Its about time British actors kicked against these roles in "horror" films:Horror stars, psychological films and the tyranny of the Old World in classical horror cinema

Jancovich, M. (2013) Its about time British actors kicked against these roles in "horror" films:Horror stars, psychological films and the tyranny of the Old World in classical horror cinema. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 33 (2). pp. 214-233. ISSN 0143-9685

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Abstract

This article is an examination of the ways in which Englishness was associated with horror long before the success of Hammer, the British studio that in the late 1950s and 1960s became synonymous with a particularly English version of Gothic cinema. During the 1930s and 1940s, many key horror stars were English or signified Englishness; and the article explores the ways in which this was due to a preoccupation with themes of psychological dominance and dependence during the period. In other words, the threat of psychological dominance and dependence that preoccupied horror films meant that the horror villain was often associated with the spectre of old-world despotism in relation to which the United States defined itself as a rejection. Furthermore, these psychological themes also demonstrate that, during this period, the horror film either included, or was intimately related to, the gangster film and spy thriller so that most horror stars played a range of horror villains, gangsters and spies. However, rather than focusing of figures such as Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Lionel Atwill or George Zucco (the British actors most commonly associated with the horror film during this period), the article will concentrate on a series of actors closely associated with horror in the period, but who are not necessarily remembered in this way today—Claude Rains, Charles Laughton, Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price—stars who demonstrate the ways in which psychological themes not only connected the horror villain, gangster and spy but were also related to the spectre of old-world despotism.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Film, Television and Media
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	29 Nov 2013 15:10
Last Modified:	21 Jul 2023 09:34
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/44717
DOI:	10.1080/01439685.2013.798077

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