left alone. It even (continued on page 86)Horror(continued from page 76) allows the audience to empathize occasionally with The Professor in order to demonstrate how easily one may be led along the road to perdition.

A more profoundly anti-intellectual message could hardly be found than "Curiosity killed the cat," but the horror-film-makers have found it. It is: Curiosity killed the world.

Less complex, but perhaps more accurate, explanations of the phenomenon are supplied by the producers and exhibitors themselves.

"In the first place," says Bert Gordon, "you've got to understand that the movie audience today consists almost entirely of teenagers. Either they're naive and go to get scared" -- this referring to the curious fact that none of the horror films are actually horrible, or terrifying, or remotely scary -- "or they're sophisticated and enjoy scoffing at the pictures. There isn't much a teenager can scoff at these days, you know."

Accordingly, some enterprising producers have gone to great lengths to make their products corny, unrealistic and "scoffable."

For it is true that the laughs sometimes outnumber the screams when a monster movie is on the bill -- nervous laughs of panic, the pristine guffaws of the moron, the derisive laughs of the jaded, who attend solely to chuckle knowingly at production goofs, logical lacunae and the showers of clichés. Periodical publications like Forrest J. Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland play it for yoks all the way, accompanying their outrageous horror stills with equally outrageous puns like "the beast is none too good," "Hyde-and-go-shriek," "all wrapped up in his work" (The Mummy), and the like.

In any case, "Thank God for the horror pictures," says the manager of a large San Fernando drive-in. "They've saved us. Before this kick we were thinking of shutting down two nights a week; now, with all the monster stuff, the place starts filling up at three o'clock. The kids go for it. The girls yell and hang on to the boys and sometimes you've really got to keep an eye on those cars...."

Which brings us to another interesting theory. According to producer Robert Newman, "Horror movies are sexually stimulating to people, whether they know it or not. The monster itself is usually a symbol of sexual power unleashed...."

And it is undeniable that the popular monsters -- King Kong, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Creature From the Black Lagoon, even the granddaddy of them all, Cesare of Caligari -- are all male, all inveterate skirt-chasers. Though it is never made clear exactly what they plan to do with their quarries, once caught, and most monsters visibly lack the required apparatus for ravishment, their intentions seem to be unmistakably dishonorable.

A careful study of the subject revealed to depth probers the following information: The appeal of Dracula obtains from the Count's habit of sucking blood from the necks of nubile maidens, which in turn suggests perversion. The werewolf continues to enjoy a happy popularity both because he encourages the savage and bestial instinct (with its connotations of human sacrifice, cannibalism, sodomy and rape) and because, with his sacred ancestry, dating back to Zeus Lukaios, the wolf-god of ancient Greece, he promotes feelings of invulnerability. The Invisible Man connotes voyeurism. The Fifty-Foot Woman makes possible a literal return to the womb; and so on. The physical appearance of some Monsters often seems frankly phallic, despite the lack of private parts. It has been suggested that Karloff's make-up in the early Frankenstein films made the upper half of his head into a king-size glans and the Monster, therefore, into a veritable walking genital. The "it" in It Came From Outer Space (an early 3-D effort) resembled nothing so much as a phallus with eyes, and it sought sanctuary in (how symbolic can you get?) a cave. The same observation can be made of practically every other glistening, throbbing, erect, aggressive outerspacenik on the screen. Wags conversant with Army slang have slyly insinuated that the title-creatures of The Crab Monsters were also derived from pubic lore, and other wags have defined "an adult horror film" as one in which the monster gets the girl, but these homespun humorists only serve to point up the fact that the sex theory can be carried too far in this regard, just as it sometimes is in another field, that of the American automobile. In each case, there is a core of truth, but the hypothesis -- so seductive because of the ease of application -- tends to spill over into the ridiculous after a while. However -- and this is the thing to remember -- that core of truth does exist, hard and stubborn, as is the nature of cores, as well as of phalli.

A less sensational motive is supplied by psychologists, who feel that people go to the films because science has taken away their religion. They seek assurance of immortality. The Mad Professors provide that assurance. When a monster is raised from the dead, the audience experiences a kind of resurrection.

From all of which, one would assume that horror movies offer a little of everything to everyone. And the almost inescapable conclusion is that the craze is fast becoming an American institution, a solidly representative part of our culture.

