The History of Anthological Horror

All that glisters is not gold, often have you heard that told...

This article is about The Dark Pictures Anthology's first installment, Man of Medan .

The History of Anthological Horror is the first segment in Man of Medan's Special Features. The video shows a short documentary-type film narrated by The Curator about the history behind the anthological horror, from past to present.

Preview

The segment elaborates on the origins of the anthropological horror and the progress this format has made over the years in books, radio, TV, movies and video games.

Transcript

[The Curator]
The horror anthology is much loved and has an established pedigree across all forms of entertainment. From "Twice-Told Tales" by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1837 to Clive Barker's "Books of Blood" in the mid 80's and with the likes of Blackwood, Poe and Lovecraft in between, short story horror writing has long been a popular format.

Largely regarded as the first published horror anthology, Twice-Told Tales is a collection of mostly previously published stories from "The Token", an annual illustrated gift book published in Boston. The author of "Twice-Told Tales", Nathaniel Hawthorne, was born on July 4th 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. His Great, Great Grandfather was John Hathorne, a puritan and one of the judges who presided at the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

In 1842 Edgar Allan Poe reviewed "Twice-Told Tales" for "Graham's Magazine" concluding that Hawthorne was a man of indisputable genius. By this time Poe, also from the state of Massachusetts, had already written his own collection of short stories for publication. This collection titled "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque" was published in two volumes in 1839.

The horror anthology had become a recognized format and after also writing many short stories for newspapers and magazines, Algernon Blackwood's first publication "The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories" was released in 1906. Blackwood went on to write such classics as "The Willows" and "The Wendigo" which was first published in another anthology "The Lost Valley and Other Stories" in 1910. Fast forward 74 years to 1984 and the first publication of "Books of Blood". Each book was a collection of horror stories written by British author Clive Barker. The first of which catapulted Barker to legendary status in horror writing with Stephen King proclaming him "The future of Horror".

Several of the stories from Books of Blood have been adapted successfully for film including "Rawhead Rex" and "The Midnight Meat Train". Barker adapted the Yattering Jack in 1986 for use in George A. Romero's anthology TV series "Tales from the Darkside".

Short form storytelling arrived on a new medium in 1938 when the radio show "The Mercury Theatre on the Air" broadcast an adaptation of "Dracula". The series was the creation of Orson Welles and John Houseman and became most famous for its broadcast of "War of the Worlds" which terrified listeners believing that the alien invasion was a reality. From 1942, the radio drama series "Suspense" broadcast more than 90 short plays on CBS Radio for 20 years, often featuring some of Hollywood's leading stars (Joan Crawford, Lucille Ball, Norman Lloyd...). Initially the series seldom used material that could be classified as horror, fantasy or science fiction, but by the late 50's this became a regular occurrence including material such as H. P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror". One episode, "The Hitch-Hiker" broadcast in 1942 featured a performance by Orson Welles and was later adapted for an episode of "The Twilight Zone" in 1960.

1947 saw the debut of "Quiet, Please", a radio horror and fantasy series created by Wyllis Cooper. Cooper had been a writer for Orson Welles' "The Campbell Playhouse", which had succeeded "The Mercury Theatre on the Air". The plays' scripts often broke the fourth wall by speaking directly to the listener, a technique much adopted in later horror anthologies. In his book "Terror on the Air!: Horror Radio in America", Richard J. Hand wrote that Cooper had enjoyed creating roles for the audience, including implicating them in the action of the story itself, indicating a clear desire to create horror as interactive entertainment more than 70 years ago. The show ran for two years.

Forward fifty more years in radio and in October 2010, we see the debut of Larry Fessenden and Glenn McQuaid's radio show, "Tales from Beyond the Pale". Successful genre film-makers in their respective rights, the two began producing episodes under Fessenden's studio, Glass Eye Pix, influenced by the works of Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Orson Welles. Fessenden would later partner with the show's sound designer Graham Reznick, to write the scripts for Supermassive Games' critically acclaimed horror debut, "Until Dawn", and for the first game in their Dark Pictures horror anthology, "Man of Medan".

In film and TV short-format horror has been successfully represented many times since "The Twilight Zone" in 1959. Created and presented by Rod Serling, "The Twilight Zone" ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. Each show was a standalone story featuring characters faced by surreal and often disturbing events. Serling's introductions and conclusions to each show summarized the story and provided some justification for the events and, often, the moral of the story. In 2016 Rolling Stone placed "The Twilight Zone" at number 7 in its list of the greatest shows of all time.

The 1972 film "Tales from the Crypt", is highly regarded by fans of the genre. Starring Peter Cushing and Joan Collins and featuring Ralph Richardson as The Crypt Keeper, it is an anthology film based on stories from EC Comics, and one of several Amicus horror anthologies produced in that decade. And, in 1989, HBO launched a horror anthology series under the same name, also based on "EC Comics" which ran until July 1996.

1982 saw the release of "Creepshow", a dark comic horror anthology film directed by George A. Romero. Influenced by, and a homage to, the material from the EC and DC comics of the 1950's, its entirely original material was written by Stephen King, and it is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek expression of the horror genre. Twenty-five years on, and in 2007 "Trick'r Treat" presents another set of horror shorts as a dark comedy horror anthology film and then, in 2012, a very different anthology film, with a very different tone... "V/H/S". Created by Brad Miska and Bloody Disgusting... an American horror genre website and film production company... "V/H/S" is a much darker horror anthology film. Comprising six short horror stories and linked by a foundfootage theme, two of the stories, "Second Honeymoon" and "Tuesday the 17th", were written and directed by Ti West and Glenn McQuaid.

Other examples in film and TV that are more than worthy of mention are Roger Corman's 1962 anthology, "Tales of Terror", based on three Edgar Allan Poe short stories and featuring Peter Lorre, Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone... The 1963 Italian horror anthology "Black Sabbath" narrated by Boris Karloff, the TV series "Night Gallery" a spiritual successor to, or certainly a close relative of, The Twilight Zone, fronted again by Rod Serling and focusing more directly on horror which ran from 1969 to 1973. Stephen King's "Cat's Eye" of 1985, John Carpenter's 1993 film "Body Bags" featuring the likes of Sam Raimi, Wes Craven and Mark Hamill and "Southbound" a 2016 road trip horror anthology by a number of the collaborators on VHS.

From written fiction, through radio, cinema and TV and now video games, horror anthology is a format that both creators and horror fans enjoy... and it's a format that has existed for almost 200 years.

Long may it continue.

Video

The Dark Pictures Man of Medan "The History of Horror Anthology" (Bonus Content Special Feature)