The Halloween Horror Month: Volume VII
By Darren Williams
01st December 2009

"Ladies and gentlemen, please do not Panic! But SCREAM! Scream for your lives!"
- Dr. Warren Chapin - The Tingler

The 1950s

In the 1950s, the Cold War brought a new kind of horror to the world. The possibility of space exploration meant that interest in sci-fi hit a boom, especially in America, but the threat of annihilation meant that sci-fi took on a darker tinge. The increased threat of television taking away cinema audiences also meant that studios were desperate to get people in, which resulted in a slew of gimmicks, the most notorious coming from William Castle. Another phenomenon also changed the general cinema audience - the invention of rock 'n' roll. Teenagers were suddenly a new audience, and studios were going to cash in. But not all horror in the 50s stemmed from something new, classic literature adaptation were still in heavy demand and a new British studio was to revisit some of the old favourites with startling results.

British horror cinema really came into its own in the 50s. The decade opened with an adaptation of Lawrence's classic short story, The Rocking-Horse Winner, A young boy discovers he can pick the winners in horse races while riding a rocking horse. Paul's parents live beyond their means, his father is a gambler and his mother thinks money is the most important thing in the world. Even the house itself seems desperate for cash as it whispers to Paul that there must be more money. Paul has to take on the responsibilities of his parents and provide money, he finds that when he rides his toy rocking horse, he's able to predict winners of big races. But the more money he wins, the more his parents spend, and the pressure begins to mount. It's an eerie and chilling story of parental neglect and the dangers of greed.

Terence Fisher would become one of the defining directors of British horror cinema and he made a superb start to the decade with So Long at the Fair. A young British woman (Jean Simmons) attends the 1889 Paris Exposition with her brother, Johnny, only to find him missing the next morning. She finds a brick wall where his bedroom door was and the hotel staff insist that neither he, or the room he stayed in, ever existed. Desperate to find her brother and prove she's not going insane, Simmons enlists the help of an artist, George (Dirk Bogarde) who helps her investigate the disappearance. Based on an urban legend, this intricately told and fascinating film was a huge favourite of Hitchcock who liked the story so much that it was also adapted for an episode of his t.v. series.

One of literature's most often filmed stories, A Christmas Carol, got its greatest screen outing with Scrooge. Alastair Sim was the perfect Scrooge and the film boasted some honestly creepy scenes when Jacob Marley came a-calling. While an opera film like The Archers' The Tales of Hoffmann may not immediately seem like it belongs on the list, the thing to remember is all the stories within the film were based on the work of the great German fantasist E.T.A. Hoffmann, and when you look at the actual plots, it's easy to see how this fits into a horror overview. All three stories have a fantastical element. The first, The Tale of Olympia, sees Hoffmann as a student in love with a star ballerina named Olympia who is actually a marionette/automaton created by a magician puppeteer, Coppelius. The second story, The Tale of Giulietta sees Hoffmann smitten by Giulietta, a vampiric courtesan who works with a devil figure to try and trap the poet's soul in a mirror. The final story, The Tale of Antonia, sees him falls for a singer who is dying of consumption and who will die if she sings again.

The Night My Number Came Up was a classy little tale of precognition as Michael Hordern's air force officer has a dream about a plane that's due to crash. Three Cases Of Murder was an anthology film that focused on three different murderstories. It's mostly of interest for the first segment, 'In The Picture'. A terrifying little tale that can quite possibly lay claim to being the scariest 'short' ever filmed. An art gallery guide meets a mysterious stranger admiring a beautiful but bleak landscape painting. The stranger is the artist, now dead and living in the macabre house that sits in the middle of the landscape. The artist takes the gallery guide back into the painting with him and introduces him to the surreal world of the painting and the sinister people who live with him in the house.

Arthur Crabtree finished the decade with the knockout duo of Fiend Without a Face and Horrors of the Black Museum. Fiend... cashed in on the popularity of sci-fi with a story about an alien monster that steals human brains. The following year he made the gruesome Horrors of the Black Museum about a writer who hypnotises his assistant into committing crimes for him.

