There are discussions on the CHFB on Universal, the Golden Age, Hammer and other kinds of horror, and I wonder if the "golden ages" are over.
Post-Hammer and AIP we're pretty much on our own. There are no studios that specialize in horror, gothic or costume horror,--call it what you will--is
largely gone except for the occasional one off, and horror seems to have been in a state of drift for at least thirty years. Horror films continue to get
made, and some are quite ambitious, but the genre (what dreaded word!) has largely morphed into something quite different from what it was in its
heyday, more properly heydays. Is it over? I mean the Whale-Browning-monster franchise-Hammer-Corman kind of horror we all came to know and love as kids.
Will there ever be another Karloff or Lugosi, Lee or Cushing? It seems unlikely. Classic horror flourished in a more genteel time, when movies were more heavily censored than they are now, and was a kind of release from all that. Horror films were, back in the day, the anti-Shirley Temples, the anti-Andy Hardys, the anti-Doris Days. They were for people, whether children, teens or grownups, who wanted something different, something weird. No need for that now, eh? The world itself has become weird and is quite frightening enough. No need for shambling mummys and mad doctors.
Will there ever be another Karloff or Lugosi, Lee or Cushing? It seems unlikely. Classic horror flourished in a more genteel time, when movies were more heavily censored than they are now, and was a kind of release from all that. Horror films were, back in the day, the anti-Shirley Temples, the anti-Andy Hardys, the anti-Doris Days. They were for people, whether children, teens or grownups, who wanted something different, something weird. No need for that now, eh? The world itself has become weird and is quite frightening enough. No need for shambling mummys and mad doctors.
