01x01 - American Monsters

[bunniefuu]

♪

[Campbell] It's probably very
cathartic why horror works.

It takes you to
the edge of life.

It's one of the few genres
that can get an audience

to react viscerally.

That's all horror is.

These six kids are
gonna die, one by one.

Maybe one schmo will
make it to the end.

But it's all life and death.

[Englund] For over a century,
horror films have been

an essential part
of American culture.

They have thrilled us.
They have entertained us.

And they have also exorcised
our collective demons.

The horror genre has always
reflected our shared fears

and anxieties.

People... they
want to be scared.

They're coming to
get you, Barbara.

[screams]

[Blum] The world is always
throwing up new terrors

that we can turn
into horror movies.

[Englund] Blumhouse's
Compendium of Horror examines

how those films have held
a mirror up to society

and allowed us to experience
and purge our national fears

in the shared
experience of cinema.

The scariest f*cking thing.

[man] We wanted Blair
Witch to come from a place

of that primal motivation.

Really get under your
skin and really scare you.

[Englund] From the
brutality of w*r

to national financial disasters,

foreign or alien threats,

uncomfortable challenges
to the social fabric,

to the struggle for progress,

all these cultural
shifts and movements

have manifested in
our collective fears.

They have inspired horror's
greatest filmmakers

and resulted in the
creation of some of the most

terrifying and unforgettable
films of all time.

[woman screams]

Invasion of the
Body Snatchers...

One of the most disturbing
movies ever made.

I was not ready for it.

[man #2] Of course,
Leatherface was terrifying.

He was just this
awful, faceless entity

that was in this house
k*lling teenagers.

We've got no money, but we
scare the hell out of you.

They don't make that movie,

I don't get inspired
to make mine.

I came up with the
title Friday the 13th,

and I took out a
big ad in Variety.

"The most terrifying film
ever made... Friday the 13th."

And I didn't have anything.

Nightmare on Elm
Street. It's so simple.

Somebody that terrorizes
you in your dreams.

And if he gets to you, you die.

Sleep kills.

[Bell] Horror fans...
They want to be scared.

[audience gasping]

Anybody with a video camera
can make a horror film.

There's a certain dedication
to it that no other genre has.

They wanted to [Blows
raspberry] bump it up and like,

"Whoa, did you see that?"

[Blum] The communal experience
of screaming together

in a dark theater

is an experience that draws
us back again and again.

Big old monster walks in
the room, we all jump.

Aah!

Fear and fun are co-mingled.

And the audience gets to
sit and scream and yell

and come out of the theater
unharmed at the end.

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

[Nicotero] My folks
are big movie buffs.

So we saw everything.

For me, as a kid, I was
fascinated with monsters.

I was just absolutely
enthralled with Frankenstein,

The Wolf Man,

Dracula,

all the Universal
monster movies.

I was kind of the weird
kid in high school.

I was into monsters

and I was into all this
kind of strange stuff

back before nerds
or geeky people

that loved this kind
of stuff were embraced.

There was one guy
that I hung out with,

and we saw every movie together.

But other than that, people
were just... didn't get it.

I got it.

♪

I am Dracula.

[wolf howls]

[Blum] The most iconic
horror characters

come from the best imaginations,

but also, they come
from the culture.

Dracula.

The Creature from
the Black Lagoon...

- [chainsaw revs]
- Leatherface,

Jason,

Michael Myers,

Freddy,

Candyman,

Pennywise,

and Red in Us...

Little girl,

run!

Are all uniquely
American monsters.

Sometimes, the divide
between the real world

and a horror movie is
a very, very thin line.

[Englund] The birth of the
American horror experience

dates back nearly 100 years.

In the wake of World w*r I,

German artists created
seminal horror films

that echoed societal fears
overwhelming the population.

The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu

were dark and disturbing stories

that expressed audiences'
shared sense of dread.

The idea that audiences would
embrace unsettling films

which allowed them to
experience and purge those fears

quickly caught on in America.

[Roosevelt] The only thing we
have to fear is fear itself.

[Nicotero] The '20s and '30s
were a really interesting time

for the United States
with post-World w*r I.

They needed escapist.

They needed something
to get away to.

[reporter] More than 70 million
people in the United States

go to the movies each week.

Horror films function as,
like, a mirror of society.

