Welcome to The Glorious and The Grotesque a place for academic reflection on the horrific the gruesome and ghastly in cinema. The link between horror and cinema dates back to J. Searle Dawley’s Frankenstein (1910) produced by Edison and the revolutionary German Expressionist films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922). Movie monsters and the gothic held domain over the genre but in the late 1960s the genre drastically changed. The atrocities of the Vietnam War and the failed cultural revolution of the 60s shifted the genre and molded it into a more nihilistic, visceral and raw cinematic experience.
This site sets out to survey some of the many ways film academia has come to reflect upon the horror genre in the 1970s and 1980s in the U.S. This crucial era helped establish some of the front runners of the genre. As a means of demonstrating the long withstanding influence of this era a page has been included on this site that reflects on recent remakes. New directors are consistently grounding their projects in 70s and 80s horror and this section of the site sets out to explore the relationship between the two. By reflecting on these remakes, the obvious poignancy of this postmodern era becomes clear. This site will be a continuous project ever expanding and growing.
Enjoy!
This site sets out to survey some of the many ways film academia has come to reflect upon the horror genre in the 1970s and 1980s in the U.S. This crucial era helped establish some of the front runners of the genre. As a means of demonstrating the long withstanding influence of this era a page has been included on this site that reflects on recent remakes. New directors are consistently grounding their projects in 70s and 80s horror and this section of the site sets out to explore the relationship between the two. By reflecting on these remakes, the obvious poignancy of this postmodern era becomes clear. This site will be a continuous project ever expanding and growing.
Enjoy!
