This was a segment of the October 14 Salon Saturday radio show. Since my first published novel, The Phoenix Society could be classified as a horror novel, and I mean that in a good way, I wanted to cover horror novels and authors that have influenced me and countless others. Obviously, these works fueled the inspiration of many films in the horror and fantasy mode; as many author’s novels have been translated to film. But before we cover films I wanted to show the evolution of horror fiction.
Horror categories
Not everyone gets the same chills from horror stories. There are always subcategories that do the job, for some more than others, and everyone has their own internal fears that stoke up the heart rate. Some fears are also universal, like being buried alive!
Horror’s history
Books based on horror, or the uncanny, or about supernatural beings have been with us a long time; at least since Beowulf with Grendel as the monster. That poem deals with events of the early 6th century and was probably composed c. 700–750. Horror novels came much later, of course.
Superstitions and myth have certainly done their part in providing content for gothic and horror novels. The Inquisition and a belief in witches date from the 1400s. In 1486, Inquisitors Henry Kramer and Jakob Sprenger published Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches).
Several movies, many gut-wrenching have been based on this period. Some historical in theme, but as often involving torture and rape. The period around the 1970s is when most of these movies came out. The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Witchfinder General (1968), and the notorious Mark of the Devil (1970).
Vampires in myth have also been with us for some time. There’s a reason many of the early movies had superstitious and terrified villagers. In 1731, the Austrian government ordered an investigation into a mass hysteria that gripped the village of Medvegja. Local citizen Arnold Paole had died in 1726 after falling off a hay wagon. Prior to his death, Paole had intimated that he’d been bitten by a vampire when he lived near Gossawa, in Turkish Serbia. To reverse the curse, Paole said he’d smeared himself with mud from the vampire’s grave and with the vampire’s blood.
After four more villagers had died, Paole was disinterred, and a stake driven through his heart. Although it was centuries before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, these myths continued as tales to frighten children and credulous adults.
In 1765, Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto, considered the first Gothic novel. The Gothic novel would take another dramatic turn in June, 1816. For three days, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Dr. John Polidori shared a villa at Lake Geneva. Likely under the influence of laudanum, they decided to have a ghost story-writing contest. The result was the first vampire story and a novel of a more famous reanimated monster. The movie, Gothic (1986), is based on this event.
Rod Serling voice: Imagine if you will, a creature, borne of man, who awakens to a world he cannot comprehend, gazed on by his creator, first as a triumph in creating life; but who then rejects him as does the rest of mankind. To whom can he turn for surcease of his malignancy, which he can only conclude, from the horror his visage presents to the world? What would such a creature do to survive; an instinct every living being needs for succor and nurture? Where could he turn?
Frankenstein: or the modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley January 1818
Shelley considered some of these themes when she wrote the story of gifted scientist Victor Frankenstein who succeeds in giving life to a being of his own creation. However, this is not the perfect specimen he imagines, but rather a hideous creature that is rejected by Victor and mankind.
There is an entire sub list of books and movies based on Shelley’s groundbreaking novel, composed when she was barely 20. The first movie based on the book, Frankenstein (1932) only covered part of the book. However, Karloff embodied that concept in his performance of the creature bringing empathy as well as fear. The Bride of Frankenstein (1934) covered the remainder. Mel Brook’s Young Dr. Frankenstein (1972), a delightful spoof of horror movies of this type did cover most of the novel.
Around Halloween each year I feature the Mel Brooks movie to a circle of friends for our Halloween party, with ghastly food and drink. It’s one of the highlights of our season.
Edgar Allan Poe brought the Gothic tradition to America; his first story came out in 1833. He produced some of the world’s most outstanding macabre tales, many made into movies. Vincent Price and American International cranked out quite a few. I know I saw all of them. Poe has also been called the father of the detective novel. That’s quite a literary tradition.
The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886
Probably no summary of this novel is required. Several films have been done, including linking it to Jack the Ripper. The Ripper was also an obvious influence on Bram Stoker. And here we have the first serial killer novel, although dressed in science. One wonders what the Scottish author, Stevenson, thought of the ripper killings two years later in 1888.
While John William Polidori’s short tale, The Vampyre (1819) was the first published vampire tale, it wasn’t really a horror novel. Over the next fifty years, vampires and vampire stories began to form and borrow from one another, (sound familiar?) but the first real vampire novel was the sensual, blood sucker, Carmilla (1872), written by Joseph Sheriden Le Fanu. What a scandalous shocker this must have been in the Victorian age. With its mix of horror, sex and lesbian sensuality, Carmilla was a scandalous bestseller.
Dracula by Bram Stoker, published in 1897
Dracula is another popular gothic novel. Stoker tells the story of the fight against the vampire Dracula in an epistolary format. The story comprises various letters, telegrams, journal entries, and newspaper articles written by the main characters. There is even a good recipe for Hungarian Chicken Paprikash.
The first movie that portrayed Dracula, Nosferatu (1922), with a rodent-like Max Schreck still provides plenty of chills and helped set the stage for an ongoing series of vampire movies. Stoker’s widow would not permit F.W. Murnau to use the name, Dracula, but the similarities were obvious.
It was in part the Penny Dreadful novels in the UK in the mid-1800s that led to the later pulp novels of America in the 1920s. The fiction dealing with lurid or sensational subjects, often printed on rough, low-quality paper manufactured from wood pulp, led to the pulp term, just as the penny per copy of the Dreadful novels of the previous era were called.
The science fiction, fantasy, and horror authors that first started in the magazines Weird Tales (1923-1954) and Amazing Stories (1926-1960) gave a start to many authors of early 20th century horror. The most influential could well be H.P. (Howard, Philip) Lovecraft who created an entire world of fantasy and horror around the dreaded Necronomicon, which has been picked up in fiction and film to this day.
That kept the horror novel alive and well to today when a short list of good horror fiction reads into the thousands. A full focus on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is in a later blog.
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