Monster movie

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Monster films are a sub-genre of horror and science fiction films .

definition

When it comes to monster films, film historian Georg Seeßlen differentiates between the offshoots of horror films and science fiction films. For Seeßlen, the monster film, which can be assigned to the horror genre, thematized the “fantastic projections of psychological suffering and suppressed passion”, which “gave shape to archaic ideas [...]”. In the "traditional animal monster myths [...] such as that of the werewolf or the ape-man , [...] the fear of one's own forbidden needs [is] projected outward in order to be fought". Another variant of these hybrid creatures ( people who transform into non-human animals ) are for Seeßlen the cat people in the film of the same name from 1942 . Other authors such as Andrew Tudor and Noël Carroll take the term monster wider and include vampires , mummies , zombies and (in the case of Tudor) even mad scientists . For Noël Carroll, an essential characteristic of the monster (both in science fiction and in horror films) is the fusion of opposites such as inside-outside, living-dead, insect-man and machine-man.

Science fiction monster films, especially those of the 1950s, gave Seeßlen's eyes "an expression of the general and particular fears of the time". “[He] took over the motif, but let the monster [...] arise through interventions from the field of natural sciences”. For Seeßlen, Frankenstein's creature already belongs to this category, which was “no longer an arbitrary product of chance”, but a human creation. “The horror film calmed down by showing the fantastic as a quality that had been overcome [...]; the sci-fi / monster movie disturbed by a warning of the fantastic threat to the future. "aliens invaders ( The Thing (1951)), by radioactivity or other human intervention (in the nature revived dinosaurs panic in New York (1953)) or gigantic animals ( Formicula (1954)) dominated the science fiction monster film. In addition to an ideological function during the Cold War , Seeßlen also found an element of “Gothic horror” in these films and, especially in the work of director Jack Arnold , erotic allusions.

A special form for Seeßlen is the so-called fairytale monster film, in which the main focus is on trick technology. "These films [...] are more about showing the cinematic technique itself [...] and about creating a more magical than" mythological "atmosphere than real horror." Seeßlen interprets the dragon from Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen (1924) as a forerunner of the primeval animals of Hollywood style. Leslie Halliwell sees this variant of the monster film The Lost World (1925) as the trigger and King Kong and the white woman (1933) as its most prominent representative . In these films, according to Hahn / Jansen , the boundaries between science fiction films and horror films and adventure and fantasy films begin to blur.

A variant of the fairytale monster film is the Japanese monster film , which " drew on the tradition of" King Kong "and the prehistoric monster films". The first film in this series was the serious Godzilla (1954), the title character of which was designed as an allegory of the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . Godzilla's numerous sequels and imitators were increasingly turning to youthful audiences.

The subgenre animal horror film is another variant of the monster film. Seeßlen differentiates here between the classic hybrid creatures on the one hand and animals that appear as natural enemies of humans or as representatives of nature avenging itself for environmental destruction on the other. Seeßlen located the latter genre primarily in the 1970s, but saw the foundation stone laid in Die Vögel (1963). One of the best-known representatives of the animal horror film is The Jaws (1975).

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Georg Seeßlen, Bernt Kling: entertainment. Lexicon of popular culture 1. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1977, pp. 162–164.
  2. ^ Georg Seeßlen: Cinema of the Utopian. History and Mythology of Science Fiction Films. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1980, p. 162.
  3. ↑ Georg Seeßlen, Claudius Weil: Kino des Fantastischen. History and Mythology of Horror Films. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1980, p. 77.
  4. ^ Andrew Tudor: Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Wiley-Blackwell 1991, ISBN 978-0-631-16992-5 , p. 20; Noël Carroll: The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. Routledge 1990, ISBN 978-0-415-90216-8 , pp. 32 and 43.
  5. ↑ a b Georg Seeßlen: Cinema of the Utopian. History and Mythology of Science Fiction Films. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1980, pp. 161-181.
  6. ↑ Georg Seeßlen, Claudius Weil: Kino des Fantastischen. History and Mythology of Horror Films. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1980, p. 83.
  7. ↑ Halliwell's filmgoer's Companion. Ninth Edition, Paladin Grafton, London 1989, p. 784.
  8. ^ Ronald M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: Lexicon of Science Fiction Films. 5th edition, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-00731-X , p. 446 ff.
  9. ^ Georg Seeßlen: Cinema of the Utopian. History and Mythology of Science Fiction Films. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1980, p. 187 ff.
  10. ↑ Georg Seeßlen, Bernt Kling: entertainment. Lexicon of Popular Culture 1. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1977, pp. 173–174.