By Ross Eric Gibson

While there were some short horror works at the dawn of filmmaking, they had little story, poor monster makeup, and would pull their punches so as not to upset sensitive ladies. But after the horrors of World War I, the Roaring ’20s became a time of heightened thrill seeking in both men and women, visiting speakeasies and riding the 1924 Giant Dipper Roller Coaster at the Boardwalk. The New Santa Cruz Theater had been built in 1920 as a movie palace at the corner of Pacific and Walnut streets, where one could see the new genre of horror films. These started with two German experimental mood pieces, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920) a psychological thriller, and the vampire film “Nosferatu” (1922), depicting a barely human creature.

Hollywood’s Lon Chaney was “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” never appearing the same twice, with makeup effects that distorted his face (sometimes painfully) into unique monstrosities. Yet such an effect would mean little, but for the emotion he could draw from audiences, such as empathy for a deformed and brain-damaged scapegoat in the 1923 film “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Next came a madman, whose isolation had made him lonely for affection, in “The Phanton of the Opera” (1925). The same year, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World” was the first non-cartoon dinosaur feature, using live-action actors interacting with stop-motion dinosaurs against photographed backdrops, some of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Depression

When the Great Depression hit in 1929, followed by the Dust Bowl in 1930, the economic downfall pushed many into a horror of poverty, job hunting and migration. A series of the classic horror films of the 1930s reflected the times. Bela Lugosi was brilliant representing Dracula not as a Nosferatu creature, but as a blood-sucking aristocrat, a parasite drawing sustenance from the shattered lives of his victims, enslaved with a bite. Next, director James Whale and actor Boris Karloff produced “Frankenstein,” basically a Nazi scientist attempting to breathe life into the rotting pieces of their violent past. Whale had Karloff next embody “The Mummy,” bringing to life the discredited corpse of empire.

Then Bela Lugosi starred in “White Zombie,” the first feature-length zombie movie, about masses of mental slaves, serving those who had dulled their senses and killed their compassion. “King Kong” (1933) was promoted as a Beauty and the Beast, but instead it represented an uncontrolled monster (the Depression) raising havoc in the nation’s economic capital, New York. Whale then starred Claude Rains in H.G. Wells “The Invisible Man,” which might as well have been called “The Invisible Enemy,” as America seemed at the mercy of hidden extremists, Gangsterism, American Nazis, the Klan and Communist authoritarianism. Then Lon Chaney portrayed “The Wolf Man,” about people turning into something they didn’t want to be, indiscriminately killing and endangering even their own loved ones.

The weekend shows at Santa Cruz theaters often had a half-hour live stage show before the feature, often themed to each movie, usually three 10-minute Vaudeville acts. Around Halloween came the Del Mar tradition of a midnight horror film, bringing back one of these 1930s classics. The lights would go down, and suddenly a woman began to scream, and a follow-spot showed her being chased across the stage by a man (the assistant manager). Some laughed at being thus fooled, but few could shake this unnerving mood with the audience now reduced to nervous anticipation.

Christopher Lee

Dolores Abrams, who’d later found the Drama Department at Cabrillo College, told me that sometime after World War II, she’d dated a struggling British film actor named Christopher Lee. His uncle was Ian Fleming, not famous until 1952 when he wrote his first James Bond novel. Dolores described Lee as 6-foot 4-inches tall, gentle in demeanor, yet with a commanding acting voice and charismatic manner, but he was once told he was too tall to act. He was a spear carrier in Laurence Olivier’s film “Hamlet” (1948). I first saw the Shakespearian ghost story when I was 11 years old in 1966. I thought I wouldn’t understand it, nor find Elizabethan spookiness at all frightening. But the Olivier film was riveting and creepy, and when Hamlet’s father died from poison poured in his ear so he would appear to have died in his sleep, the idea so haunted me, the following week, I’d sleep with my blankets pulled over my ear.

Lee was early noted for Captain Horatio Hornblower, and the Cockleshell Heroes, but made many forgettable films. In 1957, he starred in his 41st movie, because he was so tall, but received no lines. He was the creature in “The Curse of Frankenstein.” Then came “Dracula” in 1958, “The Mummy” in 1959 and “Dr. Jekyll” in 1960. Soon horror was his entire British career. His Dracula was considered innovative in the 1960s, because he seduced women who found him sexy. But after 50 horror films, to break the typecasting, he moved to Hollywood in 1977, receiving roles in “Airport ’77,” “Return from Witch Mountain” (1978) filmed in Santa Cruz, the “Gremlins” series, “Star Wars” series, “Lord of the Rings” series, “The Hobbit,” and King Haggard in “The Last Unicorn” (1982) by Santa Cruzan Peter Beagle. Lee died at age 93 in 2015.

