Walpole at the Movies: Exploring the Influence of The Castle of Otranto in Horror Film. Will Standish Dr. Breashears 3/19/14 It is, perhaps, not unfair to say that Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto has lost some of its ability to inspire genuine fear in most modern readers in the 250 years that have passed since it was first published. It’s somewhat flat characters and insistence on the aweinspiring horror of colossal pieces of armor perhaps does not hold the terrifying gravitas that they had when the book was originally released. While its scariness and plotting may be up for debate, The Castle of Otranto has undeniably shaped the way we interpret the horror genre and continues to be an important touchstone for horror cinema to this day. While its general plot outline may seem more fitted to melodrama, the base elements of the story are prevalent in almost every notable horror film in the past several decades. The horror genre can boast a wider multitude than just about any other genre of film, and the presence of The Castle Otranto can be found across most, if not all of them. Otherwise disparate subgenres such as the slasher film, the giant monster sci-fi film, the broadly defined haunted house film, and the recent phenomena of the “found footage” film each owe a debt to The Castle of Otranto for many of the stylistic and thematic elements that inform them. While it may not always be noticeable on the surface, The Castle of Otranto haunts modern horror cinema quite thoroughly. At a quick glance, it might be easy to dismiss the slasher film--movies about teens meeting their gory end at the hands of (occasionally supernatural) serial killers-- as a cheap and un-nuanced subgenre of horror with little to do with the Romantic-bred Gothic horror of

Walpole. A closer analysis, however, reveals that the genre shares very similar thematic elements to the Castle of Otranto and its portrayal of the relationship between children and their parents. In the Castle of Otranto, much of the horror and dread that the reader feels stems from the fact that the parents in the novel are unable to prevent their children from danger. Despite her noble intentions, Hippolita repeatedly fails both Matilda and Isabella, the latter serving Hippolita’s intended daughter-in-law. Hippolita does not interfere with Manfed’s schemes, and fails both of the girls through her inaction. Frederic, the father and assumed protector of Isabella, also fails his duty as a parent, agreeing to Manfred’s proposed daughter swap, once again putting his daughter directly in harm’s way (Walpole 61). Though the threats are different, the theme of parental absence is present in almost every slasher film. Notably, a survey of films such as Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween reveals that the targets of the killers in these films are exclusively teenagers and young adults, and that in each case, parents are either completely absent or are unavailable when their children face danger. Critic Pat Gill explains that “Parents in these films are generally absent, either physically or emotionally. They have demanding jobs, working late in the evening. They go on business trips or on vacations without the kids (19)”. For one reason or another, parents in slasher films are unable to offer assistance. In Otranto, Hippolita is unable to help her children because “the purity of [her] own heart prevents [her] seeing the depravity of others (89).” Just as in the slasher, Hippolita cannot help the heroines of the story because she cannot see the dangers they face. The reoccurring theme is that of parents too occupied to recognize the danger that their children face, even when those parents occupy positions of authority. In Halloween, the father of one of the girls killed by Michael Meyers is an active police officer investigating the

escaped killer but always just one step behind him. In this regard, he serves a similar role to Frederic, as both are figures of authority sworn to protection who are still ineffective in protecting their children. In both the Castle of Otranto and the slasher genre, we are presented a world of youth on the cusp of adulthood being endangered by the preceding generation. In Otranto and Halloween, for example, it falls to a young woman or group of young women to face down dangers that stalk them. Otranto creates a theme of imperiled youth that the slasher genre would later be built around. A common thread throughout the Gothic novel is the concept of taboo, particularly within the family. In Otranto, this manifests itself in the somewhat incestuous desire that Manfred feels for Isabella, who lived in his home as a daughter leading up to her marriage to Conrad. While it takes a slightly different form, family taboo is a core component of the Halloween film franchise, specifically through the theme of fratricide. Both the original Halloween and its 2007 remake open with six-year-old Michael Meyers murdering his older sister on Halloween night. The tone of the film is set not just by an image of murder, but by the breaking of familial boundaries and committing taboo. Later installments of the Halloween series will reveal that Laurie Strode, the heroine of the first film, is actually Meyer’s younger sister, making his return to his hometown purely driven by his desire to commit fratricide once again. With its themes of incestuous desire and the murder of one’s own children, Otranto establishes the breaking of family codes as an integral part of the Gothic novel and the horror genre at large. While Freudian analysis may lend itself to interesting analysis of Michael Meyer’s choice of wielding a large knife in his attempts on his sisters’ lives, the core dread of the series lies in its breaking of family boundaries, and the endangering of young women by

