Nightmares in Red, White, & Blue (2009 Documentary)
I remember watching this while I was in high school over ten years ago, and I saw it pop up on Tubi or something and remembered it existed. I was excited to revisit it because I didn’t remember shit about it. I have seen so many more horror movies since I watched this that it was interesting to understand most of the references and directors brought up.
The documentary begins by discussing the earliest horror movies and the impact of WWI on horror. Early on, the scariest thing to people was the mutilated soldiers that returned from war and were considered monsters in the movies. At first, I thought that’s fucked up these people fought for their country, and now they’re seen as freaks and monsters, but it makes sense when you realize seeing a mutilated person would’ve been ultra rare without video or photography.
This led to the Great Depression and the rise of more typical monsters, many of which were influenced by Nosferatu(1922) and The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari(1920). It was interesting to see that all these world-famous monsters pretty much all come from old European folklore, myths, and legends.
John Carpenter is a genius director and explains the different types of evil in storytelling. He explains that there is evil outside and evil within and how it is more difficult to do the latter. Carpenter talks about how it was usually the case that the most horrific and evil person in the monster movies was usually just a regular person and not the monster itself.
During the Second World War, horror movies softened up and became a little more action. However, children’s movies (like Pinocchio (1940)) began to express lighter horror themes and visuals more frequently.
The Post-War Atomic Age was mostly about nuclear fears and mutated monsters and creatures. The 1950s gimmicks in horror, like “illusion-O,” sensors, and shit, are fascinating to me. Nowadays, the only gimmick in film is the occasional 3D movie.
Psycho (1960) was first thought of as a children’s movie but is now widely considered to be the origin of modern horror films. Around that same time, they very briefly bring up one of the interesting movements/genres of horror, exploitation/sexploitation, and psychedelic-horror films. Companies like Something Weird Video, AIP Horror, and films like Herschel Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast or Mondo Cane.
The documentary brings up the collective fear of service during Vietnam and how this was reflected in the horror of the time. The Vietnam and Post-Vietnam culture was very much us versus them, rich versus poor (think of something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre.) The Exorcist (1973) had such an impact it was more of an experience and traumatic than just a movie. “The American Dream is dying; our future is fucked” seemed to be the sentiment at the time. In The Omen (1976), the devil’s son, Damien, is the representation of the future.
They bring up Halloween (1978) and Halloween (1978) is the greatest horror film of all time. Easy. No question.
There’s a section in the film I like that explains how lots of Stephen King’s work was more about the struggle of the middle class more than any sort of horror. In the 1980s, horror began to move overtly against Reaganism, traditional values, and capitalist over-consumerism.
My favorite point of the documentary was when they described many of the 80s slashers as “Old Testament God figures.” These teens misbehave with pre-marital sex, drugs, and non-conformity, and they always end up getting killed. The 80s were full of excess, even in horror with its use of blood, nudity, and gore. They explain that Freddy Kruger was basically a stand-in for Ronald Reagan since his political sins and debt would be passed on to the children of the country.
By the 1990s, horror had taken much more of a psychological turn in films like Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). At the same time, villains started to become a bit more uncertain, like with Hannibal Lecter and even Brad Pitt’s Vampire in Interview with a Vampire (1994).
It almost seems like a joke when George Romero comes up every era to explain a movie he made, which was basically the same as all the other movies he’s ever made.
They imply that the rise of gore and torture porn in the 2000s was due to 9/11 and the wars in the Middle East. Given that we were exposed to immediate updates, deaths, and torture from the war, the collective unconscious felt the need to go extra intense with the gore and death. You could turn on the news and see something horrific, so horror directors had to get intense and creative. They mention that Bin Ladden had become the boogie man who attacked and disappeared, which lots of horror villains did at the time.
I enjoyed the documentary, and I think it would be an excellent introduction to horror for someone wanting to learn more and explore the genre. If this was expanded to include the next 15 years, it would probably talk about the rise of reboots and elevated horror. They would most likely find a way to see what the impact of the election of Trump was to horror as well as the COVID-19 virus. I would recommend this documentary to people who want to learn more about horror in American history, though it might be pretty surface-level for anyone who’s been a fan of the genre for a while.