Overview

It all begins in 1816, the “Year Without a Summer,” when Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and friends—trapped indoors by volcanic ash-cloud weather—entertained themselves by writing ghost stories. What emerged was Frankenstein, the spark that ignited two centuries of macabre imagination. From there, the film traces the genre’s evolution: Poe and Stoker, Edison and Méliès, German Expressionism and Universal Monsters, Hammer Films and Giallo maestros like Argento and Bava. Horror’s heartbeat pulses through Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist, Daughters of Darkness, and the outrageous rise of Troma with The Toxic Avenger.