As we know, the film is set in approximately the year 1920, shortly after the Russian revolution and just before the fascist takeover of Italy; two revolutions on the opposite ends of the political spectrum, but both inspired by the flagrant ineptitude of the ruling classes in both countries. Mario gleefully recounts that in Russia the nobility lost everything (including their lives in many cases) and he looks forward to the downfall of the Italian nobility warning the girls they won’t even have their “crummy house” after the revolution. Perhaps it is ironic that while Mario is telling them about the dangers of revolution, the di Fiori daughters seem oblivious to the far more immediate danger they face from Dracula, a member of their own “class” who plans to murder them in order to drink their blood. The girls are too busy planning shopping trips to Paris to worry about such things as vampires. They will pay a terrible price for their ignorance and selfishness. As part of their selfish plan, they want to keep Mario as a kind of toyboy or “slave” after one of them marries Dracula. But, Mario, as we shall see, has other ideas and he certainly has no intention of being anyone’s “slave”.

In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, “workers” such as Mario were becoming increasingly conscious of the “class system”, a system with its origins in the feudal system in which the nobility ruled over the peasants as masters rule over slaves. Mario is more than just a “worker”, though. He has educated himself about the class system and believes that the workers should be “on top” and those who are not workers should be “on the bottom”. He expresses these ideas when he and the count have a conversation.

The Russian Revolution, which Mario has mentioned before, was a Marxist revolution in which the “worker” was elevated from the lowest rank in society to the highest. In fact, the revolution divided society in two with “workers” deserving respect for their labor as opposed to “parasites” who did not work but lived off the labor of the workers. “Worker” could mean peasant, factory worker, soldier, policeman, student, teacher, scientist, engineer…even actors, musicians, and artists. But, nobles were all “parasites”. The word “parasite” means “an organism that lives in or on another organism of different species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host’s expense”. In other words, Marxists considered nobles to be “parasites”, creatures that “feed off of humans”, but who are not themselves human, something like…a vampire?

WARNING: THE NEXT EXCERPT IS VERY VIOLENT AND BLOODY
(BUT VERY FAKE LOOKING).
IF YOU DON’T WANT TO WATCH IT, YOU DON’T HAVE TO. READING ABOUT IT WOULD BE SUFFICIENT.

We also learned that human beings seem to have a deep psychological need to see that which horrifies them, to confront it somehow. We may want to cover our eyes and hide from these things, but our curiosity and need to see often gets the better of us. We want to peek from under the covers and see that which horrifies us. The things that horrify us the most are not just acts of bloodshed and violence, they are things that are truly forbidden, that are taboo. These are sometimes culture-specific as when Dracula mocks the Eucharist or when Frankenstein creates life, but sometimes they are universal. At the end of The Wolf Man, when Lord Talbot is at last exhausted from beating the monster to death with the cane and looks at what he has done and sees that he has killed his own son, everyone can identify with his feeling of horror! The horror and tragedy of Larry Talbot’s end is magnified by the fact he became a monster against his own will. Larry never wanted to be a monster.

Did Erich, the phantom of the opera, want to be a monster? Erich told Christine he was a monster because that is what men made him become. The same was true for Quasimodo. It was how these ugly men were treated by others that made them monsters. Ah, but Erich chose to be evil and Quasimodo chose to be good! Yes, we also learned that evil is about making choices. We are only innocent when we are children because we do not know the difference between good and evil when we are children. But after we have eaten the fruit of knowledge, we know what evil is and we know we should not steal, rape, and kill. Yet we watched the monster in Frankenstein kill not once, but three times. However, in all three cases, we judged the monster to be innocent of the crime of murder because he either killed in self-defense or by accident. We learned to appreciate the fact that good and evil are not always black and white, that there are nuances and exceptions to be considered.