3D movies

The Rio Theatre opened in 1949 with one of the first Cycloramic screens in the west, a curved screen fooling your depth perception to make any movie seem 3D. Three years later stereoscopic cameras and projectors created a fad for 3D movies, making the Rio the place to get 3D movies on a 3D screen. “Bwana Devil” in 1952 promised you’d get a lion running through your lap. The 1953 film “It Came From Outer Space” was a thoughtful study of fear of the unknown and fear of the foreign. The same year came Vincent Price in “House of Wax,” using some of the best 3D tricks. Scotts Valley director Alfred Hitchcock did his 1954 thriller “Dial M For Murder” in 3D. It was followed the same year by “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” a bad family reunion with humanity’s aquatic evolutionary ancestor.

Yet things we once feared become sympathetic over time. Witches were no longer the stuff of nightmares. When my cousin and I first saw “Frankenstein” and “King Kong” in the 1960s, we sympathized with the creatures, both of whom had childlike minds bewildered by a hostile world they didn’t understand. Mom said the Depression-era audiences cheered when Frankenstein’s monster and King Kong died, for it represented dispelling the uncontrolled forces overshadowing their era. In 1964 came TV shows like “The Adams Family” and “The Munsters,” which played on the fear of the misunderstood hippies. The era of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War had Boomers distrusting authority, thus their films favored underdogs and anti-heroes.

Santa Cruz Harbor

But Santa Cruz also had horror films either made here, or with a Santa Cruz connection. Scotts Valley director Alfred Hitchcock made his horror classic, “Psycho,” basing the look of the film’s Psycho mansion on the dilapidated McCray Manor on Beach Hill (now the beautifully restored Sunshine Villa). Hitchcock also directed “The Birds,” incorporating references to an actual bird invasion that happened in Capitola, to make the story feel plausible and timely.

Joel Schumacher’s “The Lost Boys” (1987) was rated the No. 2 Top Vampire Film Ever out of 32 (Sept. 5, 2023), yet it nearly didn’t get made. The screenplay was based on the fact Santa Cruz had once been called the “Murder Capital of the World,” mixed with a Peter Pan “Lost Boys” tale, that they never grew up in this Boardwalk town of endless childhood, by becoming vampires. Yet in 1987, the Murder Capital reference still stirred-up raw emotions in a town only 14 years after three maniacs committed multiple murders. As I was told at the time, it became a condition of filming here, that the town’s name be changed in the film (it was called Santa Carla). When the film had its sneak preview at the Rio Theatre, we were delighted to see it was a loving tribute to the tail-end of the town’s Hippie Era, with the Doors’ song “People Are Strange” as a perfect theme for Weird Santa Cruz. The film captures a time when architecture favored the organic and natural. The movie is now the only place you’ll see the Fun Spot surfboard shop, or the Pogonip Clubhouse interior, and the area’s funky fun. Interwoven is the compelling song “Cry Little Sister” with its chorus of “Thou shalt not fall … thou shalt not die …thou shalt not fear … thou Shalt Not Kill.” The film succeeds on many levels, for acting, cinematography and outstanding storytelling.

The same year came “Killer Klowns From Outer Space,” with the goofiest premise: what if clowns aren’t some earthly fantasy, but really exist on their own planet. This horror spoof exploits every clown cliche in hilarious manner, a film that launched the popularity of sinister looking clowns so widely seen today. The special effects were produced in the Seagate Building in Watsonville, with shots around Watsonville, Soquel, Santa Cruz and the Boardwalk.

In 2017 came a film spoofing the premise of “The Omen,” called “Little Evil.” It wasn’t filmed locally, but stars Adam Scott, a Santa Cruz kid who graduated from Harbor High. Scott’s innocent character marries an equally innocent woman, who can’t see any wrong in her sullen, stoic son, around whom horrors occur. The stepdad has trouble bonding in any conventional way with his stepson. All the boy’s previous stepfathers have died, and people keep telling the dad that his stepson is the son of Satan.

“Us” was made in 2019, and is too intense for some audiences, especially children. It borrows some elements of “It Came From Outer Space,” but uses them in entirely original ways. This time, the story is literally about Santa Cruz. It opens in 1986 when “Hands Across America” was happening, and a little girl wanders away from her family on the Boardwalk and finds an amusement that mentally scars her for life. Fast forward to 2019, and she’s married with a family, living in an upscale mountain home on a lake. But the idyllic calm is disturbed by strangers with an agenda. At the end you may question what happened, and the nature of identity, and humanity.