But, like many other machine-made parts of our culture, they're dreadful. Why? Why, in view of the nearly limitless possibilities of the medium and its generally respectable past, are horror pictures so poor in quality? Horror is, after all, an accepted form of literature. It (again using the term to include such ancillary genres as science-fiction, fantasy, etc.) has been treated by many of history's great authors, including the Apostles. Most of the recognized books for children (Anderson, the brothers Grimm, Baum) deal with horripilatory themes. Stemming as it does from superstition, and from fear, one of mankind's deepest emotions, horror merits being taken seriously. There are, literally, hundreds of great horror stories and novels, perhaps a thousand more good ones, all containing the same basic elements as the current creature-features. Yet this literary gold mine has been almost wholly ignored. To repeat, why?

To take a stab at an answer, one must first understand, as well as one can, the nature of Hollywood. Hollywood is now, and has always been, an unreal place full of unreal people. Like Erewhon or Wonderland, it has its own set of laws, its own set of mores, and these laws and mores are not duplicated anywhere on the face of the Earth. Logic is discussed in Hollywood, but the truth is that there is little logic, little thought as it is understood elsewhere in the world, and on the whole a great deal less culture than one might find on a Saturday afternoon at Stillman's Gym. Novelists have tried to describe Hollywood, but the closer they have come to facts, the more they have been accused of embroidering.

Something peculiar happens to producers when they are absorbed by Tinseltown. The standards they may have had, once, are checked at the door, and replaced with new ones. They become Machiavellian, cynical, shrewd, incurious, timid and cowardly; they become distrustful of others, but mostly of themselves, and go about sneering at shadows. To a man they are contemptuous of the industry and their part in it; yet beneath the necessary pose, they love the madness, the tensions, the disappointments, and wear their ulcers proudly as a soldier wears his battle ribbons.

Despite this pride, however, none of the producers engaged in the business of manufacturing horror films will admit to a liking for the subject. Most of them frankly hate it and would vastly prefer to be working on comedies or Westerns or mysteries. "The cycle will pass," said producer Gordon Kay, four years ago, "and then we'll all celebrate, because it will give us a chance to get back to interesting picture-making."

William Alland is a representative case. He has made several fortunes for himself and his studio on such popular items as The Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Mole People, etc. Yet he appears to hate them.

This contemptuous attitude makes producers leery of attempts to inject quality into horror. As far back as Val Lewton's excellent Isle of the Dead, "messages" were suspect. Lewton, sneaky hombre that he was, often slipped in a bit of humanistic philosophy when no one was looking, badly worrying an executive producer at RKO who distrusted messages on principle. This producer asked the film's director, Mark Robson, if Isle contained any messages. Robson assured him it was messageless. The exec breathed easy. But later, on the set, Robson got to thinking about it, and decided that his reply, though reassuring, had not been entirely honest. He picked up the phone and called the messageophobe. "Say," said Robson, "you know this Isle of the Dead thing we were talking about? Well, I was wrong. It does have a message."

"It does?" intoned the exec, ominously.

"Yes."

"And what is it, the message?"

Robson told him: "Death Is Good."

There followed a portentous silence. Then the producer said, "All right. Leave it in." For he knew, with the instinct of his trade, that death is always good at the box-office.

Laymen commonly believe that horror films are written by veteran science-fiction writers, whereas the truth is that these worthies have seldom had so much as a look-in. In any other business it would seem logical to hire a qualified man for a specific job; not so in Hollywood. William Alland once allowed Ray Bradbury to concoct something called a "treatment" (neither a story nor a screenplay but a mutation of both), but science-fiction's most gifted author was not permitted to touch the actual shooting script. That delicate work was handed to one Harry Essex, a Hollywood pro, who by his own admission knew little of s-f. That the picture (It Came From Outer Space) turned out reasonably well is largely due to Essex' faithfulness to the Bradbury original. Most of the really first-rate authors in the field have had to stand by and watch as hacks and unknowns have picked up the heavy green. Robert Heinlein, referred to by some sciencefictionados as The Master, has been called upon just twice; Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, James Blish, Clifford Simak, the late Henry Kuttner, and Fritz Leiber have not been asked at all; and Richard Matheson, whose work is ideal for pictures, did one sensationally successful film (The Incredible Shrinking Man) and has been writing every sort of film except horror ever since. Producer Albert Zugsmith, known for some reason as "The Dynamite Kid," bought Matheson's novel, The Shrinking Man, on the basis of a synopsis: he "couldn't get through" the book. There is, of course, no reasonable explanation for this attitude, nor does Hollywood offer any. One might safely conclude therefore that the producers' ignorance of the subject is so profound that they have simply never heard of the medium's masters.

