contain that horror so as to maintain viewer en- gagement. This is accomplished through the pro- cess of “framing”—or confining horror within specific boundaries so that it never overwhelms the narrative proper. Such framing is often literal— such as having the monster appear outside a win- dow—thus placing a concrete barrier between the threat and the protagonist (and therefore the viewer). Sometimes it involves visual or narrative distancing, such as having the horror viewed through a lens (such as in the climax of Pasolini’s Salo) or having it unfold in the form of a story, memory, or dream. Sometimes it is self-reflexive, such as when the film’s opening assures us that it is “based on a true story,” thus evoking an uneasy sense of gravity while simultaneously reminding us that we are simply watching a reenactment. Kawin concludes that the horror film, unlike other genres, is preoccupied not only with what it shows, but with the problem of viewing it.
The second and far longer portion of the book is comprised of a taxonomy of the horror film based on Kawin’s notion that horror films are most ap- propriately subdivided according to the nature of the central threat—that is, the specific source of horror. Under such subheadings as Giants, Body Parts, Vampires, and Immortal Slashers, Kawin examines various films that employ these horrific threats, and takes pains to list the recurring themes, plot devices, and visual cues that define the genre as a whole.
Kawin’s work is unusual in both purpose and execution. It is clearly not a historical overview, and rarely includes any production information. Nor is it evaluative, as practically no mention is made of the relative merits of any particular film, and no differentiation is made between the land- mark and the ephemeral. Furthermore, the writ- ing style is neither conversational nor academic, and largely shies away from any overt attempt at persuasion. Instead, Kawin employs the brief and precise declarative sentences traditionally found in instruction manuals to offer largely irrefutable observations about the mechanisms that horror films employ to manipulate viewers. The advan- tage of this approach is that its understatement and absence of critical pronouncement may make subtext-averse fans more willing to entertain ob- servations they might otherwise find unpalatable— such as Kawin’s descriptions of the genre’s repeated use of rape iconography, of the ho- mophobia implicit in the fact that male cinematic vampires prey exclusively on females, and of the horror film’s aggressively anti-intellectual subtext. This latter point, for example, appears in a series
of neat bullet points delineating the differences between the horror genre, where curiosity is pun- ished, and science fiction, where the cardinal sin is closed-mindedness.
There are problems with this approach as well. Because of the book’s structure, some of Kawin’s most valuable insights can only be gleaned by piec- ing together observations scattered over dozens of pages. For example, he at one point reviews the genre’s preoccupation with the reestablishment of the status quo, and then clarifies that horror films may be dated by their definitions of normalcy. Monsters embody a threat to this state and, when the monster is destroyed, the hero and heroine usually kiss—depicting a return to “normal” re- productive sexuality—and the film ends. Several pages later, he offers the astute observation that even films that incorporate the recent trend to- ward “open” endings still prioritize the reestablish- ment of the normal—with the surprise coda generating horror only by revealing that the fight is not yet over. Still later in the text, Kawin ob- serves that only rarely does a horror film acknowl- edge, as in THE BLOB (1958), that the very fact of the monster’s existence, even if rendered histori- cal by its destruction, makes a return to the former status quo impossible given that “normalcy” must now incorporate the monstrous intrusion. Even attentive readers may fail to notice how, in his later discussion of Cronenberg’s SHIVERS, he highlights the film’s subversive nature by asserting how the “final kiss” has here been perverted to represent the triumph of the monsters.
Furthermore, Kawin’s scrupulous avoidance of criticism means that the book fails to even con- sider the question of why some horror films are more successful than others, even when they em- ploy identical narrative strategies. As befitting a professor of English, Kawin focuses almost exclu- sively on narrative devices rather than cinematic techniques, resulting in very little discussion of cin- ematography, sound effects and music as means of inducing or sustaining horror. Finally, although Kawin makes the case that horror films may be coherently categorized according to the nature of their central threats, he never really makes a case for the value of doing so. Kawin’s taxonomy proves most compelling when used to delineate the spe- cific fears that each type of threat may invoke, such as when, for example, he explains how gi- ants threaten our self-perception as the domi- nant species, or how monstrous children may not only elicit painful memories of our childhood antagonists, but also play upon parental fears that one’s offspring might harbor some unknown
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