An interesting sounding new book of cultural history from Kendall R. Phillips, A Place of Darkness: The Rhetoric of Horror in Early American Cinema (Spring 2018). It steps beyond the movie industry’s early history and surveys the wider currents which each distinct cultural milieu both drew on and drew around itself…

“He shows how early cinema [1890s onward] linked monsters, ghosts, witches, and magicians with Old World superstitions and beliefs, in contrast to an American way of thinking that was pragmatic, reasonable, scientific, and progressive. Throughout the teens and twenties [1910s and 20s], Phillips finds, supernatural elements were almost always explained away as some hysterical mistake, humorous prank, or nefarious plot. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, constituted a substantial upheaval in the system of American certainty and opened a space for the reemergence of Old World gothic within American popular discourse in the form of the horror genre [the famous Universal monster movies, 1931 onwards], which has terrified and thrilled fans ever since.”

It’s being well reviewed. Sublime Horror has a sturdy review, and also a free one-hour podcast interview with the author.