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Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film, Updated Edition
"Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film" traces the origins of the 1970s family horror subgenre to certain aspects of American culture and classical Hollywood cinema. Far from being an ephemeral and short-lived genre, horror actually relates to many facets of American history from its beginnings to the present day. Individual chapters examine aspects of the genre, its roots in the Universal horror films of the 1930s, the Val Lewton RKO unit of the 1940s, and the crucial role of Alfred Hitchcock as the father of the modern American horror film.
Subsequent chapters investigate the key works of the 1970s by directors such as Larry Cohen, George A. Romero, Brian De Palma, Wes Craven, and Tobe Hooper, revealing the distinctive nature of films such as "Bone, It's Alive, God Told Me, Carrie, The Exorcist, Exorcist 2, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," as well as the contributions of such writers as Stephen King. Williams also studies the slasher films of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the Friday the 13th series, "Halloween," the remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and "Nightmare on Elm Street," exploring their failure to improve on the radical achievements of the films of the 1970s.
After covering some post-1970s films, such as "The Shining," the book concludes with a new postscript examining neglected films of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Despite the overall decline in the American horror film, Williams determines that, far from being dead, the family horror film is still with us. Elements of family horror even appear in modern television series such as "The Sopranos." This updated edition also includes a new introduction.
Subsequent chapters investigate the key works of the 1970s by directors such as Larry Cohen, George A. Romero, Brian De Palma, Wes Craven, and Tobe Hooper, revealing the distinctive nature of films such as "Bone, It's Alive, God Told Me, Carrie, The Exorcist, Exorcist 2, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," as well as the contributions of such writers as Stephen King. Williams also studies the slasher films of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the Friday the 13th series, "Halloween," the remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and "Nightmare on Elm Street," exploring their failure to improve on the radical achievements of the films of the 1970s.
After covering some post-1970s films, such as "The Shining," the book concludes with a new postscript examining neglected films of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Despite the overall decline in the American horror film, Williams determines that, far from being dead, the family horror film is still with us. Elements of family horror even appear in modern television series such as "The Sopranos." This updated edition also includes a new introduction.
- GenresNonfictionFilmHorror
360 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1996
120 people want to read
About the author
Tony Williams
251 books14 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name.
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August 26, 2016
Tolstoy said all happy families are alike and unhappy families were all unhappy in their own way. For Tony Williams all unhappy families are alike and happy families are a lie told by the capitalist patriarchy to keep us from creating a new kind of society (and that's what ruined the Bolshevik revolution, btw).
Families in horror movies sounded like a juicy subject. Families are endlessly interesting always. This is basically what makes the TV show Intervention so addictive. On the surface it's formulaic: somebody is addicted, they do an intervention and they either do or don't go to treatment where they either do or don't succeed. What makes each episode unique is the family dynamics. That's the type of thing I was expecting in this book, a look at fictional families in horror movies and how they worked. But the author doesn't really seem to see families as collections of people he looks at with empathy.
There's not too many movies that earn the author's approval--especially after the 70s. Two movies that get his greatest praise are...wait for it...the 80s movie of Flowers in the Attic and Exorcist II: The Heretic. So obviously he's not always in line with mainstream opinion. That itself isn't a problem. If somebody can find something great in something I thought was terrible, that can actually be great for me. The whole point of the analysis is to dive into the movies and find interesting things there.
Unfortunately he's not really finding great things in individual movies. It's more like we hear about the one movie described over and over--the movie Williams would like to see where capitalism and the patriarchy are the real villains and the traditionally family is rejected. (At times I felt like I was reading an analysis of horror movies done by the Marxist peasants from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) All movies are compared to this one narrative. Things that fit are praised, things that don't are dismissed or criticized. (There is an afterword to the new addition that talks about movies of the last couple of decades that's even more OTT in its contempt--the Monty Python peasants are replaced by the SNL Jebidiah Atkinson character without the snappy one-liners.)
