Lessons Not Learned - The Horror Hiatus of the 1930s

It's long past overdue, but I think now's the time for another instalment in my Zero Punctuation inspired looks at notable disasters, mess ups, and embarrassments from the history of motion pictures, to see what could have been learned from these... and what decidedly wasn't.  This time, it's not a film itself we're looking at, it's something that happened to almost an entire genre.  Over the years, the horror film has had its ups and downs, including some dry spells; I know for a fact that a few fans in particular do not look at the Nineties terribly kindly at all, bar perhaps Scream.  I don't think that's fair; for a start there were at least horror films being made then, unlike the time we're going to discuss, when after defining what a monster movie was, Hollywood straight up gave up on them for a while..

This is the story of how the above film was the triumphant return for the whole genre!

The Horror Hiatus of the 1930s

This is going to be a brief overview of the topic, if you'd like to learn more I'd recommend Hygnogoria podcast (as I often do), as Mr. Jim Moon discussed this as part of the History of Universal Horror series, and it's the first place I heard about this.  So then, 1936; Universal Pictures had been run by the Laemmle family since its foundation, but a series of severe financial decisions, including the securing of a loan to fund the epic musical Show Boat, meant that The Standard Capital Corporation took over.  Many changes happened at the studio, including several lay-offs, and you bet it had an artistic impact too.  The main one we're going to discuss is that, after finishing off some already in production films like Dracula's Daughter, the studio who had defined horror films up to that point with their blockbusters like Frankenstein and the Invisible Man, pretty much stopped doing them for a while.  Now many have thought it was this change in management alone which lead to the hiatus, but that's not true, and you can see that from the fact that other studios at the time were doing the same; something else was going on...

Note how in this excellent little montage that the ones for the late thirties are a bit of a stretch

For many years, the story of why this is happened is that it was indirectly the fault of the UK; that the BBFC (the British Board of Film Censors back then) had an outright ban on horror films which meant a major export market (not just Blighty itself, but the rest of the English speaking world practically) was just gone for them.  That's what circulated for many years... but that is also not true; yes the UK did have issue with some titles, but there was no actual ban, nothing official, and certainly not against anything and everything slightly spooky.  So why has this story emerged?  Well, it was a misinformation campaign which happened at the time, and it's the return of something I talked about in an earlier one of these; The Hays Code!

In a move that they probably wouldn't approve if it was in a film back in the day, may I submit that these guys were utter c-

The Production Code Administration (PCA) was the group sent in to clean up Hollywood in 1934; after the Production Code (commonly called the Hays Code after Will Hays, although he himself was not that involved with making it) was introduced in 1930, Hollywood just kind of ignored it for a while.  So the PCA was created and sent in, to pretty much clean up a lot of "immorality" overnight.  There's a lot to discuss with that (including how much that thing set back representation of various minorities in film), but most relevant to this discussion is PCA head Joseph Breen.  A staunch Catholic conservative, Breen, as you can imagine, had a particular dislike of horror fare, and wanted it gone.  So he just made up the story that Britain was going to ban horror films.  Really, he got together any press clippings, quotes and such anyone connected with the BBFC may have made about horror in a negative light, and just told all the studios "See, they're going to ban them, might as well not bother any more, hey ho!".  Now it's debatable how much the studios actually believed this story (keep in mind, given communications at the time, actually calling across the Atlantic to check if it was true was somewhat harder then), but whether they did or not, they probably went along with it just to keep Breen off their backs, for the sake of one less battle with the PCA.

Mr Breen, pictured right before his undergarments ignited.

So it was that pretty much 1937 and 1938, a wasteland for fright flicks, no new ones being made in the US... but then something happened in August '38.   At the Regina-Wiltshire Theatre, a smallish cinema in LA, the manager, one Emil Umann, decided to put on for a few days a triple bill of Dracula, Frankenstein, and Son of Kong, three films he got the rights to show for a flat rate.  He figured it would be a decent money maker, enough to keep the lights on... what actually happened was near constant sell out shows and lines around the block for at least four days!  He also saw that Son of Kong wasn't the one people really wanted, so he booted the ape so there could be more of Drac and Frank back to back.  He even got Bela Lugosi to make personal appearances, it was a sensation... and Universal took note (after picking themselves off the floor when they realised that, since the prints were sold flat rate, they were only getting a tiny portion of the proceeds!).  They sent out the Dracula and Frankenstein double bill nationwide, and after raking the cash, decided "There's gold in them thar Transylvanian hills!", and work began on re-animating the classic monsters.  Yes, the PCA did try to interfere, but knowing how big a potential profit there would be in the US alone, Universal charged ahead anyway.  The result, Son of Frankenstein, was a huge success (it might actually be the best one of the cycle!), and kicked off a whole new age of classic fright flicks. Incidentally, it did OK outside the US, even though it did get the BBFC's "H for Horrific" certificate, so I wonder if at the time someone on the Universal board, when they heard it would play in the UK, immediately went "You f***ing liar Breen!".

The moment fright flicks were resurrected!

The Lessons Not Learned

Well first off, never listen to rabidly right wing conservatives about anything, I think that's something everyone needed to learn about eight years ago.  Secondly, well produced horror films marketed properly can be very good business, pulling in above average profits on below average budgets.  Whilst numerous times, not just with this particular case, that has been proven true, it seems like it's a lesson that a lot of studios need to keep on being reminded of.  For example, when the Warner Bros. Discovery merger happened, at that disastrous shareholder presentation which I talked about in here, nowhere did they mention their horror properties.  That's despite the fact that the first IT didn't just gross more than Fantastic Beasts 2 did, it did so about about a sixth of the budget.  Admittedly the second one didn't do so well, but still percentage wise a far better return on the investment than FB2.  Hell, the Conjuring-Universe has been keeping things afloat at WB for a while, and has turned out to be a good source of directorial talent for their DC films (James Wan going from Conjuring to Aquaman,, David F. Sandburg going from Annabelle: Creation to SHAZAM).  There might be signs of that changing though; originally Evil Dead Rise was just going to be farted out on HBO Max, but that tested well, was put in cinemas, and is doing damn well, so WB might just be starting to get the idea.

It makes sense that the film with Pennywise would be more profitable.  Mind, I suppose that Fantastic Beasts includes in its cast and crew some even worse monsters...

But I think a bigger lesson here is that a particular genre or type of film can never truly be "dead"; at the very least, if you hear someone saying that, check if there's any truth to that before agreeing.  This doesn't just apply to the film industry; for example, AAA video games just plain stopped doing survival horror titles for a while, despite them being a big thing during the PS1/PS2 era (and still being so in indie titles like Amnesia).  But then with Bloodborne, Alien Isolation, and Resident Evil VII it was like "oh yeah, these things make tonnes of cash.  Why did we stop doing them again?".  This one is actually even more confusing to me than the 30s Horror Hiatus, as there doesn't seem to have been a particular reason for it, no insidious conservative figure spreading a lie to make that happen; it's like everyone suddenly "knew" that survival horror was dead, and that was that.  (See this Commander Sterling video for more about this).  So let this be the main point; genres, horror in particular, will never die, no matter what people say there will be an audience for it out there.  Variety is the spice of life, so if you want to be successful, make sure you have so much of that spice, you end up the MotherF***ing Kwisatz Haderach!