They're gonna reflect
whatever is going on.

So whatever political,
whatever national trauma,

whatever wartime we are seeing,

we're gonna see horror
reflect what's going on.

Good day, Herr Baron.

Well, what do you want?

If it's trouble, go away.
I've trouble enough.

Oh, there's no trouble, sir.

What do you mean, no trouble?

There's nothing but trouble.

[Englund] America and
the rest of the world

were barely recovering from
the horrors of World w*r I

when a new threat
was unleashed...

The terror of
financial catastrophe

in the form of the
Great Depression.

It's interesting. In tough
times, horror thrives.

The monsters of the era of
right around the Depression

were relatable to all of us.

There's pathos in
these characters.

[wood creaks]

[eerie laughter echoes]

♪

♪

[Blum] The 1930s saw the birth
of the American horror movie.

Carl Laemmle Jr.,
son of Carl Laemmle

who founded Universal,
made a big bet on horror,

and his instincts were right.

He put together adaptations
of Dracula and Frankenstein.

[Englund] Before
Dracula and Frankenstein

became iconic movie monsters,

Carl Laemmle Jr.
Had to find a way

to make these large-scale,
ambitious films

in the midst of
financial hardship.

The stock-market crash of 1929
devastated the global economy

and decimated movie budgets.

But nothing... nothing
could k*ll the pictures.

Carl Laemmle Jr. found a
workaround by optioning plays

that were easily adapted
into film scripts.

With these ready-made
stories in hand,

Laemmle tapped directors
with dark sensibilities.

Laemmle recognized that
audiences wanted horror movies

to purge their fears
now more than ever,

and he tasked his directors
to fulfill that vision.

But they needed the
perfect leading men

to bring the monsters to life.

[Blum] He hired James Whale
to direct Frankenstein

and Tod Browning
to direct Dracula.

[Hendrix] Tod
Browning, the director,

as a kid, worked in carnivals,

and one of his shticks was
he was the living corpse.

He would get buried
alive for hours at a time

and then dug up,
sometimes overnight.

And so he was someone
who was very acquainted

with living death and
being in a coffin.

Director James Whale
was a World w*r I vet.

He spent a lot of his w*r in
a German prisoner-of-w*r camp.

He was a tremendously
troubled individual.

Carl Laemmle Jr...

He also approved
casting Bela Lugosi

and Boris Karloff
in those films.

[Lugosi] Frankenstein.

[Karloff] Dracula.

And those actors are still
synonymous with 1930s horror.

Dracula and Frankenstein,
which really do kind of become

an embodiment of society

where it is these very wealthy
people in these castles.

But the castles
are all crumbling.

And the townsfolk are all
down below, struggling.

Castle Dracula?

Yes. That's where I'm going.

No, you mustn't go there.

And this is what
we see in Dracula.

[Englund] In 1931,

the world was introduced to
the first Universal monster.

I bid you welcome.

[Englund] The sinister
Count Dracula.

Ouch!

Oh, it's nothing serious.

Just a small cut
from that paperclip.

It's just a scratch.

[Kusama] The notion of
Dracula as a character

is that he is an eternal evil.

To die, to be really dead...
That must be glorious.

He's someone who takes great
pleasure in the victimization

of mostly female victims.

He has a sadistic love affair

with other people's
pain and humiliation.

♪

Bela Lugosi's Dracula is
very revolutionary for me

in that he's the one
Universal monster

that's not tormented
at what he is.

He's actually enjoying himself
as best he can and go, "Well,

since whatever can't be
remedied must be endured.

And if I have to endure it,
I may as well enjoy it."

Excuse me. Count Dracula,
Professor Van Helsing.

A most distinguished
scientist whose name we know.

Even in the wild Transylvania.

[Carpenter] Bela Lugosi...

He was kind of an evil
Rudolph Valentino.

He was originally written

as an aristocrat
back in the old days.

For one who has not lived
even a single lifetime,

you are a wise man.

Slicked-back hair, and he
was all... got the girls.

You see, I am 30
years here in America.

And eight months ago, I was
called to come to England

to revive the American
version of Dracula.

Doesn't Dracula
ever end for you?

No, no. Dracula
will never end.

[Williamson] I always
was scared of Dracula

because there was something
very sensuous about him.

He was the most sexual
of our sort of monsters.