To me this kind of criticism is backwards. It starts with an idea and projects it onto the source material instead of looking at the source material for what it's saying in its own context.
So all the analysis didn't leave me much interested in seeking out any of the movies again or for the first time. (Exorcist II is, after all, praised for looking forward to a world where the whole genre "whithers away" because the conservative devil is replaced with the New Age "good locusts" stuff--and I don't want the genre to whither away!) There were also a number of times where he happened to drop some analysis of a moment or movie that I remembered that didn't seem accurate. Anybody can mis-hear a quote or remember something wrong, of course, but there was a number of times I was surprised at something like that. To choose one example, he casually states that the mother at the end of the movie Cujo is doomed to die because it's too late to give her treatment for rabies. I don't remember getting that impression watching the movie and it doesn't fit with how rabies actually works. I think he maybe just prefers that ending because it avoids the family staying together.
Which reminds me, he also slips in a really odd, imo, swipe at Steven Spielberg. I mean, of course he hates Spielberg. But he sneers at the director's "infantile epiphanic visions of adult faces beaming childlike wonder." It's almost too fitting that he'd seem to be so angry at the idea of adults being capable of that kind of emotion. Supernatural plots conservative distractions from the true evil, all children are abused and strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Families in horror movies sounded like a juicy subject. Families are endlessly interesting always. This is basically what makes the TV show Intervention so addictive. On the surface it's formulaic: somebody is addicted, they do an intervention and they either do or don't go to treatment where they either do or don't succeed. What makes each episode unique is the family dynamics. That's the type of thing I was expecting in this book, a look at fictional families in horror movies and how they worked. But the author doesn't really seem to see families as collections of people he looks at with empathy.
There's not too many movies that earn the author's approval--especially after the 70s. Two movies that get his greatest praise are...wait for it...the 80s movie of Flowers in the Attic and Exorcist II: The Heretic. So obviously he's not always in line with mainstream opinion. That itself isn't a problem. If somebody can find something great in something I thought was terrible, that can actually be great for me. The whole point of the analysis is to dive into the movies and find interesting things there.
Unfortunately he's not really finding great things in individual movies. It's more like we hear about the one movie described over and over--the movie Williams would like to see where capitalism and the patriarchy are the real villains and the traditionally family is rejected. (At times I felt like I was reading an analysis of horror movies done by the Marxist peasants from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) All movies are compared to this one narrative. Things that fit are praised, things that don't are dismissed or criticized. (There is an afterword to the new addition that talks about movies of the last couple of decades that's even more OTT in its contempt--the Monty Python peasants are replaced by the SNL Jebidiah Atkinson character without the snappy one-liners.)
To me this kind of criticism is backwards. It starts with an idea and projects it onto the source material instead of looking at the source material for what it's saying in its own context.
So all the analysis didn't leave me much interested in seeking out any of the movies again or for the first time. (Exorcist II is, after all, praised for looking forward to a world where the whole genre "whithers away" because the conservative devil is replaced with the New Age "good locusts" stuff--and I don't want the genre to whither away!) There were also a number of times where he happened to drop some analysis of a moment or movie that I remembered that didn't seem accurate. Anybody can mis-hear a quote or remember something wrong, of course, but there was a number of times I was surprised at something like that. To choose one example, he casually states that the mother at the end of the movie Cujo is doomed to die because it's too late to give her treatment for rabies. I don't remember getting that impression watching the movie and it doesn't fit with how rabies actually works. I think he maybe just prefers that ending because it avoids the family staying together.
Which reminds me, he also slips in a really odd, imo, swipe at Steven Spielberg. I mean, of course he hates Spielberg. But he sneers at the director's "infantile epiphanic visions of adult faces beaming childlike wonder." It's almost too fitting that he'd seem to be so angry at the idea of adults being capable of that kind of emotion. Supernatural plots conservative distractions from the true evil, all children are abused and strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Displaying 1 of 1 review