©Stephen Carver, 2012 1 Gothic Film: A Brief History Stephen Carver Ph.D Originally published in W. Hughes, D. Punter & A. Smith eds, The Encyclopedia of the Gothic, 2 vols (London: Wiley-Blackwell 2012) Illustrated version available at: https://ainsworthandfriends.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/gothic-film-a-brief-history/ Gothic films are at once very easy and very difficult to categorise. Within the wider context of the “horror” genre, gothic films are linked directly to the literary gothic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, often adapting the original novels – for example: F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (Germany, 1922), Tod Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein (US, 1931), and pretty much everything made by Hammer after The Curse of Frankenstein (UK, 1957). Beyond the literal definition of gothic films as versions of gothic novels, however, there is a legion of horror films, fantasies and thrillers that have some level of gothic sensibility. Edward D. Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (US, 1959), for example, combines vampire iconography with bargain-basement science fiction, while Hitchcock’s Psycho (US, 1960) and David Fincher’s Fight Club (US, 1999) are both doppelgänger narratives. There are Faustian allegories everywhere, with deals and demons present in, among many others, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (US, 1968), William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (US, 1973), and Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (US, 1987). Ridley Scott turned the gothic castle into a derelict spacecraft in Alien (US, 1979), and explored the Miltonian subtext of Frankenstein in Bladerunner (US, 1982). Following a long tradition of Romantic art and literature, phantasmagoric theatre, melodrama, and Expressionism, gothic films have a recognisable mise-en- scène based around archetypal settings and characters, familiar visual signifiers and narrative codes. The style is Otranto-esque and uncanny, and can be either period or contemporary. There are old dark houses, sublime castles, dungeons, graveyards and