Hence Andrew Tudor in his classic book Monsters and Mad Scientists
argues for the distinction between secure horror (classic, c. 1930-60)
and paranoid horror (since c. 1960) as tendencies with closed/safety
restored or open/no final safety endings. That the monster or the
horrific threat cannot be definitively vanquished in the later films
is partly, of course, determined by the commercial logic of
sequelizing, which today seems almost de rigoeur.
Henry
> It is true that we (almost) always know who the winner is going to
> be in classic horror films, but this is much more unclear in more
> recent times. We always knew that the cavalry would beat the
> indians in the classical western, but that didn't make it any less
> about power.
>
> Robin Wood was right that monsters challenge normalcy, and that
> their defeat restores that normalcy. The horrific force wins with
> increasing frequency in the last 20 years or so, as it did in such
> classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Birds, and the
> original Night of the Living Dead. My take on this is that we live
> in an increasingly nihilistic age where there is less faith that the
> center can hold and that we can rest assured that our existence is
> meaningful.
>
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