After Dracula: The 1930S Horror Film
by Alison Peirse /
2013 / English / PDF
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After Dracula tells of films set in London music halls and Yorkshire coal mines, South Sea islands and Hungarian modernist houses of horror, with narrators that travel in space and time from contemporary Paris to ancient Egypt. Alison Peirse argues that Dracula (1931) has been canonized to the detriment of other innovative and original 1930s horror films in Europe and America. She reveals a cycle of films made over the 1930s that are independent and studio productions, literary adaptations, folktales and original screenplays, and include 'Werewolf of London', 'The Man Who Changed His Mind', 'Island of Lost Souls' and 'Vampyr'. She considers the horror genre's international evolution during this period, engaging with a number of European horror films that have hitherto received cursory attention. She focuses on the interplay between Continental, British and transatlantic contexts, and particularly on the intriguing, the obscure and the underrated. This historical account reveals wide disparities across horror filmmaking in the 1930s and brings to light a cycle of films of which many have been forgotten and unloved - until now.