For example, we learned that even a man “pure of heart may become a werewolf when the wolfsbane blooms”. Leon Corrido did not want to become a werewolf and kill any more than Larry Talbot. When Leon wakes up the next morning after he has killed Jose and the prostitute and sees the blood on his hands he screams and cries in horror. As we consider the nuances and exceptions I mentioned just now, we have to acknowledge that not only do people sometimes kill in self-defense or by accident but sometimes they may do so because they have lost their minds and have no control over themselves. You can only be held responsible for what you know is wrong. A werewolf has no sense of right or wrong, good or evil.

But, not all monsters are innocent of course! We acknowledge the evil of men like Dracula or the Marquis di Siniestro, but we also remember that Hollywood horror films showed us that these monsters were enabled by the feudal system itself which was institutionally evil. In other words, Count  Dracula, Countess Bathory, Henry Frankenstein, or the Marquis di Siniestro are not just evil men and women, they are part of an evil system that gives them the power to harm others.

It is this last idea that was so unique to horror films and that made them special and different from other types of films because the idea is so subversive. If something is “subversive” it seeks to undermine an established system or institution. Horror films subvert the very systems and institutions the Production Code Administration was designed to protect and uphold: church, government, the class system.

How are horror films subversive? Consider again the example I used of a man going through a woman’s bedroom window and approaching her with an evil look on his face. The PCA would never have allowed such a scene in a normal movie, but because Dracula is a vampire he is allowed to do this. Now use that same logic and apply it to some of the other scenes in our horror films. If you are chained up in prison and you kill the man who tortures you with fire and a whip how are you judged at the end of the film? Are you evil or innocent? In the film, you die like Jesus Christ, on a hill with a mob of angry people killing you because they do not understand that you are innocent. That is subversive.

Showing us that the real evil monsters are not the “freaks” in the circus, but instead, the normal looking people who torment them is subversive. The film Freaks made audiences uncomfortable because it showed them that they could actually be the monsters.

The Bride of Frankenstein as a “camp” movie with a “gay sensibility” and the implied lesbianism in Dracula’s Daughter were both subversive films because to even hint at the existence of any sexuality that the Church did not accept as “normal” was to challenge the invisibility of LGBTQ people …and when we are visible it is harder to mistreat us, abuse us and dismiss our rights. That is subversive.

But surely, I am not suggesting that these films are actually on the side of the so-called “underdog”  the monsters? After all, don’t the monsters almost always end up dead at the end with the normal people going off to get married and start a nice normal family? Consider how we get to these “happy endings”. Whose story was it we were watching anyway? If you want the answer to that just go through the titles of our films: Nosferatu, Phantom of the Opera, The Man Who Laughs, Dracula, Freaks, The Wolf Man. In each case, the monster or monsters are the ones we watch in the film, the ones we learn about. Of course, there is the notable exception of the greatest film of them all, Frankenstein. This film is not named after the nameless monster but instead is named after the man who created him. But from the moment the monster walks through the door and shows us his face, he becomes the focus of the film and it becomes his story, not Henry Frankenstein’s. In the sequels that followed after The Bride of Frankenstein, the monster does get a name! He is actually called “Frankenstein” in the promotions for the films from 1939 on. In other words, the monster not only stole the movie from Henry Frankenstein, he eventually ends up stealing Frankenstein’s name as well. The illegitimate child takes his father’s name.

In fact, even making movies with ugly or evil monsters as the “stars” was subversive. This is why Joseph Breen and the Church and the PCA and the new management at Universal tried so hard to kill the horror film in the mid-1930s because it was subversive. But they couldn’t make it stay dead. The horror film, like Dracula, came back from the dead not just once but several times with sequels and series and reboots that continue to this day. Horror films are never going away because we still need them.

I hope that through these films you had a chance to learn about all the things I mentioned above, but most of all, I hope these films gave you a chance to learn a bit about yourselves and what you think about all these things. If you know what you think about some of these issues, if you know yourself a little bit better after this class, I would say that you have and I have done our jobs well.

Thanks for watching!