The aforementioned William Alland, who was in at the start of the craze (kicked off by Them and The Thing, both interesting pictures), provides numerous examples. When he decided to produce The Mole People he hired a man named Laszlo Gorog to write the script. Gorog, whose sole qualification seemed to consist of his last name, which is the same spelled backwards, is a Viennese playwright. At the time of his assignment, he had read no science-fiction or horror at all with the exception of a bit of Karel Capek. He had never heard of Ray Bradbury. The very term sciencefiction was new to him. Yet he plunged manfully into the job, and though it ended so disastrously that one beleaguered critic called it "the worst film ever made," Alland was apparently delighted, for he forthwith commissioned Gorog to script a monster film called The Lost Valley. The Viennese playwright has not been heard of since.

A more adaptable type was Martin Berkeley. He had established a reputation as a real pro, having written most of the Doctor Kildare and Lassie pictures, and therefore seemed the ideal choice for a series of horror films. Immediately upon signing the contract, he and Alland began the inevitable conferences. What sort of horror film should they make? They tried to think of stories, but that, selbstverständlich, got them nowhere. So, feeling that the gimmick was the thing foremost, they trotted down to the Los Angeles County Museum, where they looked at insects and other creatures in amber. Spiders had been used (Tarantula), so had ants (Them), so had lizards (King Dinosaur); but what about -- the praying mantis? That was it! Berkeley returned to the studio and, after typing out a "formula sheet" based on the successful Them, reworked that picture as The Deadly Mantis. It made a million.

More than that was made by MGM's Forbidden Planet, which was thought up one night after a cocktail party by two Hollywood scribes and sold the following morning.

Nothing, on the other hand, resulted from an experiment by Columbia. Someone had told the wazirs that horror was big and that there were actually such stories in existence. Suspiciously, Columbia hired an established science-fiction writer and told him to pick something good. Overcome with excitement, the writer did just that. He picked a lovely yarn by Arthur Machen. It was rejected with a note reading, simply: "Too advanced." Undaunted, the writer picked another yarn, one of the classics. Again, rejected: "Too advanced." He picked another. "Too advanced." He tried stories by Bradbury, M. R. James, Blackwood, De la Mare, Sturgeon, Kuttner -- all turned down. Frantic, the writer chose items from crumbling old issues of Air Wonder Stories, on the theory that what was accepted 30 years ago in s-f circles would not be too advanced in the space age. But the theory was wrong. He ended by writing, while half-loaded, a script called Killer Brain, which was about a giant ape with (according to the writer) the brain of a producer. Everyone loved it.

There are hundreds of similar anecdotes, all demonstrating why the films are as bad as they are. But, in a sense, the situation was unavoidable. For nothing worthwhile ever seems to come out of a commercial craze. The great horror and science-fiction pictures of the past -- King Kong, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Island of Lost Souls, Things to Come, The Man Who Could Work Miracles, Metropolis, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Body Snatcher, Dead of Night, The Invisible Man, Isle of the Dead, The Cat People, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, The Werewolf of London, The Lost World, Just Imagine, Beauty and the Beast, etc., etc. -- were truly independent productions, made for the fun and love of it, mad risks, personal statements of imaginative men. Pains were taken with those pictures, money spent on them, intelligence applied to every foot of film. They had the basic elements of the Creature-Features we see, or avoid, today: they had monsters and scientists (both mad and sane) and curvy cuties in deadly peril. But they had something else, those pictures, something the boys don't have time for any more: they had quality. It didn't take slavering, foam-flecked, anthropomorphic phalli to make the girlies squeal in those times. All it took was a cold wind slamming an unexpected door, a hand on a bannister, the cry of a child, or the silence of a field beneath a moon. But we're in the midst of a craze now and Hollywood can't afford the expense of such effects, because to achieve them you must have a good dramatic story, good dialog, good direction, good acting and good photography; and that's where you run into money.

Is there a chance for a return to the horrors of yesteryear? Will the debris and offal and driftwood be swept away by a sudden current of popular good taste?

Could be. But, in discussing the horror craze, one unhappy producer put it as well as anyone. "We've created a Monster," he said. "God have mercy on our souls."