Horror Films: 1896-1929 - Page 3

Derived from The Overlook Film Enclyclopedia: Horror by Tom Milne, Kim Newman, Julian Petley, Tim Pulleine, Paul Willemen, edited by Phil Hardy. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1995, with a few additions (Wegener's Student of Prague is mentioned, but not given its own entry, A Page of Madness is omitted, Watson & Webber's Fall of the House of Usher is omitted, while Jean Epstein's version of the same year is included, and several Hund von Baskerville films are separated here).They. note the contrast between the dark approach of the European films while American films trended more toward "gasps and goosebumps." Haunted house comedies were a common theme in American films, culminating in The Cat and the Canary, while European films, especially the work of Fritz Lang, took more psychological approaches to horror. Even masked wrestlers fighting monsters began in this period. Lengthening films helped the genre develop, jumping as it does from 1896 to 1909 with the second entry.