Silent Film and the Creation of Horror

Though not officially defined as a genre until the release of the movie Frankenstein in 1931, horror films haunted audiences during the silent film era. Based on classic literature or haunting current events like World War I, these films confronted such contemporary topics as war, PTSD, epidemics, and financial peril that threatened to disrupt everyday life. In this course, we view four silent horror films: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, (1920), a German movie about a hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to commit murders; The Penalty (1920), an American psychological thriller about a legless criminal mastermind; Nosferatu (1922), a German Expressionist film about a vampire who preys on his wife; and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), about a deformed musical genius who haunts the Paris Opera House to make the woman he loves a star.