One of the finest films of the period was Night of the Demon. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, proving that he could create great genre films away from Lewton, it was an adaptation of M.R. James' classic 'Casting of the Runes'. The Satanic Dr. Karswell is able to bring a fearsome curse upon all those who disagree with him, simply by slipping them a small parchment covered in runes. Apart from an ill-judged scene where we see a demon (included against Tourneur's wishes) Night of the Demon is a wonderfully subtle and ambiguous film.

Jacques Tourneur's "Night of the Demon".

Britain were also producing some impressive short horror films. Death Is a Number was an interesting, if not entirely successful film about a man suffering from a numerological curse. Ireland's Return to Glennascaul would fare better. A loose adaptation of the Oliver Onions classic, The Cigarette Case mixed with some vanishing hitch-hiker style legends, the film has a classic feel to it and it would go on to be Oscar nominated. Jack Clayton's The Bespoke Overcoat, based on Gogol's The Overcoat, would actually win the Oscar for short film and deservedly so. While it may not be very frightening, its story of a lowly tailor returned from the grave to get that which he was denied in life, is a superbly acted and directed supernatural offering. Best of the bunch was The Stranger Left No Card, directed by Wendy Toye. Toye was responsible for 'In the Picture', and this tale of revenge deserves to stand alongside her earlier offering as a classic of the genre. Alan Badel was the sinister and eccentric lead in both and if the films had received the attention they deserved then he could have been an icon of the genre.

Some of the most influential work of the decade came from British television. The Last Reunion, with it's spooky tale of a bomber crew's reunion, was a memorable episode of Television Playhouse. The most important work was to come from the pen of one of the genre's most influential writers, Nigel Kneale. Kneale helped bring sci-fi/horror cross-overs to British cinema, and his work started on the small screen with the remarkable Quatermass trilogy. The saga started in 1953 with The Quatermass Experiment. Something goes horribly wrong on the first manned space flight, the rocket returns with two of the three astronauts missing and the survivor acting oddly. The head of the experiment, Professor Bernard Quatermass discovers that an alien being has taken over the ship and is planning to destroy the Earth. An explicitly adult series, The Quatermass Experiment became a sensation, terrifying viewers and becoming one of the most influential of all telefantasy shows. Quatermass would return two years later with Quatermass 2. Luckily the imagination in the writing was far superior to that of the title. In this sequel, Quatermass is trying to plan permanent based on the moon discovers evidence that the government has been infiltrated by aliens and that the aliens may already have bases here. Unlike Experiment, thankfully all of the episodes still exist. The original Quatermass, Reginald Tate, had sadly passed away and he was replaced here by John Robinson. Robinson's performance isn't as strong and the show suffers slightly as a result. But the writing was of the same high standard and the public loved it. Quatermass's final t.v. outing of the decade would come three years later, with the jewel in the crown of telefantasy, Quatermass and the Pit. Pit would bring us a new Quatermass again, this time in the form of Andre Morell, and his interpretation of Quatermass was the finest of them all. The storyline, about a bizarre object discovered during building works in London, was the darkest and most intelligent piece of science-fiction ever created for television. Kneale wasn't content with merely examining what happens when humanity is replaced by a darker influence, as in the earlier shows, here he questions the very nature of humanity itself. Kneale takes on supernatural phenomena, aliens, religion, genocide and racial memories. Kneale created an intelligent, philosophical and terrifying work of art that bizarrely managed to achieve mass popularity. Quatermass and the Pit is not just one of the defining works of horror or science-fiction, it's one of the defining works of television as an artform. In the middle of all of this, Kneale also managed to fit in time to take on another genre icon with his adaptation of 1984. Teaming with Rudolph Cartier, Peter Cushing, Andre Morell and Donald Pleasence, Kneale created the best adaptation of Orwell's classic novel. It was so terrifying that the live broadcast actually raised questions in the house.

Kneale was also at least partially responsible for the early success of Britain's greatest ever horror studio, when in 1955 Hammer decided to remake The Quatermass Experiment as a film. Even though only a few episodes still exist of the original series, the film is weaker. Mostly because of the idiotic casting of Brian Donlevy as Quatermass. Donlevy's brash performance was in direct contrast to the thoughtful nature of the television version of the professor, and Kneale himself hated the adaptation.

