Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film

When it comes to film-making, horror flicks have carved out quite a nice little existence for themselves. This documentary does two things: it reflects back on the history of the horror movie, as well as gives some reasons as to why they have evolved over the years.

That first part, the reflection, is truly what carries "Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue". It is interesting to see the history of the genre, remembering all the terrifying (whether physically or emotionally) images that have branded themselves into our collective "film conscience".

However, the "discussion" parts of the documentary leave much to be desired. The approach here is very political (in one laughable segment, former President Ronald Reagan is compared to Freddy Krueger!) and really tries to understand why the "Monster Era" of the early 1900s gave way to the aliens of the 50s, the slashers of the 80s, or the psychological thrillers of the 90s, for instance. While I appreciated the effort, the reasoning just seemed a bit ridiculous at times, almost as if the panel of guests were reaching for conclusions where perhaps none in fact exist.

Overall, then, "Nightmares" is a great doc if all you care about is a history lesson on horror movies. If you want anything deeper, be prepared to take pretty much every comment with a grain of salt or that nagging feeling of "this is all just being trumped up to sell a genre".

This review may seem as though it outlines the entire documentary, but believe me, it only scratches the surface. :) No spoilers to be had here!

The pros: There are some interesting clips with some horror heavy-hitters - George Romero, John Carpenter, Mick Garrison, Joe Dante and more - interspersed with clips from everyone's favourite scary movies. We catch glimpses of other great talents behind the stories, too, like Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg and Stephen King. And when the description of of the documentary says that this is the history of the American horror film, they're not kidding: we're shown clips from the very first "Frankenstein" in 1910, through the classic Monster Movies ("Dracula," "The Phantom Of The Opera," "The Wolfman," "King Kong" and so on) all the way up to much more contemporary films, like "Se7en," "American Psycho," and franchises such as the "Saw" and "Scream" films. It's all narrated by the great voice of Lance Henriksen, who takes us on a chronological journey through what has been popular in American theatres since the silent film days and gives context to how (and why) we got from there to here.

The cons: I felt it was too short for the ground it wanted to cover; a three-part series would have allowed more time and space to get into what each director wanted to say, rather than limiting them to sound bites.

Also, for me, a lot of the attempts to politicize the evolution of horror films feel ham-fisted. Saying that Freddy Krueger's "making the children pay for the sins of the father" was a mirror of what Reagan was doing in office at the time? Tying in the ever-more excessive gore of the remakes like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Dawn Of The Dead" with the media coverage of the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan? Commenting on how there's a new moralistic level to horror films like "Saw" because victims now have "the power to choose"? "Hostel" being nothing more than a metaphor for xenophobia? According to some of the critics and writers giving their two cents, every horror film is made to have a moral (yes, they even manage to moralize "Gremlins" and Poltergeist"!). It's all a bit of a reach, really. Certainly art imitates life, though I wouldn't go as far as some of these guys do. Perhaps its brief running time adds to the problem, as each of the examples I gave above are no more than one line out of the entire documentary.

Still, none of the cons take away from this being a fun and entertaining look into the history of scary movies. If all you're seeking is 90-ish minutes of great nostalgia (or a crash-course intro to horror), along with some face time with many of our favourite directors of the genre & clips of a whole lot of films that'll make you think, "Oh, I need to rent that again!"...then this is definitely for you!

||| ***½ out of 5 ||| ******½ out of 10 |||

I got a chance to watch a screening of this with the director followed by a Q & A session. It actually starts out well. It breaks into the major time periods of the 20th century and posits that the social issues of the time helped craft their most notable horror films. Paranoia and the threat of nuclear war in the 50s led to "Invasion of the Body Snacthers" and "Them!" The loosening of social mores helped drive the slasher films of the 70s and 80s.

It's when this movie gets to the modern day that it stumbles. Face it, to 2000s have been a TERRIBLE time for American horror. The biggest characteristic of this decade has been not original films, but remakes of either past classics or more inventive foreign films. "Nightmares" somewhat acknowledges this, but by saying that since we face many of the same social problems as we did in decades past, THAT is the reason we've turned to remakes. Yeah, I know. LAME.

I would have much better things to say about the movie if it had acknowledged that the quality of the genre has flagged from time to time, and we're currently in a slump. Such a lost opportunity.

Can you believe that even today (56 years later) Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" still continues to have a substantial impact on the general direction of contemporary, American, horror movies? Well, it does!

And, with that in mind - Is it any wonder that this particular genre of film has become the stalest and most predictably trite movie category of them all?

According to all of the horror-movie directors, story-writers and historians who offered up their opinions in their fright-flick documentary - It was completely unanimous by all that Psycho was, indeed, the turning point. In the decades to follow, Psycho single-handedly set the inevitable direction that horror movies would head.

And, of course, in order to continue to compete with such a significant milestone as Psycho, horror-movie scenarios quickly accelerated into fast-pace mode and became a helluva lot messier and horrendously more sadistic in those years that followed Hitchcock's unforgettable slasher classic.

Yet, as is clearly evident today, it has been proved virtually impossible to fully satisfy and quench America's seemingly insatiable thirst for buckets of blood, and geysers of gore, and horrific stories that escalate into a non-stop barrage of pure, x-rated ultra-violence.

2 things that quickly lost this documentary some serious points were -

(1) All of those who offered up their opinions on the subject of horror movies placed a ludicrous amount of emphasis on directly connecting up these films with the socio-political mood (especially since 1950) that was clearly present in American society (at any given time in their nation's turbulent history).

(2) Way too much screen-time was given over to focusing in on director John Carpenter's half-baked opinions. As well, far too many film clips from his movies were spotlighted in this documentary. Also movies adapted from Stephen King novels were given too much attention, too.

P.S. - In order to make a point, I thought it was really pushing things a little too far when a particular scene from Disney's animated, 1940, classic Pinocchio was included in this film as yet another example of a horrific movie-moment worth discussing..... Spare me!

An excellent documentary about American horror movies from Thomas Edison's 'Frankenstien' to 'The Mist'. It talks about the evolution of horror movies and the times they were made. But it it is interesting how these movies reflected their era. From the aftermath of World War I all the way to 9/11.

I never figured Lance Hendrickson would be a good narrator, but he was. And I like all the film historian's insight. What's really cool is the interviews of the 'Masters of Horror', Mick Garris, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Joe Dante, etc... and how they all loved horror films as kids. I loved it when George Remero talks about 'The Thing', and his own 'Night of the Living Dead'. You find out horror directors are not sick, demented people. They simply make these movies because they enjoy them and the have a true passion for good horror movies. And they are not above shaking things up a bit as well.

You find out true horror movies aren't always madmen killing sexually active teenagers in strange ways, but how true horror is all around us every day and these movies reflect that. It also shows horror films will never die. Like it or not they will always be with us.