Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film

Darren Lynn Bousman:
Speaking of Horror: Most of the power that it has relates to the time that it is made.

John Carpenter:
Last House on the Left was... it was like a strong cup of coffee in the morning, and opened you right up. Wow!

George A. Romero:
[talking about the 1960s and Night of the Living Dead] I thought it was about revolution. Um, you know we were '60s guys and, um, thinking in those terms sort of pissed off that the '60s revolution didn't work peace and love didn't solve anything in the end in fact sh*t was looking worse. And I said, what would be a really earth shattering thing that would revolutionary and that people would refuse to ignore. THE DEAD STOP STAYING DEAD! Oh! And there's one thing more, THEY LIKE TO EAT LIVING PEOPLE!

Larry Cohen:
If a horror film is cutting off people's thumbs and gouging your eyes out, I guess that's a certain of horror. But it's not the kind of horror film that interests me.

Mick Garris:
If you meet all the people who make horror films, you discover they are very non-violent, they're politically active and knowledgeable and anti-war. They have opened themselves up to all of these possibilities, and it's the people repressed them who are the ones you have to look out for.

Narrator:
In Targets, Boris Karloff realizes that triditional monsters can't compete with the horrors of real life in 1960s America.

John Carpenter:
[Talking about They Live] I had this deal with Universal to make some movies where I would write the scripts and I'd have complete control and such, which was great. And I wanted to do something about Reaganism and... because it pissed me off so much. The crowd was kill a commie for Christ and uh... let's get those commies and kill all of them.Something I grew up laughing at that in Dr. Strangelove. And now here it was again and with this massive enthusiasm behind it, and this unrestrained um... free enterprise.

Mick Garris:
[Talking about The Howling] Horror became spectacle again. Back in the '50s it was spectacle because it was space monsters and all those things. And in the '60s it drew down to the Norman Bates and Rosemary's Baby and into human drama. Now it was a new time because suddenly it wasn't just the filmmaker, but it is also the special effects guys, the Rick Bakers of the world, the Rob Bottins of the world. Spectacle returned in a big way.