Caligari's Children: The Film as Tale of Terror

by S.S. Prawer

"The terror film, with puzzling, disturbing, multivalent images, often leads us into regions that are strange, disorienting, yet somehow familiar; and for all the crude and melodramatic and morally questionable forms in which we so often encounter it, it does speak of something true and important, and offers us encounters with hidden aspects of ourselves and our world."





So writes S. S. Prawer in his concise and penetrating study of the horror film--from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Frankenstein, to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Omen. After a brief history of the horror genre in film, Prawer offers detailed analyses of specific sequences from various films, such as Murnau's Nosferatu. He discusses continuities between literary and cinematic tales, and shows what happens when one is transformed into the other.




Unpatronizing and scholarly, Prawer draws on a wide range of sources in order to better situate a genre that is both enormously popular with contemporary audiences and of increasing critical importance.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Horror, History, Cultural

330 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Full name: Siegbert Salomon Prawer.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good overview of the ways in which Gothic literature has in a sense not only survived but flowered in a media unknown to Radcliffe, Maturin and the rest of them. Old tales have been recycled and embellished in movies. Dreyer's Vampyr, a reworking of Carmilla, is an obvious example. Very entertaining, serious study, with lots of stills from the best movies.

[Debra]

Stephen King recommended book in Chapter 5 of Berkley's 1983 paperback edition of Danse Macabre.

[Frank Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1980, it shouldn't be necessary to say this book is dated. That said, Prawer does an excellent job of looking at the first 80 years of cinema art and the place the "terror film" has played in it. He is most interested in the appeal of the horror film genre by inquiring into the rhetoric and iconography of the terror film, and how it relates to the cultural context within which it is produced and -- importantly -- viewed.

His first chapter, "The Making of a Genre" surveys the evolution of the horror film as a separate genre of film, while looking into its relationship to other genres. Chapter Two explores "The Fascination of Fear." This sets the stage for his deeper dive into analysis of examples from specific films such as Mamoulian's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" where he zeroes in on what the process of turning a book into a film signifies. This is followed by a chapter where he focuses on "The Uncanny."

The next film he devoted an in depth analysis to also looks at the difference between how a story is handled in book and film as in Dreyer's Vampyr. One of the strongest chapters is "The Iconography of the Terror-film: Wiene's Caligari whose shadow and influence has not lessened in just over 100 years! In Chapter Seven, he looks at the terror film "Beyond Caligari.

The final chapter, "An Image and its Context" looks at the opening of the Hammer film, Dracula - Prince of Darkness" which launches into an analysis of the Hammer aesthetic in the context of the terror/horror genre in the 50s and 60s, including the work of Roger Corman, early Francis Ford Coppola, and folks such as Herschell Gordon Lewis! It's clear that Prawer has less appreciation of schlock and strongly favors higher artistic designs. In fact, in his "Conclusion" he questions whether "intrusions of the monstrous" have gone too far and flirts with the possible need of censorship to protect children and "the sick."

Ultimately, he concludes that while Goethe's conviction that one of the artist's functions is "to make us feel at home in a world changing so rapidly that our intellect can scarcely keep pace with it" which he refers to as a "Tolstoy truth," we also need what he calls "Kafka truths which lead one to the complementary conviction that we also need works that focus a sense of homelessness, articulate feelings of strangeness and disorientation, keep us alive to the possibility of orders of existence which cannot easily be assimilated in the categories of our waking consciousness." After all his criticism of the banal and tawdry forms horror films have exhibited he writes: "it does speak of something true and important, and offers us encounters with hidden aspects of ourselves and our world which we should not be too ready to reject."

[Bernie4444 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is "The Film as Tale of Terror"

This book has more depth and comparisons than the title implies. It is about many films from different eras and locations. They are categorized by types more than times or locations. They are compared to the original scripts or books and the authors. This book discusses the different media types and what is best designed for different media. The words terror and horror are interchanged in the book so that there is no distinction. This is more of a psychological book than it is of a media. However, I had to put it down several times to catch up on the films and people discussed in the book. I was ready for the German silent films but the scope is much greater. It also includes a theater.

[Phillip · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm doing research for an article about a Caligari adaptation, so I figured this might be helpful. However, I didn't really find it either interesting or particularly useful. My main issue with the book is that Prawer doesn't really make an argument as such--instead there are a bunch of observations about the "terror-film," which don't really seem pulled together by any central point or contention.

Prawer does a fine job analyzing a multitude of "terror-films" from across decades and cinematic traditions, and he considers elements like audience reception, socio-cultural origins, aesthetic choices, etc. So, it's a fairly wide-ranging survey. But, again, I just don't see a central argument here. It feels almost more like notes that could be pulled together into a coherent argument if a thesis were framed to fit them together.

[Matthew J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Published in 1980, this is an inferior and incomplete version of Dauber’s recently published "American Scary" accounting. The writing, which is dry as a Kinko’s course packet, bleeds any joy from the text, as does the pace: Prawler takes nearly 40 pages to synthesize Dreyer’s Vampyr, an ancient film whose screenplay comprised fewer pages.