Of course, Hammer had produced a few forgettable horrors as far back as the 30s and they even started the 50s with a horror. In the previous decade Valentine Dyall had made himself a name in British horror radio as 'The Man in Black', the host of the highly influential radio horror series Appointment with Fear. In Room to Let he played a potential Jack the Ripper as Dr. Fell, a highly suspicious stranger who becomes a tenant in a London home and starts to take over the house. They'd also taken on other films like Four Sided Triangle, but nothing had marked them out as contenders as yet.

1957 was the year things really started for Hammer. First was the adaptation of Quatermass 2. The sequel was a huge improvement on its predecessor, even if the atrocious Donlevy was back again and stamping all over the subtlety of the story. Better was The Abominable Snow Man, another Kneale adaptation, this time of the sadly lost 'The Creature'. Nowhere near as lurid as you'd expect from the title, The Abominable Snow Man is a thought-provoking wintry tale, with Peter Cushing at the peak of his powers as a scientist involved in an Himalayan expedition to find the legendary Bigfoot. Once again, American casting was the biggest problem, with Forrest Tucker overacting his way through the role Stanley Baker created on television.

57 was also the year Hammer first cast their eye over some classic horror literature. It had been over 20 years since Universal created the first iconic takes on the great monsters, and Hammer was determined to add a little sex and violence. First up was The Curse of Frankenstein. Despite the beloved and influential reputation the films have today, they outraged the critics on their initial release, they were dismissed as depressing and degrading, a testament to how shocking they must have been. The plot was familiar enough, but Hammer put the focus on the Baron rather than the Monster and allowed Peter Cushing the opportunity to become one of the figureheads of British horror. Cushing's performance as the cold and clinical Baron is a masterpiece of understatement. The film also helped introduce Christopher Lee to a cinema audience, Lee manages to gain some sympathy for the Monster, even if his performance is leagues below Karloff's. In the midst of a decade obsessed with terror from space and government experiments, Terence Fisher managed to go back to the original mad scientist and spark a revival of the traditional gothic horror at the same time.

The following year Hammer and Fisher would take on Bram Stoker. Their Dracula was better than Universal's although it still felt somehow static, like an adaptation of a stage play that they're unable to open up. Lee and Cushing reteamed as the Count and Van Helsing. Cushing brought the same level of determination to his vampire hunter as he did to Baron Frankenstein and Lee was a splendidly sexual Count. Despite having a gothic charm, it hasn't dated well, in fact it's rare to find a Dracula film that does work, at least direct adaptations of the novel. There are a few in existence, but most seem to be lacking something. What saves Dracula is its pairing of the best Count/Van Helsing on screen.

58 also saw Hammer produce a sequel to The Curse of Frankenstein, The Revenge of Frankenstein. Even though it may seem like a case of rushing a sequel because of the success of the original, this is actually a superior film. We find out that Frankenstein evaded execution and has set himself up in a new town, but still finds himself drawn to the old experiments. Cushing reprises his role and is as excellent as ever, with a Baron who is just as arrogant, but somehow more sympathetic in comparison to the other characters.

Hammer would leave the decade on a high point with another two films that revisited classic characters. The Mummy was yet another team-up between Lee and Cushing. A loose remake of two later Universal films, The Mummy had nowhere near the poetry of the first Universal film. That's not to say it's a failure. It's an interesting film that on occasion reaches brilliance, it just doesn't have that doom-laden magnificence of the Karloff film. The finest of the gothic revivals came with The Hound of the Baskervilles. As good as Rathbone was in the role, Peter Cushing was better. And Andre Morell's take on Watson was certainly far more in keeping with the nature of the character than the bumbling nuisance Nigel Bruce saw him as. This is the only film of Baskervilles that really captures the gothic feel of the book and the mysteries of Baskerville Hall and the deadly Grimpen Mire.

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee team up yet again in "the Mummy".

