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I feel horror movies from that era are so much less scary than horror fiction from even the late 1800s. (Admittedly I’m talking the very best fiction— EF Benson etc). Maybe I’m not watching the right ones? But also I intellectually know ppl’s relation to film was just totally different than today

I think the earliest horror movie I find genuinely frightening (as opposed to just eerie in its vibes) is The Leopard Man from 1943, though 40s cinema is a pretty different beast from 30s.

I will say that a lot of early horror movies have a certain disjointed quality that makes them stick out pretty uniquely and makes them effective as macabre mood pieces. I mean there's just nothing else at all like White Zombie

It was very different. And the film sensibilities were different. A lot of horror movies failed to develop tension, had a LOT of talking, a lot of formulaic romantic stuff, and there was almost never that sense that the bad guys might win. But they were the start of things, and some are beautiful.

There must be fascinating analyses of this era’s horror out there… I wonder… not just moral pressure issues (even prior to the Hayes code), but maybe the theater-derived forms of early movies, the (still existent) expectations that movies must be a tentpole with something for the whole family etc

I can get behind the idea from “Gods and Monsters” that the Frankenstein movies were intended as camp, not to be scary. (Though audiences still felt they were scary..??! I think…?) I know ~1900 people were fainting when a prop gun was fired at the screen so I assume their nerves were wired different