From Grand Guignol to the Classic Horror Movies of the 1930s: Elliot Passantino’s History of Horror Film, Part 1

• Film

Starting in 1897 with the creation of the bloody, gruesome spectacle of the Grand Guignol in Paris, horror film historian Elliot Passantino presents a visual guided tour of the horror genre, from its theatrical roots into the advent of the silent film era, to the golden years of Universal Studios, Hollywood’s trailblazing horror movie production company. Along the way we shall savor samplings from such works as Thomas Edison’s 1910 adaptation of “Frankenstein,” the European films that first defined a movie genre (“Caligari,” “Nosferatu,” “Vampyr”), the curious career of Lon Chaney (“The Man of a Thousand Faces”), Hollywood’s first great movie star of the horror genre, leading up to the classic horror movie archetypes of the 1930s: “Dracula” (1931) and “Frankenstein” (1931), but also uncovering many lesser-known horror films from the early years of cinema.