Universal Horror: How fear came to the movies

Bela Lugosi pounces in Dracula (1931)

The 1930s were a watershed era for cinema, defined by seismic change on screen and beyond; from the dawn of the ‘talkies’ to the Great Depression and rise of Totalitarian regimes in Europe, which fuelled an influx of fresh talent to Hollywood. One of the greatest beneficiaries of the new ‘talkies’ was the horror picture. Synchronised sound provided a multitude of opportunities to shock, excite and terrify so it is unsurprising that this period gave birth to some of the most enduring villains and monsters in cinematic history, in horror classics like Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933) and The Mummy (1933). Many of these works came from Universal Pictures a second-tier studio that came to shape the horror genre, casting glamorous damsels in distress and suave, charming villains while pushing creative and technological boundaries.  

"The stable of Universal horror films produced in this period gained popularity because to some degree they provided an avenue for the exorcism of the racial tensions and social conflicts of the day."

The stable of Universal horror films produced in this period gained popularity because to some degree they provided an avenue for the exorcism of the racial tensions and social conflicts of the day. With little exception, they all reflect a paranoid view of the outsiders, positioning foreigners and exotic monsters as the primary source of fear. Take Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), in which the sinister Dr. Mirakle, a doctor exhibiting a violent ape named ‘Erik’ as part of a fairground attraction. A series of brutal murders ensues and a young detective discovers that Dr. Mirakle has been murdering young women by infecting them with ape blood in the hope of providing Erik with a mate. All the conventions that would become so common in Universal horror can he found here; the young pure woman threatened with contamination by a shadowy foreigner, the mad scientist intent on wreaking havoc and the ensuing disruption of the social fabric. It’s also evident that the source of horror is not only foreign but savage and uncivilised and the threat posed originates in the literal contamination of the blood. Similar themes can be identified in Dracula where again, threat originates in fear of the literal pollution of the blood by foreign forces. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula was undoubtedly a more charming villain than Erik the ape but again the sense of danger is as much rooted in his ‘otherness’ as in his demonic inhumanity. We don’t have to search too deeply to find parallels with the discourses on miscegenation and racial contamination prevalent at the time.

In a decade in which America sought to isolate itself politically from the rest of the world, Universal horror reflected deep-seated unease with an outside world deemed primitive and barbaric. This xenophobia was easily applicable to the British audiences of Universal horrors who were themselves grappling with the death of Victorian imperial optimism. The Mummy can be seen as much as an emblem of colonial anxiety about the Other as an entertaining adventure about an ancient monster come to life. 

The eponymous mummy Imhotep in The Mummy (1933)

Universal horrors also demonstrate a sense of disquiet with modernity and technology – particularly when harnessed to corrupt the natural order. Indeed, the 'mad scientist' motif was played out again and again in Universal horror, in films like The Raven (1935), Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man and Murders in the Rue Morgue. These films constructed an image of the scientist/doctor as an individual willing to transcend the accepted boundaries between man and monster to distort nature. In The Raven Bela Lugosi plays a family physician obsessed with the stories of  Edgar Allen Poe who, finding his love for a patient thwarted, plots to kill her and her fiance by ensnaring them in a series of elaborate Poe-inspired traps. The Raven – arguably one of the darkest of Universal horrors – shocked and thrilled audiences with its chilling portrayal of lust, hatred and vengeance. 

The golden age of Universal Horror was fundamentally concerned with the blurring of  established social boundaries – between pure and impure, living and dead, man and monster, foreign and domestic. By exposing and perhaps even satirising the fragility of these defining boundaries these films established horror as a genre that could chill audiences with a cinematic vision of fear anchored in very real anxieties.