The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror Films, 1931-1936

411 Pages·2016·6.31 MB·English

by  Jon Towlson

Also by JON TOWLSON
Subversive Horror Cinema: Countercultural Messages of Films from
Frankenstein to the Present (McFarland, 2014)
The Turn to Gruesomeness in American
Horror Films, 1931–1936
JON TOWLSON
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE
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e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-2639-0
© 2016 Jon Towlson. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher.
Front cover: Bela Lugosi and Arlene Francis in Murders in the Rue Morgue,
1932 (Universal Pictures/Photofest) McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
For Donato Totaro,
who inspired this book.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction: “Misery likes reality for company”
1. “Nightmare pictures”: Thirties Horror and the Hollywood Film Industry
2. “Five reels of transgression followed by one reel of retribution”: Thirties
Horror and the Studios
3. “Brutality, horror and gruesomeness”: Thirties Horror and the Hays
Office
4. “Why should Cecil B. De Mille have a monopoly on torture and
cruelty?” Thirties Horror and the Filmmaker
5. “A secure universe”? Thirties Horror and the Critics
Afterword
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
List of Names and Terms
Preface
Our understanding of thirties horror has changed somewhat in recent years. Until
not long ago we had forgotten—or were not fully aware of—how shockingly
graphic the early thirties horror films actually were. Only in the age of the DVD
have we been able to view these films in uncensored versions, and become
aware of previously censored and deleted scenes, changed and tacked-on
endings, reshoots and added scenes that changed or diluted the original versions
of classic horror films and gave previous generations of horror fans and critics
the impression that the thirties horror film was safer and more reassuring to
audiences than it actually was. Film historians and fans (thanks partly to a raised
awareness of pre–Code Hollywood cinema) are now beginning to separate their
nostalgia for Universal’s family-friendly “monster rally” horror films of the
forties from their growing appreciation of the gruesome and brutal nature of the
thirties cycle. Certainly the term “gruesomeness” is one that crops up again and
again in the censor reports, film reviews, marketing and publicity materials
produced by the studios (which routinely played up the sensationalist aspects of
the films, including their gruesomeness) and industry journals of the 1930s; it is
arguably the defining characteristic of thirties horror, and undoubtedly key to its
popularity with audiences of the time.
The infamous scene in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) where Lugosi strings
up a prostitute on a cross while he takes samples of her “rotten blood,” might,
for example, be seen as a precursor of torture porn; it is certainly strikingly
similar, in the way it is staged, to an equally infamous scene in The Texas Chain
Saw Massacre (1974) in which Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) carves up a body,
while another victim dangles from the meat hook behind him. Both are shocking
examples of Grand Guignol. This raises the question: Is the thirties horror film
more akin to graphic modern horror than is often thought?
However, many critics have in the past drawn sharp distinctions between the
classic (1930s–1940s) and modern (1960s–present) horror film, claiming that
whereas the former seeks to reaffirm the status quo (the classic horror film
inevitably ends with the monster destroyed and normality restored), the modern
apocalyptic horror film (from Psycho [1960] onward) is, by contrast, open-
ended, nihilistic, paranoid, and subversive. But, despite their restorative endings,
horror films of the thirties—with their social outcast monsters, mad scientists,
torture chamber imagery, libidinous maniacal killers and often overt sadism—
posed considerable challenges to censors and audiences. Moreover, by closely
examining the so-called restorative endings of films like The Black Cat (1934),
The Raven (1935) and Mad Love (1935), these endings can be revealed as
tacked-on, formulaic (usually as a sop to the Production Code and state censors)
and unconvincing, running counter to the main body of the films: they simply
don’t “fit.” In some cases (Frankenstein [1931]), Freaks [1932]) endings were
changed after preview screenings in order to provide audiences with closure and
reassurance where none had previously existed.
So How Safe and Reassuring Were the Thirties Films Really?
To explore such questions is the intention of this book. The Turn to
Gruesomeness in American Horror Films, 1931–1936 challenges the critical
opinion that classic horror is inherently conservative as defined by endings
which restore normative order; instead it argues that the essential characteristics
of thirties horror are its gruesomeness and brutality, and that happy endings in
the thirties cycle are almost entirely lacking conviction. In order to do this it
looks first at how the genre was formulated in the thirties and examines the
evolution of the classic horror film from various perspectives.
Chapter 1, “‘Nightmare pictures,’” charts the emergence of the thirties cycle in
an industrial context, showing how various socio-economic stresses during the
Great Depression, censorship controversy over sex and crime films, declining
audiences and growing opposition to unfair business practices, formed a
backdrop of rupture and contradiction during horror’s first golden age. This
chapter draws on trade journals of the day to track the cycle from Dracula
(1931) and Frankenstein (1931) to its becoming a firmly established niche
