'The Murderer's Mind': Edward G Robinson, Humphrey Bogart and the Monstrous Psychologies of the 1940s Horror Film (original) (raw)
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Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2013
This article is an examination of the ways in which Englishness was associated with horror long before the success of Hammer. During the 1930s and 1940s, many key horror stars were English or signified Englishness; and the article explores the ways in which this was due to a preoccupation with themes of psychological dominance and dependence during the period. In other words, the threat of psychological dominance and dependence that preoccupied horror films of the period associated the horror villain was associated with the spectre of old-world despotism from which the United States understood itself as a rejection. Furthermore, these psychological themes also demonstrate that, during this period, the horror film either included or was intimately related to the gangster film and spy thriller so that most horror stars played a range of horror villains, gangsters and spies. However, rather than focusing of figures such as Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Lionel Atwill or George Zucco, the article will concentrate on a series of actors closely associated with horror in the period, but who are not remembered in this way today -Claude Rains, Charles Laughton, Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price -stars who demonstrate the ways in which psychological themes not only connected the horror villain, gangster and spy but were also related to the spectre of old-world despotism.
2009
The article discusses Welles's critical reception during the 1940s, and demonstrates the ways in which he was understood as a horror star. In the process, it argues that his films illustrate the close connection between the paranoid woman's films and the noir thriller, categories that were not seen as distinct during the 1940s but as part of a larger generic category: horror. The first section focuses on his early films, when the New York Times regarded him as a promising director, but during which there were also developing concerns about his failings. The second section moves on to examine his career in the mid 1940s, by which point reviewers had started to express contempt for him, and presented him as an egomaniac and an exhibitionist. Finally, the last section concentrates on his last three films of the period, films that were seen as symptomatic of his problems, but were viewed nostalgically as also demonstrating the talent that he had squandered. Finally, the conclusion considers Welles's attempted comeback with Touch of Evil, a film that sought to nostalgically play upon his 1940s persona as a specialist in horror.