It's, you know, the
power of seduction,

the power of the danger.

You know, he is there to
either kiss or k*ll you,

and you don't know which.

And in the moment,
you don't really care.

Come here.

Come...

here.

[Oswalt] I think the reason
sex is so connected to Dracula

and to vampires

is that a lot of people's kink

is being completely
dominated and drained

and used up as
someone else's fuel.

There's something really
kind of beautiful about that.

[Kusama] There's something
about the notion of the vampire.

The thing that, in this case,
literally sucks your blood

but, in other ways,
can get in your head,

can change you from
the inside out.

Can make you a version
of the monster he is.

No, master, please.

Please don't ask me to do that.

That, to me, says a lot

about the corrupting
power of power.

[Englund] In the wake
of the Great Depression,

Americans were angry

at the corrupt and
selfish wealthy class

that they blamed for
the economic crash

that left 12 million
Americans without work.

A staggering 12,000 jobs
were lost every day.

Over 20,000 Americans
committed suicide.

And Hollywood delivered them
a monster fit for the times.

The money-sucking upper
class was personified

by the handsome and wealthy,
bloodsucking nobleman

feeding on his less
fortunate victims.

[Williamson] Dracula
resonated with a lot of people

because here comes this man
who's just sucking the life

out of us, and I think

[chuckles] people living
in that time felt like

life was sucking the
life out of them.

Everyone was thirsty
and hungry for food,

so they understood
the need for blood.

[Englund] Dracula was
an overnight success,

selling 50,000 tickets

within days of its
opening in New York.

[man] Here is Bela Lugosi,
the screen's numbere vampire

who's decided to pay
back some of that blood

that he's borrowed.

I can't help thinking
what a perfect payoff

it would be if Dracula Lugosi,

after all the jugular
veins he's tapped,

should be found too
anemic to donate blood.

[Englund] The success of Dracula
gave Universal confidence

to greenlight its next
monster movie, Frankenstein...

based on a play and inspired by
Mary Shelley's novel from 1818.

The brain you stole fits
the brain of a dead man,

waiting to live again in a
body I made with my own hands.

With my own hands.

♪

It's alive! It's
alive! It's alive!

[Turek] Imagine being in a movie
theater, seeing Boris Karloff

lumber out of the dark
for the first time.

You know, they do that great cut

where it just goes boom,
boom... Right into his face.

It's so scary.

There's something very taboo

about a mad scientist
screaming about playing God.

There was that moment,
too, that was always cut,

where Frankenstein
meets a little girl

who's picking flowers and
throwing them into the lake.

Would you like
one of my flowers?

See how mine floats?

- [grunts]
- No, you're hurting me!

No!

And then it all suddenly cut to

her dad carrying her
corpse through the village.

[Nicotero] There is
something scary about

something that is
unstoppable and...

Maria... she's drowned.

♪

And pursues you...

[screams]

and is relentless.

[screams]

And that's what I
kind of love about it.

[grunting]

[Englund] For audiences in 1931,

Dr. Frankenstein and the
monster he pieced together

were another potent symbol

of the relentless evil
that had ruined their lives

through w*r and
financial hardship.

Frankenstein really
created the text for horror

for many decades.

[Halberstam] Basically, every
era remakes Frankenstein.

Back into the
closet. Back, back.

Back, back, back, back, back!

[Turek] They were there to lay
the foundation for what works.

Dr. Frankenstein, I presume.

♪

[growls]

Frankenstein is a story
about a mad scientist

whose greatest dream
is to create life.

And he does so by
cobbling together a body,

galvanizing that body with
the use of a lightning storm.

Child's Play.

- Hi. I'm Chucky. Wanna play?
- [screams]

The Chucky films are
Frankenstein movies...

about a doll that comes to
life after the warehouse

that the doll is stored
in is struck by lightning.

[glass shatters]

That's a Frankenstein myth.

I said talk to me, damn it,

or else I'm gonna
throw you in the fire.

I mean, look at Michael Myers.

Michael Myers is
the perfect example.

You can't stop him.
You can't k*ll him.

[Carpenter] Michael Myers
was written as a blank.

He had no defining
characteristics, really.

He had no face.

It was a thing without a face.

Almost a force of nature,
as opposed to a human being.