product by the mid-thirties. At the same time, the trade journals also report on
the growing concerns about this “gruesome” cycle by state censors, church
groups and exhibitor organizations. This chapter thus attempts to contextualize
the emergence of horror in light of the politics of the industry of the time, and
how these factors almost led to the cycle being killed off in 1932 before jungle
movies revived the horror cycle at the box office with the extraordinary success
of King Kong (1933); thereafter the genre continued to thrive on sadism despite
moving away from its gothic roots.
Chapter 2 goes on to show how cash-strapped studios pushed for increasingly
gruesome and sensational screen content to attract audiences, while
simultaneously placating the Hays Office with moral endings, and how, in
conjunction, the production practices pioneered by Irving Thalberg—such as
audience previews and retakes—also helped shape the form of the thirties cycle
as we know it. Critics of the genre at the time called such studio tactics “five
reels of transgression followed by one reel of retribution” (the title given to this
chapter). This chapter thus takes the studio perspective on the burgeoning horror
cycle, from Universal’s initial appropriation of the genre, to other studios’
adoption of it.
In their bid to attract audiences through sensational content, studios often flouted
the Production Code; however, horror pictures (in contrast with sex pictures and
underworld crime movies) were of only mild concern to the Hays Office at the
start. Later, though, the rigid enforcement of the Production Code under Joseph
Breen saw horror increasingly censored in terms of its gruesomeness and
brutality to the point where, by 1936, the Code had an overbearing influence on
actual story content and plot construction—as can be seen in Dracula’s
Daughter, The Walking Dead and The Devil Doll (all 1936)—effectively
emasculating the genre. Chapter 3, “‘Brutality, horror and gruesomeness,’” thus
documents from the censors’ perspective the changing ways in which the Hays
Office responded to gruesomeness in the thirties cycle, from relatively light
interference in the early days to heavily influencing the allowable level of
gruesomeness after July 1934. It charts an arc of trajectory from Dracula to The
Devil Doll and discusses the implications of reissues of pre–Code horror films
also being cut after 1934 (these cut versions became the official distributed ones,
influencing how audiences and critics in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s perceived
classic horror).
Chapter 4, “‘Why should Cecil B. DeMille have a monopoly on torture and
cruelty?,’” further explores links between producer, audience and censor to
examine how screenwriters and directors deployed gruesomeness and brutality
in the mise-en-scène through special make-up effects and the use of shadow
play. The chapter explores the ways in which sound was used to heighten
realism, and how filmmakers used off-screen space as one of several cinematic
strategies to circumvent objections to gruesomeness raised by the Hays Office
and state censors. The arguably transgressive qualities of the thirties cycle
culminated in an unproduced version of Dracula’s Daughter which was vetoed
by the Production Code Administration as “utterly impossible for approval under
the Production Code,” and in Mad Love, a film described by one industry journal
(Motion Picture Herald, July 6, 1935) as “the type of picture that brought about
censorship.”
It is hoped that by bringing together these four perspectives of industry, studio,
censorship and production practices, this study will highlight gruesomeness as a
primary characteristic of the thirties horror film, equal to the happy ending as a
key signifier of the cycle. Chapter 5, “‘A secure universe’?,” discusses how and
why many past critics have misread the thirties cycle. My contention is that—up
until relatively recently—critical appraisal of thirties horror has been based on
this misperception of what thirties horror actually “is.” There are several reasons
for this confusion: a number of key films (such as Mystery of the Wax Museum
[1933], Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1931], The Old Dark House [1932]) remained
unavailable or lost for many years; TV revivals such as Shock Theater in the late
fifties, where the Monster Kid generation first saw many of these films, mixed
the thirties and forties films in their programming, encouraging a lumping
together of the two cycles; and those pre–Code thirties films that were shown on
TV and in cinema revivals were often PCA-cut reissues shorn of their more
shocking scenes. These factors combined led to an incomplete picture of the
thirties cycle in the minds of viewers, and formed the basis of much of the
critical opinion that followed. The graphic explicitness of the thirties horror film
was underplayed and the happy ending overemphasized, creating an impression
of tameness.
This misperception, I believe, was followed through by academics in their
arguing that the classic horror film (in comparison to the modern or postmodern
horror film) is—based largely on the ending in which “normative order is
restored”—inherently conservative or reactionary (Wood, “The American
Nightmare”; Tudor, Monsters and Mad Scientists; Pinedo, Recreational Terror),
or at best (and probably more accurately) a site of “ideological contradiction and
negotiation” (Berenstein, Attack of the Leading Ladies). Only more recently
have scholars begun to question the nature of the restorative ending in thirties
horror films and its significance within the cycle (e.g., Hutchings, The Horror
Film).
Therefore redefining the thirties horror film in light of its gruesomeness and its