It feels nonsensical how much horror is made into some kind of niche subject in film discussion and academia, a side subject that is regularly talked about separately from more “serious” films. How they constantly get looked over when award season comes, to the point where people have to give them their own awards show. They’re totally given the shaft, the same as animation, which is doubly frustrating when you think about how long horror cinema has been around. Since 1896, withGeorges Meilies’Le Manoir du diable,movie-going audiences have loved the spooky and scary.
Every milestone in cinema history from the very beginning, from the Belle Epoque period of three-minute features byMeliesandLumierealike tothe silent era, to now and beyond, the genre has provided more than its fair share of classics. Even before the addition of sound, there are films that are beloved today, such as the German Expressionism ofNosferatuandThe Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,and the very beginnings of universal horror seen inLon Chaney’s repertoire.
Sound, color, every scale, every definition, practical effects and CGI,even analog horror gets its moment in the sun. Everything once seen as a gimmick was given their all small revolutions in a genre so many look down on. And yes, some gimmicks don’t spread out into a worldwide phenomenon,look atWilliam Castle,and as much as many would try,horror just couldn’t quite translate into 3Ddespite its deceptive simplicity of having the scares jumping right out at the audience. But today we’re going back, way back to very nearly a century ago, when audiences could finally hear the screams seen on the screen. We’re talking about the first ever talking horror movie, 1928’sThe Terror.
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‘The Terror’ Was the First Ever Talking Horror Movie
When asked “What’s the first talking horror movie?” many educated guesses may come to mind. The one some cite isTodd Browning’s 1931 adaptation ofDracula, or if you want to get really technical, the simultaneously filmed Spanish version. It is, of course, extremely well-known and highly influential, so you think it should be the first at something. ButThe Jazz Singer, the very first “talkie,” (or is it?) came out in 1927, a full four years beforeDraculawas released, so that doesn’t feel quite right. Well, that’s because it isn’t quite right, because 11 months afterThe Jazz Singercame out, the world was given the first talking horror movie. While Universal’sDraculamay be the first talking horror movie we can still sit down and watch to this day, the actual first-ever came from Warner Bros. Studio in 1928 withThe Terror.
No, not the incredible horror anthology series from 2018,but rather a very early example of sound cinema. Released in the pre-code era, written byHarvey Gatesand directed byRoy Del RuthofThe Maltese Falcon,The Terrorwas based on the play and novel titledThe Black AbbotbyEdgar Wallace, the incredibly prolific mind behindKing Kong. It’s a classic haunted house story, or at least that’s how it appears. The mayhem and murder happening in a cozy country house is not the work of an apparition but an unknown serial killer who goes by “The Terror.” From what we know of this film, looking at the 1938 remake, and in reading the play and original novel, this film seemed to be an early example of many tropes seen in horror films to this day.It’s a home invasion story, with a mysterious killer terrorizing the house guests, and the reveals surrounding the identity of the intruder can be seen in films likeYou’re Next.There also seem to be elements of revenge and sympathetic criminals in pursuit of a serial killer who betrayed them. It’s a horror thriller with things that wouldn’t slide in the era ofthe Hays Codesix years later.
‘The Terror’ Is One of Many Lost Films
However, these estimates about the story, the characters, and the tropes are just that. Estimates. Because despite it being the first horror film in sound, despite it being only the second talkie produced by Warner Brothers afterLights Of New York,The Terroris one of themany examples of lost filmsof the early 20th century. While the soundtrack is preserved in the UCLA Film and Television Archive, this film has been missing for decades now. I can’t give you an ending explained on this movie, or even a full rundown of its production, all we have are sparse pieces of this film that I can only attempt to put together in a way that’s coherent.
‘The Terror’ Divided Audiences
Was the film good? It’s hard to say. It certainly split audiences at the time, some were entranced by this new evolution in the moving images, generally enjoying the thrilling mystery. Others,seen in a review byJohn McCormacfromThe New York Times, found the film incredibly dull and dragging. Even Wallace is quoted as saying: “Well, I have never thought the talkies would be a serious rival to the stage.” Because that’s what talkies were at the time, a gimmick, something that wasn’t quite as good as just going out and seeing live theater, especially when you could go and watch Wallace’s play yourself. The passage of time would eventually prove him wrong, but time couldn’t saveThe Terror.
The negatives for this, among many other relics of early film history, were thrown out in 1948. The reason, granted, was rather practical, those very early movies are extremely hard to preserve because of the materials used, that being nitrate which is incredibly, and dangerously flammable. If the MGM Vault fire of 1965,and the Fox Vault fire of 1937, have taught us anything, it’s that you do not want to keep nitrate film rolls just lying around. It could be an unfortunate coincidence that many well-known examples of these scrapped 35mm films are horror films, or it could be that they didn’t consider them worth saving. Either way,a wide majority of silent-era films, from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th,are lost forever.
Film history is just over a century old, and yet the first three or so decades of that history have so many gaps, it’s impossible to know what is missing. No one thought that a film likeThe Terrorwould pave the way for more talkies, or that film would outperform theater and become a dominant art form, so all we have now are tiny pieces of a movie that once was.