[grunting]

You can draw a direct line
from Frankenstein's monster

to Leatherface in The
Texas Chainsaw m*ssacre.

[chain saw revving]

Frankenstein's monster
is always terrified,

jumping at the light, at fire.

He's tormented by
the other characters.

And there's a scene in The
Texas Chainsaw m*ssacre

where Leatherface is genuinely
frightened and agitated

that why are so many people
coming into his house.

[screams]

You actually kind of feel
bad for him in a weird way

because he's frightened.

[Turek] Because
we're all rooting

for the Frankenstein monster

who's pulled into this
world and abandoned,

and we all feel bad for him.

[Englund] Like Dracula,
Frankenstein also told a tale

of elites unleashing a
horror on the masses.

In this case, a scientist
who wanted to play God.

It was the perfect allegory
for a traumatized America

still reeling from facing
its own monsters...

The First World w*r,
financial disaster,

and the prospect of another
global conflict on the horizon.

The movie struck a chord.

[Hendrix] Frankenstein
became a huge, huge hit,

because I think it tapped
into a lot of these fears.

Frankenstein... it's almost
like an autobiography

by director James Whale.

It is a cry for help.

James Whale.

He was a w*r veteran
who saw a lot of combat.

He had a hard time sleeping
without being drunk

or doped up on pills.

These things haunted him.

He talked a lot about suicide.

He didn't like water, yet
he had a swimming pool

and would ultimately k*ll
himself with that swimming pool,

almost like he
had the instrument

for his own self-destruction
there at his house,

waiting until he
was ready for it.

[McKendry] Universal
saw the success

of Dracula and Frankenstein.

They hit, and they exploded.

And so in the 1930s, that's
what we see is Universal

owns the game with
these movie monsters.

And with that, they keep
just churning them out

as fast as they can.

♪

[shouts]

[screams]

♪

[screams]

Stop where you are.

♪

[man] Oh, no!

No!

Inspector Crow, District Police.

- Smoke.
- [grunts]

[woman] What
strange-looking country.

[man screaming]

♪

[Campbell] I saw The
Mummy on television.

I was pretty familiar with
all of the Universal monsters

because they did the
best job selling them.

I mean, they had the package.

If you wanted horror,
it was Universal.

They treated their
genre seriously.

I told you not to disturb me.

[Englund] The Invisible Man,

adapted from H.G. Wells'
horror novel of the same name.

There must be a way back.

[Englund] After Frankenstein,

audiences were hungry
for more monster movies.

Only, this time,

the monster literally was
the mad scientist himself.

A scientist playing
dangerously with nature.

An arrogant, elite doctor,
indulging his dark impulses

and, as a result,
unleashing horror

on an unsuspecting
and innocent public.

You're crazy to know
who I am, aren't you?

All right, I'll show you.

There's a souvenir for
you, and one for you.

I'll show you who
I am and what I am.

[laughing maniacally]

Look. He's all eaten away.

[The Invisible Man] How
do you like that, eh?

[laughing]

[Nicotero] Ironically,
the most effective k*ller

of every Universal monster
is the Invisible Man.

[train horn blares]

Invisible Man, like,
derails a train.

[people screaming]

And the entire train
goes off a cliff.

It kills a whole
trainload full of people.

And basically, he's the
one that's not a monster.

He's the one that's
a human being,

which I always find fascinating.

[The Invisible Man] Thank
God for the fire. Sit down.

Unless you want me to
knock your brains out.

Sit down!

You're frightened out of
your wits, aren't you?

[Dickerson] When I
was growing up...

[The Invisible Man] Oh, it's
no good talking like this.

There was a show
that used to come on,

I think it was Friday
nights and Saturday nights,

called Shock Theater.

And that's when I first saw
the old Universal horror films.

Frankenstein, Dracula,

The Invisible Man,

The Wolf Man.

Yeah, I loved The Wolf Man.

[woman screams]

Larry Talbot, man.

Talbot Castle, Mr. Larry.

You know, he was just so cool.

[Englund] The Wolf Man
gave us yet another monster

who represented audiences'
fear of the unknown events

that continued to
upend their lives.

The Wolf Man was the monster

who could not control
his own actions.

It was in the Wolf
Man's nature to k*ll.

Go ahead and sh**t
before he bites you.

A monster too many
could relate to.