their relatives. It is clear that Halloween is working within a framework established by Otranto and the novels which it inspired. By its very nature, the haunted house film is steeped in the imagery of the Gothic tradition which found its roots in Walpole’s writing. While horror critics such as Jack Morgan make the assertion that the elements that we associate the Gothic genre existed well before The Castle of Otranto (41), it nonetheless remains a key component of the genre and serves as the beginning of the Gothic novel tradition, particularly in its use of setting and description of place. The elements that we associate with the haunted house film such as winding corridors, dark and moldering rooms and passages, and homes housing family tragedy can be drawn back to the eponymous castle. In classic horror cinema, the Gothic aesthetic of Otranto is perhaps best reflected in Robert Wise’s 1963 film The Haunting, based on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, widely considered to be classic of the modern Gothic mode (Bunnell 87). Though it is based on a novel, the film evokes the Gothic in a unique manner through its Gothic shooting locale and its use of cinematography. Robert Wise constructs incredibly evocative shots, casting long, angular shadows across the walls of the mansion, often setting the camera at peculiar angles so as to make the viewer uneasy. “Even during the day, shadows fill every corner, hinting of the unknown, primitive darkness of the house (Bunnell 89).” In the Gothic tradition established by Walpole, the building itself becomes a menacing character in the text, both reflecting and amplifying the terror felt by the characters. In both Otranto and The Haunting, the physical space expresses the emotions of the characters. The massive, sublime space of the castle is a reflection of Manfred’s sublime, outsized presence in the novel. The winding, labyrinthine hallways of the castle are a manifestation of Isabella’s inability to

escape from Manfred’s plot. This concept is used to great effect by Wise in The Haunting. The mental anguish of the heroines of this film is captured in physical space. Isabella’s frantic, twisting escape through the vaults, dungeons, and catacombs of Otranto are incredibly similar to the Haunting, specifically in Eleanor’s doomed ascent of a winding spiral staircase in the library (Bunnell 89). As an heir to the modern Gothic tradition, it’s clear that both Wise and Shirley Jackson in her novel owe a great debt to Otranto’s evocation of the Gothic locale and its portrayal of the sublime. It is impossible to discuss the Gothic novel without discussing the role of the sublime in the construction of Gothic landscape. The Gothic strives to evoke the massive and unfathomable in both its villains and its settings. In the Castle of Otranto, the sublime is present not just in its characterization of Manfred, but in its exotic, distant setting. The size of the castle and the surrounding countryside overwhelm both the characters and the reader in ways that good filmmakers achieve through cinematography. Few directors capture Otranto’s sublime scale quite as well as Stanley Kubrick does in his opening to his 1981 film adaptation of The Shining. In the film’s opening sequence, the viewer follows the Torrance family’s car as it makes its way through winding mountain roads on their way to the Overlook hotel. Instead of the tight, claustrophobic cinematography of the Haunting, Kubrick engulfs the viewer in the expansive, sublime setting of the Rocky Mountains through wide, sweeping shots. Throughout the opening, the Torrance’s car is dwarfed by the mountain ranges they drive through, making them only a small part of an incalculably large landscape. Kubrick evokes a sense of unease and establishes the tone of the proceeding film in the same way that writers such as Walpole and his contemporaries did through their descriptions of location and setting.

While filmmakers like Robert Wise and Stanley Kubrick capture Walpole’s aesthetic through the use of heavily constructed shots, recently the trend has turned towards capturing realism in horror film. One of the most popular subgenres of horror in recent years has been the “found footage” subgenre, a mode which produces much of its ability to scare from the conceit that the events of the film actually occurred. At its release in 1999, The Blair Witch Project, the first massively popular found footage film became the most financially success independent release, partially due to a multi-media campaign which presented the film as a real document of the disappearance of a group of filmmakers investigating the legend of an 18 th century witch (Harris 77). Since then, found footage films such as the Paranormal Activity series have become some of the most financially successful horror films of the decade using a similar conceit, the first film in the series grossing $107,918,810 in its theatrical run. While a film being purportedly based on a true story is an old concept, actively presenting the film as a found document can be traced back to the original preface to The Castle of Otranto. In his first preface to the novel, Walpole presents the novel to the reader under the pseudonym William Marshall as a medieval document “found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the North of England (5).” Walpole presents the story as an Italian manuscript dating back to between 1095 and 1243 and presents the events as ones that people of the time believed to be true (6). Though Walpole would later reveal that the story was not a historical document, it is telling that he only chose to do so after the novel proved to be a financial success. It is not unlikely that its presentation as fact or as some valid historical text counts in part for some of the novels early success and was perhaps a large part of the draw for readers. It is this same conceit that