In America, sci-fi/horror hybrids were really taking hold of the genre. Most people count Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby's The Thing (From Another World) as the godfather of the sub-genre, but in fact it was beaten into cinemas by Edgar Ulmer's Man From Planet X. Of course that film was just rushed out to try and steal some of The Thing's thunder, and it was a very backwards looking affair. The threat could easily have come from an old-world monster as an off-world one, and it feels like the worst of Universal's later offerings. That said, much of The Thing also feels like it owes a debt to Universal. But The Thing feels like top-class Universal. Despite its sci-fi trappings, it could just as easily be Frankenstein's Monster as that intelligent carrot terrorizing the humans. As good as the film is, it's such a loose adaptation of Campbell's classic story that it always feels somehow lesser to me, it'd be another 30 years before a film would really do 'Who Goes There?' a real justice, but for now The Thing was breaking down boundaries.

As for Universal themselves, they became Universal-International and produced a few sci-fi/horror cross-overs of their own. The best were directed by Jack Arnold. Tarantula was serviceable enough, and It Came from Outer Space is a fine film, even if its promises of alien control amount to nothing thanks to the cop-out ending. The true classic was The Creature From the Black Lagoon. A scientific expedition up the Amazon discover a gill-man who takes a keen interest in one of the female members of the group. A fascinating study of sexual tension as well as a lyrical horror film, Creature deserves better treatment than its reputation often suggests. In many ways it feels closer to the Val Lewton offerings of the 40s.

So many of the sci-fi/horror hybrids were aimed at a teen audience and they played at drive-in cinemas all over the U.S. Films like The Blob, with Steve McQueen as the oldest teenager in the movies, or I Was a Teenage Werewolf, with Michael Brandon doing a risible James Dean impression, wouldn't have appealed to an adult audience. As popular as these films were, they were still pretty awful, even if I Was a Teenage Werewolf had a fascinating central premise - teenagers are scared of their body changing, but what if they started growing hair in really unusual places? There were other films like I Married a Monster From Outer Space and Beast From 20,00 Fathoms that while not being especially ground-breaking were a lot more interesting than the teenybopper scare films. But they couldn't compete with some of the true classics of the period.

Invaders from Mars revisited similar territory to that of 49's The Window. A child witnesses a shocking event (this time an alien invasion) and he can't find an adult to believe him. William Cameron Menzies does a remarkable job of capturing a child's perspective of the world. Similar praise must also go to The 5000 Fingers of Dr T that was a surreal tale of childlike horror, where the villain is a demented piano teacher who forces children to play an enormous piano while locked in a dungeon.

There was an adaptation of War of the Worlds that didn't meet the standards of the Orson radio version, but walked all over the later Spielberg film. Jack Arnold gave us the excellent The Incredible Shrinking Man. While it may have lacked some of the deeper psychological implications of the novel, it was a thrilling film, especially during the face-off with the spider. Giant ants abounded in Them, as studios played on the public's fear of the effects of radiation.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is probably the most interesting American example of its type. A doctor in a California town finds his patients are worried their loved ones have been replaced by impostors, and stumbles upon an alien plot to kill humans and replace them with plantlike pod people. The fear of the unknown is rife in this nightmarish classic and it can be read as either anti-communist or anti-McCarthy, depending on what the individual wants to bring to the film.

Fear wasn't just of the other, however, the fear could come from within as well. The Bad Seed was a look at the ultimate horror for a mother, what if that innocent little thing you gave birth to wasn't so innocent after all? What if that child dealt with disappointment or frustration by eliminating anything or anyone that stood in its way? That's how little Rhoda Penmark deals with the problems in her life, as her horrified mother slowly discovers. Despite a ridiculous ending and a bit too much cod-psychology, the film is nicely atmospheric and surprisingly well-performed.