It shows the wolf
in the pentagram.

- The sign of the werewolf.
- Werewolf? What's that?

Oh, that's a human being who,
at certain times of the year,

changes into a wolf.

[woman screams]

♪

Sir John!

- Master Larry, what happened?
- He was bitten by a wolf.

- A wolf?
- Yes.

Nonsense. Haven't been
wolves around here for years.

Where did all this happen?

By the marsh. That
woman came to help.

[Oswalt] The main thing that
the Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man

did was, if you're gonna
do a werewolf movie,

you'd better have the
transformation scene,

and it better be
something amazing.

♪

♪

[growling]

[Oswalt] That is the sizzle.

[screaming]

[growling]

So that became the
standard for a long time.

♪

[Carpenter] The Wolf Man is
a really interesting monster.

He's completely
innocent of anything.

Richardson was k*lled last
night. The gravedigger.

The tracks lead
up to this house.

Footprints?

No. Animal tracks. A wolf.

He got bitten by a werewolf.

What the hell, man?

You k*lled the wolf.

Well, there's no crime
in that, is there?

Bela became a wolf.

- And you k*lled him.
- You're insane.

I tell you, I k*lled a wolf.
A plain, ordinary wolf.

[Carpenter] It's
unbelievably depressing.

It's like what was going on
in the culture at the time.

Hell, I'm out of a job. Why?

Why am I a werewolf?

And it's... you
know, it's tragic.

[woman] Your
suffering is over.

Now you will find
peace for eternity.

♪

[Turek] And then there was
kind of, like, another wave.

There was another boom,
and you saw movies like

the Universal classic
movie-monster sequels.

[Englund] Bride of Frankenstein
is considered by many

to be a perfect sequel.

It picks up where
Frankenstein left off,

scaring audiences with its
tale of unnatural monsters

threatening the
world around them...

and ups the ante
with spectacular

and unnerving effects

unlike any that were
seen at the time.

I think Bride of Frankenstein
is one of the best films,

period.

Baron Frankenstein.

- What do you want?
- We must work together.

Bride of Frankenstein
is super interesting

because it's modeled on a piece
from the Mary Shelley story.

[Henry] I give
you the monster.

Frankenstein, the scientist,

decides he should make
a mate for his monster.

Oh, I thought I was alone.

You make man like me?

No.

Woman. Friend for you.

[The Monster] Woman. Friend.

Why?

James Whale takes up
Mary Shelley's lost plot

and brings it to life.

Isn't it amazing, Henry?

[Oswalt] Bride of Frankenstein
is genuinely frightening

when you realize what
a scientist wants to do

is to make a world
of gods and monsters.

To a new world of
gods and monsters.

Universal Horror really
nailed the idea of the monster

is never really the
evil perpetrator.

- [grunting ]
- [man] Keep still!

If anything, they're the biggest

and most frightened
victim in the film.

- [hammering]
- Oh!

I'd hate to find him
under my bed at night.

Bride of Frankenstein
is amazing.

It is a feminist film
without ever even realizing

that it is a feminist film.

[machine powering up]

[electricity crackling]

We see this woman who has been
created for the sole purpose

of being a mate
for this monster.

She's alive. Alive!

The bride of Frankenstein.

♪

But once she's born to light,
she looks at him and she's like,

"Nah, I'm not into that."

[grunts]

[screams]

"This is not what I want.
I don't want to do this."

So we're seeing this beautiful
feminist reaction in a movie

that no one really kind
of perceived it being in.

[screams]

She hate me.

Get away from that lever.
You'll blow us all to atoms.

[Elizabeth] Henry!
Undo the door!

[Henry] But I
can't leave them.

Yes, go. You live.

You stay.

We belong dead.

[hissing]

It's the most nihilistic ending.

♪

[Turek] Universal
making those movies

gave all the other
studios permission to go,

"Horror movies are lucrative."

It gave, like, you know,

Paramount the right to go
make a slate of horror movies.

Give MGM the right to
go make some films.

It's like the landscape
just opened up.

♪

♪

♪

♪

[Blum] After he
directed Dracula,

Tod Browning went
on to make Freaks.

An incredibly important,
unique early horror movie.

[Englund] Freaks was based
on the short story Spurs,

written by American
horror author Tod Robbins.

