Monsters' Ink
In summing up A Quaint & Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore
Frank J. Dello Stritto notes, "... a great deal has been
published on the old horror films ... The writers have always
been a mixed bag: ranging from die-hard fans still 12 years old
at heart to scholars applying weighty analyses to what are
largely movies intended for 12-year-olds."
He might have gone further. It seems sometimes that most
film books appearing these days are devoted to fantastical
cinema. It has been only a year since Stritto's own Vampire
Over London and David J. Skal's Death Makes a
Holiday. In that year Gary Don Rhodes' intriguing study of
White Zombie, Chris Fujiwara's estimable book on Jacques
Tourneur, Paul Leggett's hit-and-miss appraisal of Terence
Fisher's Gothic horror films, John T. Soister's invaluable
volumes on Claude Rains and Conrad Veidt and Arthur Lennig's
updated biography of Bela Lugosi have all appeared. James
Curtis' flawed biography of James Whale is about to be reprinted
yet again and the writing team of Alain Silver and James Ursini
offers a new volume of essays.
The writers above -- in addition to Ken Hanke, who has been
restricting his energy to magazine and newspaper pages since his
study of Tim Burton, and excepting Leggett and Curtis -- are
among the best. They treat their subjects seriously but not
reverentially and are intelligent without being intellectual
(though Rhodes sometimes falls into that trap). They
insightfully unveil new interpretations of these old films
(some, admittedly, not consciously intended by their makers).
This separates them from the "12-year-olds" who steadfastly
refuse to find anything beyond what they saw in those films when
they were that age (adamantly denying any subtext is possible),
and from the academicians who find fantasy films ripe for
indigestible and opaquely worded theories without ever having
simply enjoyed the films. One suspects the former incapable of
thinking and the latter of enjoyment though Stritto is possibly
too diplomatic to make such accusations. Still it is these
writers who fall between the two extremes -- taking the films
seriously, not themselves - who do the most interesting writing.
Stritto is among that company. When he makes a comparison in his
prologue between Lon Chaney, the "Man of a Thousand Faces" and
Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces you know
his book is not going to cover the same ground that has been
examined endlessly since the glory days of "Famous Monsters of
Filmland." That he doesn't work in a reference to House of a
1000 Corpses is also an indication that the focus will be
solidly on the 1930s and 1940s with a smattering of titles from
the silent era; Fisher's 1962 The Phantom of the Opera is
the most recent film mentioned.
Stritto loves new theories and new readings of these favorites
and would probably agree with those who feel that what keeps
these old favorites alive -- as opposed to dusty museum pieces -
- is that they are capable of reinterpretation. One of his best
essays, on King Kong, cites the astonishing number of
interpretations various critics have found over the years for a
film likely seen as no more than a variation of "Beauty and the
Beast" by its makers. Kong has been interpreted as
depicting: an adolescent faced with puberty; a childlike pre-
adolescent fluctuating between naivete and violence; a parable
of racial paranoia and miscegenation, and a political allegory
(intriguingly Hitler banned the film while Stalin praised it;
they obviously sensed something). At its furry heart,
Kong may be no more than a simple adventure but it must
also possess additional resonance if it remains a popular film -
- and one much written about -- 70 years following its first
appearance before an audience.
The author seems to have spent as much time wolfing down
writings on films as watching them and loves sharing these works
with his readers. In a few essays this becomes a detriment as
Stritto's contribution becomes little more than segues between
quotes. In the Kong piece and most others, however, he
does offer his own observations. He may be the first writer to
note that the second half of Kong doesn't merely parallel
but is a nearly exact retelling of the first half, the major
difference being that Ann Darrow is tied to an altar before an
audience in the first part while in the second it is the giant
ape; both are posed in similar fashion, sacrifices to Carl
Denham's ambition.
His chapter on Universal's mummy movies details the literary
predecessors of a horror icon generally considered to be a
cinematic invention and reveals a number of details which
reappear in the movies; apparently the screenwriters did more
research than anyone imagined (only John L. Balderstone, who
wrote the 1933 film, was known to have any knowledge of
Egyptology, courtesy of having covered the excavation of King
Tut's tomb as a journalist). A healthy part of each essay is
devoted to such literary examination and while this is not
unheard of in other works on the genre -- Peter Haining's books
in particular come to mind -- Stritto seems more intent on
tracing such pre-movie history than most.
Most of the essays included appeared originally in Cult
Movies magazine and therein lies their chief weak point. The
need to keep them to a manageable length as often as not results
in Stritto making some particularly fascinating observation and
then moving on rather than exploring it in the depth it
deserves. It's arguably a minor flaw; the observation, after
all, is there but it still prevents this collection from
offering as much to chew on as it might. The most satisfying
essays are those on the 1931 Dracula or those which cover
a limited number of films; particularly good in the latter
category are several essays which find common themes in films
not generally considered together. His essay on the eight
Frankenstein films seems like it barely scratches below the
surface by comparison. To be fair, some of this might be more an
impression than a fact; observations on the Universal monsters
are often spread over several essays since their adventures
began intersecting in the productions of the 1940s.
While not the absolute best book ever written on the horror film
(an honor that goes to Skal's The Monster Show) Stritto's
work is an excellent one and a valuable addition to the
literature available on these classics.
— 5 January 2004