"The Bad Seed" (1956, Mervyn LeRoy)

The demand for low-budget horror was really kicking in and films as diverse in theme and quality as I Bury the Living, The Maze, Mesa of Lost Women and The Screaming Skull were being churned out at a rapid rate. Another way studios distinguished their films from the competition and brought in viewers was through the increased use of gimmicks. The 1950s was the golden age of 3D, and one of the first examples of horror in 3D was Andre de Toth's House of Wax, a remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum. The film is probably more notable for being the one that turned Vincent Price into one of the figureheads of horror. The film isn't as good as its source, but Price is magnificent, camping it up all the way as the murderous wax museum owner. Price would strengthen his position later in the decade, but he would follow up House of Wax with a low-budget but entertaining film, The Mad Magician. Price would be back in the genre with The Fly, a silly little film with enough iconic moments to make it important. The truth is that other than those moments it's not particularly good and Price has a restricted role. Far better were the two films he made with the king of gimmick cinema, William Castle.

William Castle made his name by bringing the circus sideshow into the cinema. He'd worked in cinema for a long time before turning his focus to horror. He would promote his films through the use of various gimmicks, starting with Macabre. A doctor's daughter has been kidnapped and buried alive and he's in a race against the clock to find her. It's a decent little horror-thriller, one that Castle would improve on as he delved further into the genre. The gimmick? Everyone who went to see the film was given a $1000 life insurance policy in case they died of fright during the film. He also had ushers wear surgical gear and ambulances waiting outside the cinema.

Castle was back a year later with House on Haunted Hill, the first of two films he made with Price that closed the decade. Here Price played a millionaire stuck in a loveless and fight-filled marriage. He decides to throw a party in a legendary haunted house. He invites only five guests and tells them he will pay $10,000 to anyone who stays the night. It's a tense little film that manages to keep the audience guessing - is the house haunted, is Price psychotic, or is both? Castle upped the gimmick stakes with the invention of emergo. Emergo was basically a plastic skeleton on a wire that was launched over the terrified audience at the appropriate time in the film.

Finishing up the decade was The Tingler, the most audacious of them all. Price plays a scientist who discovers that when we are afraid, a parasitic creature causes tingling of the spine. It can kill us unless we destroy it by screaming. Castle's greatest gimmick, Percepto, accompanied this film. At a certain point in the film, the tingler got loose and the film broke down, showing a blank screen with the shadow of the tingler moving across it. At which point Price's voice warned the audience that the tingler was loose in the cinema and they should 'scream for your life.' At which point, Castle's masterstroke kicked in. Several of the seats in each cinema had been wired up to small buzzers and the staff activated them at that moment, causing a tingling sensation in the spine of the lucky soul sitting in the seat.

As cheesy as the William Castle films may sound, they were at least made with some talent, which is more than can be said of the films of Edward D. Wood Jr. Proving that all you needed to be a director was some foolish backers, Wood inflicted some of the most notoriously bad movies of all time on the viewing public, including Night of the Ghouls and Plan 9 from Outer Space. His actors couldn't act, he couldn't direct or write, and when his sole star, a decrepit Bela Lugosi, died halfway through filming Plan 9, he replaced him with a chiropractor. He covered up the lack of resemblance by making the stand-in hold a cape over his face. Long the stuff of much mockery, the Wood films aren't actually as bad as they sound. They're awful, but not in a hateful way and they're always entertaining.

Alfred Hitchcock continued his reign as one of cinema's greatest borderline horror directors in the 1950s. His greatest film, Rear Window, was a meditation on paranoia, voyeurism, impotence and the fear of the other. Jimmy Stewart's character spied on the activities of his neighbours, but the idea that one of them could be a murderer was as much a violation of the natural order as those pod-people in Body Snatchers. Meanwhile Stewart's descent into obsession in Vertigo was an excellent depiction of a man haunted, even if the haunting isn't supernatural. In many ways Vertigo is the greatest ghost story ever filmed. Charles Laughton's sole directorial effort, The Night of the Hunter, was one of the greats. A film so atmospheric you could almost dip your feet in the treacherous waters. It straddled the border between childlike fairy-tale and terrifying nightmare, as Robert Mitchum's insane criminal preacher becomes almost a boogieman figure to the two children he chases along the river. The 50s also saw the debut of another of the horror greats, Roger Corman. He directed a series of forgettable films for most of the decade with titles like Attack of the Crab Monsters and The Wasp Woman. His last film of the decade was his first important one, A Bucket of Blood. This darkly comic horror starred Dick Miller as a wannabe beat artist who becomes a star when he starts killing people and covering them in sculpting clay.