Director Tod Browning, regarded
as the Edgar Allan Poe of film,

had worked for a
traveling carnival

and urged MGM to
secure the rights

to a story some
considered grotesque,

thus putting his
reputation on the line.

[all] ♪ We accept
her, we accept her ♪

♪ Gooble, gobble,
gooble, gobble ♪

♪ One of us, one of us

When looked at through the
lens of the Great Depression,

Freaks is about
the class struggle.

The supposedly
normal characters,

Cleopatra and Hercules,

have disdain for the people that
make their carnival possible.

The so-called freaks
are the working man.

♪ Gooble, gobble,
gooble, gobble ♪

No!

Dirty!

Slimy!

Freaks!

Freaks! Freaks!

Get out of here!

[Bress] Freaks disturbed me.

[Hercules] Get out.
You heard her! Get out!

[laughing]

And I think it did it in
a way that was probably

really advanced for its time.

And a lot of that, I'm sure,
had to do with the casting.

[Blum] The cast of Freaks
was groundbreaking...

Putting people on screen
who'd never been seen

in movies before.

[Bress] I mean, it really
felt like, "Oh, wow,

we're hearkening back to
a time where creepiness

and exploitation was acceptable

and thrived upon."

Watching it, I found
myself kind of like,

"This is a little bit
more than exploitation.

There's actual story going on
with a lot of layers to it."

[Blum] Freaks follows a trapeze
artist who joins a group

of carnival sideshow performers

with a plan to m*rder
a little person

in the troupe for
his inheritance.

[Turek] Any horror
filmmaker wants to set out

to give you a level
of discomfort.

[thunder rumbling]

Make you confront feelings that
you don't normally confront.

Sometimes when
you're a horror fan,

you have to listen
a little deeper

than what people
automatically lead with,

which is, "This
movie's exploitive."

In the end, it becomes this
kind of, like, revenge movie,

almost in a way like
I Spit on Your Grave.

[screams]

[Turek] It's a
r*pe revenge film.

[sobs]

[choking]

These movies are that window
into the darkness of the world.

[McKendry] At the same time,

Freaks came out in a time period

where we're having
people return from w*r.

[Man] Terrible was
the price to be paid.

A million men laid dead.

Hospitals coped with the
unending flow of wounded.

Plenty of soldiers came back
with whatever had happened

to them... their injuries...
And felt less than.

They felt marginalized. They
felt they didn't fit in.

They weren't worthy anymore.

They weren't the high
school quarterback they were

when they left.

They're not just
externally injured.

They're internally injured.

And nobody knows about it, and
nobody ever talked about it.

And then along comes a
movie like Freaks, where...

they can identify
with these people

that are being marginalized
and looked down on

and just don't make
the cut anymore.

And they're the heroes.

[McKendry] We are
actually seeing

these body horrors firsthand

of people coming
over, missing limbs,

and so seeing it up on screen
in an almost exploitive manner,

no one really knew
what to do with it.

[Blum] Freaks was also a film

that when MGM initially
test screened it,

there are anecdotes that
people got up and ran out.

They didn't just leave.

They literally ran
out of the theater.

There was a backlash to that.

[Englund] After
the test screening,

MGM removed more than


from Tod Browning's
original cut.

Despite the changes,

Freaks was not a
commercial success

and was outright
banned in some places.

With its failure
at the box office

and the controversy
surrounding it,

the film essentially ended
Tod Browning's career.

Although it is now in the
National Film Registry,

at the time of its release,

Freaks was a prime example
of why the Hays Code

was enacted just a
few years earlier.

[Halberstam] At the time,

people did not know
what kind of impact

the cinema might have
on the mass audiences

who were all going to
see the same material.

So the question is, would
people be so mesmerized

by what they saw in the cinema

that they would immediately go
out and mimic what they saw?

And if so, was there
a responsibility

within the community
of filmmaking

to regulate what was shown?

[reporter] Hollywood, the
glamour capital of the world.

Hollywood reaches far,
carrying its cargo of dreams

to almost every city
and village in America.

♪ Clean as a whistle,
fresh as a daisy ♪

♪ Brand-new, clean through

♪ On my way just wearing
that smile of mine ♪

[Hendrix] The Hays
Code was this reaction

by the film industry
to police themselves

before the government
started policing them.

