Rational Fears: American Horror in the 1950s

This re-assessment of 1950s American horror films relates them to the cultural debates of the period and to other examples of the horror genre: novels and comics. Through close analysis of a wide range of films such as I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Creature of the Black Lagoon Mark Jancovich argues that horror films of the 1950s developed a critique of conservatism, conformity, mass society and masculinity. In addition, he claims that while many critics have seen contemporary horror as the product of a break with that of the 1950s, most of the key elements within recent horror films and novels were actually established during this time.