1950s: Cold War terror and the pull of science fiction

In the nuclear-charged atmosphere of the 1950s the tone of horror films shifted away from the gothic and towards the modern. A seemingly endless parade of low-budget productions featured humanity overcoming threats from "outside": alien invasions, and deadly mutations to people, plants, and insects. During this time the horror and science fiction genres were often interchangeable.

 These films provided ample opportunity for audience exploitation, with gimmicks such as 3-D and "Percepto" (producer William Castle's electric-shock technique used for 1959's The Tingler) drawing audiences in week after week for bigger and better scares.

The classier horror films of this period, including The Thing From Another World (1951; attributed on screen to Christian Nyby but widely considered to be the work of Howard Hawks) and Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) managed to channel the paranoia of the Cold War into atmospheric creepiness without resorting to direct exploitation of the events of the day. Film makers would continue to merge elements of science fiction and horror well into the future.

The late 1950s and early 1960s saw the rise of studios centered specifically around horror. Notable were British production company Hammer Films, which specialized in bloody remakes of classic horror stories often starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, including The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958). Hammer, and director Terence Fisher, are widely acknowledged as being pioneers of the modern horror movie.

American International Pictures (AIP) also made a series of Edgar Allan Poe themed films produced by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price. These sometimes controversial productions paved the way for more explicit violence in both horror and mainstream films.

It's estimated that more than 500 horror features and shorts were produced between 1948 and 1962 during this golden age, most of them populated with giant irradiated beasts (lizards, sea creatures, flies, moths, blobs, and on and on) terrorizing middle America.

For audiences of the '50s, it was perhaps reassuring to know that if science somehow spawned the giant ants of "Them," the 10-story fire-breathing lizard of "Godzilla" or the colossal woman scorned of "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

In the 1950's there were only two major fantasy films, The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T and Darby O'Gill and the Little People. There were also several low budget fantasies, based on Greek or Arabian legend, by Ray Harryhausen.