Japanese cinema gave the world Ugetsu Monogatari, a beautiful and haunting tale of ghosts and samurai that alone would have assured director Kenji Mizoguchi's legacy as one of the greats of Japanese cinema. The alternate translation as Tales of the Pale and Silvery Moon After the Rain sums up the film's melancholy nature perfectly. Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan was another film that managed to capture an otherworldly feel, its tale of betrayal and supernatural revenge wasn't quite on the same level as Ugetsu, but it managed to stand above most of its fellow ghost stories of the decade. Japanese cinema also took on the fears of the atomic age with the creation of the cult icon that is Godzilla. Godzilla was to become the most beloved big monster since King Kong scaled the Empire State Building and there would be an endless stream of mostly inferior sequels.

Ingmar Bergman's psychological "horror", "the Seventh Seal".

In Swedish cinema, Ingmar Bergman would take on horror in The Seventh Seal, with the figure of Death pursuing a knight just back from the war. The Seventh Seal featured one of cinema's most imitated scenes as Death and von Sydow's knight played chess for his life. Bergman would also take on genre themes in the deeply unsettling film The Magician. Germany gave us the spooky kids film, The Singing Ringing Tree. In Italy, the great Mario Bava made his debut with I Vampiri, another take on the Elizabeth Bathory story. Mexico gave us the influential vampire film, El Vampiro and the gothic masterpiece, The Black Pit of Dr. M. And France gave the world the Hitchcock-esque Les Diaboliques, where a schoolteacher is murdered by his wife and lover, but refuses to stay dead, and Georges Franju's Les Yeux sans Visage. Franju's film was a gothic fairytale where a mad doctor commits illegal experiments and murders in an attempt to restore the face of his disfigured daughter.

Animation was still taking influence from horror films, Water, Water, Every Hare and Claws for Alarm were more spooky Looney Tunes outings and Animal Farm was a remarkable take on the Orwell novel. Greatest of them all was an expressionist adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart. James Mason's performance as the insane narrator was one of the greatest of his illustrious career.

As always, I wish I could talk more in-depth about the horror literature, but this is a cinema site and to do so would double the length of each entry when it isn't necessary. But media outside cinema should at least be acknowledged. In horror literature, Ray Bradbury continued his ascent to fame and icon status with the publication of The Martian Chronicles. Ostensibly a collection of sci-fi stories about Mars colonists, but if a story like Mars Is Heaven isn't horror then I don't know what is. Usher 2 was a stunning revisit of the Poe story. He also wrote The Veldt, A Sound of Thunder, his collection, 'The Illustrated Man', Fahrenheit 451, The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl, The Golden Apples of the Sun, The Dwarf, The October Country and Dandelion Wine. You could throw a dart at Bradbury's work in the 50s and be sure of hitting at the very least a minor classic.

Richard Matheson made his debut, the man who would write some of the most influential stories and scripts of post-50s sci-fi/horror kickstarted his career with Born of Man and Woman. He followed it up with Drink My Blood, I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, Children of Noah and No Such Thing as a Vampire. L.P. Hartley wrote Monkshood Manor and W.S.

Robert Bloch continued his rise to being one of the most influential of all horror writers with Notebook Found in a Deserted House, The Hungry House, Psycho and That Hellbound Train. Bruno Fischer published House of Flesh, John Collier his classic Fancies and Goodnights collection, Elizabeth Jane Howard gave us Three Miles Up. Dylan Thomas wrote The Followers. Shirley Jackson was one of the most important of all the horror writers of the period, and she followed up one classic with another when The Summer People, The Sundial and The Haunting of Hill House were published. Robert Aickman started to make a name for himself as the definitive weird storyteller with The Trains and The View. Manly Wade Wellman wrote The Last Grave of Lili Warran and One Other. Jack Finney gave us Contents of the Dead Man's Pockets, The Body Snatchers and There Is a Tide. Joseph Payne Brennan published Levitation, Nine Horrors and a Dream, On the Elevator, Slime and Canavan's Backyard.

