OWI Meets the Monsters

Hollywood Horror Films and War Propaganda, 1942 to 1945

Bibliographic Data

ID8905048
AuthorsRick Worland (corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume37
Issue1
Pages47-47
Publication date1997-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCinema Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-7101 • E-ISSN: 1527-2087
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1225689
OpenAlexW2329029362
LanguageEN
Citations received8

Standard historical accounts of the horror film consider the 1940s a dismal decade for the genre. Apart from the stylish films produced by Val Lewton at RKO from 1942 until 1946, films not so highly regarded in their day despite their current stature, forties horror cinema is commonly remembered for tired sequels to respected originals (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man [Universal, 1943]); numbing poverty row quickies (King of the Zombies [Monogram, 1941], The Mad Monster [PRC, 1942]); or mocking genre send-ups (Zombies on Broadway [RKO, 1945], Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein [Universal, 1948]). The broad explanation for the decline of the horror film to B-movie or programmer status, one not challenged here, points to the historical backdrop of World War II.' Hollywood horror films first attained great popularity and prestige as A-budget features in the worst years of the Depression, generally considered the genre's classic period. Critics have subsequently argued that the screen's rampaging monsters metaphorically embodied the widespread fears and disillusionment that followed economic collapse.2 The traditional account contends that in the 1940s, however, the horrors of global war so far exceeded mere anxiety and the capacity of distanced metaphor that the genre ceased to command both wide audiences and critical respect. Put simply, real horrors overwhelmed fake movie scares and made them irrelevant except as purely escapist, increasingly puerile entertainment.: Against such meager competition, the Val Lewton cycle with its moody lighting and Freudian overtones continues to draw the major attention of critics who write about 1940s horror films.4 The general disdain for the genre's aesthetic depletion in the war years, however, has tended to forestall consideration of how such common movies might still yield other historically interesting subtexts, particularly in those horror films that engaged the contemporary wartime background overtly and directly. We can at least redeem forties horror films from critical neglect by considering them foremost as specifically historical texts. This essay examines certain studio horror films produced after Pearl Harbor primarily as historical products influenced by wartime propaganda themes defined by the government's Office of War Information (OWI). Considered in relation to

Art · Art history · Hollywood · Humanities · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

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