The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror

Horror historian David J. Skal is the rare combination of an authoritative voice with a truly entertaining and readable writing style. His in-depth insights into everyone from Bram Stoker to Tod Browning are fascinating, and his combination of little known facts, biographical details, rarely seen photographs, and analytical insights into the broader social context of each major horror phenomena makes The Monster Show a must read. Highly recommended.

'The Monster Show' plays to David J. Skal's strengths - specifically the genesis of early-twentieth century Hollywood Gothic - and the results are a book that belongs on the shelf of any serious fan of the genre. Well-written and riddled with original and interesting research, Skal treads what will be a familiar path to many horror fans, but crucially places it in context and finds a few truly novel angles on the topic. Not everybody will agree with all of his analysis - I certainly didn't - but 'The Monster Show' manages to be provocative in just the right measure.

I have decided to review this book because it needs to be a little clearer about what you are purchasing here. The first half of the book focuses on what is clearly David Skal's expertise-- 30's monster movies. He covers biographies on Tod Browning and Bela Lugosi, James Whale's battles against the censors, the influences of war and the Great Depression, and the move from stage to screen. It was so pleasurable and enlightening to read all about the beginnings of the genre.After 200 pages on this decade, I soon realized that the following 6 decades could not possibly get the same attention in the second half. Hammer horror from England receives two sentences in the book when it easily deserves at least a lengthy chapter. Italian horror (which has one of the largest cult followings within this genre) is completely unmentioned. To my shock, a film with such powerful cultural relevance as The Stepford Wives also remains completely unmentioned in the book. A chapter that I thought would discuss the cultural emergence and relevance of slasher films ends up covering plastic surgery. Basically the book is greatly unbalanced. There is so much passion in the first half that the second half of the book seems a drought by comparison.However, if you are even reading this review, then I must say that this book is a must-own. The information is absolutely fascinating (even in the second half). The photos throughout the book are excellent and add so much to the experience of reading it. The information I regretfully did not get is now more accessible to me through the foundations and structure of this book.

I really enjoyed this book... I do think you can go overboard using culture to PREDICT the future (1991 being roughly equivilant to 1931), but looking back on it as history, it fits. I do not think it is any coincidence that we got all the evil child, and childlike things during the time of the heated abortion debate in this country. Or that vampires have come more to the front in the age of AIDS. But just as I would be mistaken to say we are now headed into a depression because of all the 30's style clothes I see in the stores in NYC right now, you can't make some of the furture pridictions he makes. We may look back in 70 years and say, hey, look what the fashions predicted, but not now.At any rate, for the cultural evolution of our monsters and a beautiful and loving (?) tribute to Tod Browning, this book is worth its weight in gold.I especially loved the plastic surgery discussion, and the photos of plastic surgery-man himself, Michael Jackson.

I received this book from my little brother - he had used it as a textbook in film school. What a tremendous book. A fascinating and erudite study of horror films. Thirty years ago I was a child with dozens of pictures from the magazine *Famous Monsters of Filmland* plastered all over my bedroom wall. This book has given me a great deal of insight into the genre with which I was once obsessed. The book is fun and the pictures are a hoot as well.