Mervyn Peake published Gormenghast and Titus Alone , the second and third parts of his Gormenghast trilogy. Forget Tolkein, this was the real deal. Speaking of Tolkein, he published his popular but vastly overrated Lord of the Rings trilogy in the mid 50s. For all of Tolkein's great imagination he was an incredibly flat prose writer. Peake also had the imagination, but he could also write. Something he proved again with Mr. Pye.

In addition to all of these you have Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Sarban's The Sound of His Horn, Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood and A Good Man is Hard to Find. Roald Dahl wrote Man from the South, Skin, Someone Like You and Royal Jelly. John Blackburn gave us A Scent of New Mown Hay, The Sinful Ones from Fritz Leiber, Lord of the Flies from William Golding, John Wyndham published the terrifying The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes and The Midwich Cuckoos, Charles Beaumont gave us The Crooked Man, William Sansom wrote A Woman Seldom Found, Naked Lunch came from William S. Burroughs and the Japanese Poe gave us the Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination. On top of that was the first volume in the long-running and notorious Pan Book of Horror series.

One of the big controversies of the decade was the publication of EC's horror comics. The trio of comics they unleashed on children, The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror and most notorious of all, Tales from the Crypt were gory fun, and often they were (like much horror) very conservative morality tales in disguise. That didn't stop psychiatrist Fredric Werthem from trying to blame them for all of the ills of society in his book, The Seduction of the Innocent. Werthem's ridiculous attacks on comic books sadly found popular support, just as any idiotic witch-hunt will, and the comics code was introduced and comic books were effectively neutered.

An issue of "Famous Monsters of Filmland"

I can't talk about horror writing in the 50s without mentioning Famous Monsters of Filmland, Forrest J. Ackerman's magazine devoted to horror cinema. From the 50s to the 80s it became a bible to a great many horror fans and it inspired many imitators from Fangoria to The Monster Times.

Radio horror went from strength to strength with the introduction of Dreadful John at Midnight, a late night series of readings of classic stories by the titular narrator. Dimension X was a hugely popular sci-fi/horror radio anthology series, as was Hall of Fantasy. Orson Welles returned to the radio with The Black Museum, an examination of real-life murder cases. The great Nelson Olmstead, one of the finest narrators/audio actors in history, recorded his Sleep No More and Tales of Terror albums and Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone recorded readings of Poe stories for the Edgar Allen Poe collection.

Television also continued its rise to power. First it aided in the revival of the popularity of Universal horrors after a package of the films was sold for television screenings. They were usually screened with the addition of a horror host who would introduce the films and pass commentary on them. The first accepted host was Vampira, a sexy vampiress type who would also go on to act in Ed Wood films. The late 50s saw a new brand of horror films on tv under the 'Shock!' banner. Two of the great anthology horror shows also made their debut in the 50s.

First up was Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Hitchcock would open and close the show and the episodes were mostly adaptations of classic short stories. Not all of them worked, but when you had something as amazing as their adaptation of their Peter Lorre starring Man from the South then the show still deserves its classic status. The Twilight Zone came later and despite the touches of sentimentality that Rod Serling brought to the show, it was the better of the two. Only twelve episodes of the show were aired in 59, the bulk of its output was in the 60s so we'll discuss it in depth in the next entry, but those first twelve episodes included show classics like Where Is Everybody?, Escape Clause, The Lonely, Time Enough At Last, Perchance to Dream, and a contender for the show's greatest ever episode, Time Enough At Last. Quite a debut.

The 50s was a decade stuck between the old values and the freedom that was coming in the 60s. As such the cinema was both forward and backward looking, often within the same film. The sci-fi hybrids often owed a debt to the past, especially to Universal horrors, while the Hammer revival of classic literature added more sex and violence to the mixture, looking forward to the relaxed censorship rules that would come in the next decade. This tendency towards more explicit horror would continue in the next decade, as would the growth of foreign language classics and the rise of the independents.