Inquiry: UNCANNY BODIES: THE COMING OF SOUND FILM AND THE ORIGINS OF THE HORROR GENRE.

• Artist: Mark Lynch
• Title: UNCANNY BODIES: THE COMING OF SOUND FILM AND THE ORIGINS OF THE HORROR GENRE.
• Album: Inquiry
• Length: 29:38 minutes (8.6 MB)
• Format: Stereo 11kHz 40Kbps (VBR)

Two films released in 1931 by Universal, Dracula and Frankenstein, forever changed the cinematic look and experience of horror in movies. Though these films may not seem very scary compared to today’s blood and gore spectacles, in their day these films terrified audiences around the globe. What was it that made these two films so chilling? Tonight Inquiry talks with ROBERT SPADONI, Assistant Professor in the English Department at Case Western Reserve University. Professor Spadoni explores the transition from silent films to talkies and how the audience’s perceived “unreality” of the new phenomena of sound in these two early films was used to give filmgoers the creeps. Spadoni’s book is titled UNCANNY BODIES: THE COMING OF SOUND FILM AND THE ORIGINS OF THE HORROR GENRE.