Horrors: A History of Horror Movies

Since time began, mankind has attempted to explain away the terrors of the night and the unknown by creating a whole dark universe of demons, monsters, vampires and strange phenomena from outer space. And, in so doing, the human psyche has revealed its innermost secrets, its fears and conflicts leaping out into the glare of conscious understanding. Yet there is enjoyment in this self-inflicted horror, for who has not felt that spine-chilling tingle when face to face on the cinema screen with the bloodlusting vampire figure of Dracula, the lumbering monster created by Frankenstein, or the terrifying shark that looms out of the depths in Jaws? Those we profess to loathe we nonetheless love to witness in the movies, and actors whose names are immediately recognizable for their petrifying roles in films of horror.. Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee among the many... number among our favorite stars.Tom Hutchinson and Roy Pickard are film writers who have compiled this history of horrors to bring us news of movie ghoulies and beasties that, over the years, have expressed in dramatic terms our inner terrors and conflicts. There is in this account, dramatically illustrated with over 240 movie stills, a third of them in full color, a real understanding of why we enjoyed being terrified and an appreciation that what we fear most we live with all the time. For when we look into the unknown, we come face to face with the monster who has created all the others: we come face to face with ourselves!