[Man] Things got so
hot in the movies

that the reputable producers
signed up Will Hays

at 100 grand a year to clean
up the picture business

and yet keep the busybodies
off the industry's neck.

Pre-Code movies had cocaine
use, drinking, wild partying.

Pretty racy stuff that
maybe wasn't quite nudity

but was getting awful close.

[woman] I'm ready now.

[McKendry] They looked
at Hollywood and said,

"All of the questionable
stuff that you've been

doing for years,
we're done with that."

And they really
started to regulate

not just things like violence
or m*rder or nudity on screen,

but also morality.

- [Hendrix] Crime must not pay.
- [laughs]

You cannot show
sexual intercourse.

You can't show drug use.

I mean, really specific
stuff that you could not do.

And that steamrolled all the
joy out of movies for a while.

There were many ways in
which filmmakers figured out

how to circumvent the rules

and the regulations
of the Hays Code,

and that was to eschew
realism for the supernatural

or the extraordinary,
the fantastical.

[Wilson] A lot of the
studios pulled back

from doing overt horror

because they felt that
people had enough death

and destruction in their lives.

You know, you can't
depict violence,

and it puts a damper on horror.

What you do get is very
psychological horror.

You get Val Lewton
and his whole stable

of psychological
thrillers like Cat People.

He kind of reinvents horror
to be this more subtle genre.

[McKendry] Cat People is
incredibly groundbreaking

and has a lot to say about
what it means to be a female.

It explores a lot of
kind of marriage basis,

like, our ground
rock of society,

like what does marriage mean?

What does it mean to be
in love with someone?

[Englund] The studio RKO

gave director Val Lewton
the title Cat People

and told him, "Develop
a film around it."

[Blum] Cat People is about
a fashion illustrator

obsessed with the idea
that she is descended

from an ancient
tribe of cat people

who turn into panthers
when they're aroused.

[Englund] While it didn't claw
its way to success at the time,

Cat People did fulfill
the Hays Code edict

to ensure the audience
is always aware that

in the battle of
good versus evil,

evil is always wrong.

The film did this, in part, by
illustrating one of society's

most notoriously
dangerous temptations...

Female sexuality.

Cat People is also
one of the pioneers

of what we know in
horror as the jump scare.

[growling]

[Turek] But like all
things, you know,

there's times that horror boom
started to wane a little bit.

You weren't getting really
beautiful works of art

that, like, Val
Lewton was creating.

[Englund] With
Hitler on the rise

and the threat of
another World w*r

creating tremendous
stress in people's lives,

the great release
that horror provided

was on the decline.

We started getting more
tepid scary movies.

Some were just incredibly awful.

[woman] How can you
defile this sacred house

with the body of that evil
man, that servant of the devil?

This house is full of
it... Something evil.

Evil? Yes, it's you.

[screams]

[Nicotero] At that
particular time,

Universal had sort of been
cycling through their monsters.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.

And then it was House
of Frankenstein.

Don't go this way.
Quicksand. Quicksand.

They shouldn't have come here.

[Nicotero] And then
House of Dracula.

[woman screams]

They were getting
a little fatigued.

They didn't know what to do with
those monsters after a while.

[Roosevelt] Yesterday, the
United States of America

was suddenly
deliberately attacked.

[Englund] With America's
entry into World w*r II,

vampires, werewolves,
and man-made monsters

like Frankenstein
and Invisible Man...

Well, they had run their course.

The audiences were engrossed
in a new kind of horror.

Realities of w*r.

[Turek] People are seeing
stories unfold on a big screen

with sound in black and white

and seeing things they
had never seen before.

[Nicotero] People
were genuinely afraid.

They were afraid because
now there was nowhere safe.

They couldn't just go into their
bedroom and slam the door shut

and be safe from the monster.

Because the monster could
get through the wall.

It's hard to know where
the true monsters are.

It's sort of like they're
everywhere you look.

[Truman] A short time ago,

an American airplane dropped
one b*mb on Hiroshima.

The atomic b*mb kind
of changed everything.

Changed people's world
view, perspectives.

I think people were just
like, "Okay, you know what?

There is clearly a
greater force at work here

and bigger things
to be afraid of."

♪

"Not only do we have to
worry about World Wars,

but there is another threat."

[screeching]

Holy sh*t. [laughs]

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

[roars]