has made the found footage subgenre so potent. Like Otranto, the appeal lies not in whether or not the events presented actually occurred, but in the nature of its presentation. Though it may seem to have the least to do with what modern audiences consider scary, even the infamous giant helmet that sets of the events of the Castle of Otranto has its modern antecedents. Though few significant academic examinations have been published on the subject, the giant monster film can be viewed as an ancestor to the horror that Walpole meant to convey in his oversized armor. In Otranto, the armor which plagues the castle appears due to the sinister actions of Manfred’s line. The helmet crushing the sickly and presumably innocent Conrad can be viewed as the exacting of what Walpole refers to as the sins of the father being exacted on “their children to the third and fourth generation (7).” The giant armor stalks the halls of Otranto in punishment for Manfred’s family betraying Alfonso and usurping the crown. This theme of the giant entity appearing to serve as a punishment for the commitment of atrocities is carried over into the giant monster movie tradition starting in the fifties with films such as Godzilla. Central to the plot of the Godzilla is the concept of the monster as an analogue for nuclear weaponry. Godzilla is created by nuclear testing and punishes mankind for the creation of the bomb through his destruction. Similar themes can be found in American science fiction films such as 1954’s Them. Once again, nuclear testing leads to the creation of gigantic creatures—in this case, irradiated ants—which return to the society that created them to wreak havoc. Like in Otranto, giants serve as a physical reminder of wrongs committed. The horror of the helmet as well as in Godzilla, lie partially in their massive size, but also in the notion that past wrongs are inescapable and will eventually catch up with those committed them, at the cost of the innocent around them.

As author Jack Morgan demonstrates, The Castle of Otranto’s significance does not lie in the fact that it created the elements that we associate with the Gothic novel (41). Rather, what makes The Castle of Otranto a significant work is the way that the various themes and concepts that inform the book are assembled and presented to the reader. It is not the originator of the central ideas of Gothic horror, but of how we interpret those ideas. Otranto has the language of horror cinema in the same way. While it’s likely that the creators of films like Halloween, The Shining, and The Blair Witch Project did not specifically have Otranto in mind while creating their films, they are nonetheless indebted to Walpole for the ways that he brought the Gothic landscape, familial themes, and the “found document” conceit into the language of contemporary horror. Walpole’s novel is, ultimately, significant because it synthesized a language for the horror genre that has echoed throughout centuries and subgenres and has left its mark on otherwise radically different visions of horror. It is not an exaggeration to say that without the influence of The Castle of Otranto, the horror film as we know it today would perhaps look quite different.

Works Cited The Blair Witch Project. Dir. Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez. Perf. Heather Donohue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard. Haxan Films, 1999. Film. “Box office/ business for Paranormal Activity”. Internet Movie Database. Internet Movie Database, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2014. Bunnell, Charlene. “The Gothic: A Literary Genre’s Transition to Film.” Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press Inc, 1984. 79100. Print. Gill, Pat. “The Monstrous Years: Teens, Slasher Films, and the Family.” Journal of Film & Video. 54.4 (2002): 16-30. Web. Godzilla. Dir. Ishiro Honda. Perf. Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, and Akihiko Hirata. Toho, 1954. Film. Halloween. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Tony Morgan. Warner Brothers, 1978. DVD. The Haunting. Dir. Robert Wise. Perf. Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn. MGM, 1963. Film. Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Penguin, 1959. Print. Martin, Harris. “The ‘Witchcraft’ of Media Manipulation: Pamela and The Blair Witch Project.” Journal of Popular Culture. 34.4 (2001): 75-108. Web. Morgan, Jack. The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2002. Print. Paranormal Activity. Dir. Oren Peli. Perf. Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat. Paramount Pictures, 2007. Film. The Shining. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, and Scatman Crothers. Warner Bros, 1981. Film. Them! Dir. Gordon Douglas. Perf. James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, and James Arness. Warner Bros, 1954. Film. Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.