Biological Horror Film Analysis

Science has been a major component of the horror genre ever since its origins. These two different subjects go hand in hand. Specifically, horror movies are well known to exploit the human anatomy to create repulsive and monstrous creatures such as decomposing zombies or alien offspring. Studies of the human anatomy have inspired producers and authors to use the human body to inspire that feeling of repulsion, fear, and disgust proper to the horror genre. To explain the ambivalent love and the fear for the horror genre that uses the human body, also called "body horror" or "biological horror," many scholars have been analyzing this subject. Rebecca E. May (Carnegie Mellon University, Qatar) and her study "This Shattered Prison': Bodily Dissolution,

They both explore the importance of the human anatomy and explain the exploitation of it in the movies. Drawing upon these writers' argument, many major horror movies connect to both arguments such as George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) and Rupert Julian's, et al. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

The innovation in science like the discoveries by the anatomists has initiated the use of the human body in the horror cinema. Even though she does not directly talk about the gothic movie, Rebecca E. May illustrates the great importance of these anatomists and their work on the human dissection. Many connections between her study of this medical field and the horror films can be drawn such as how "the anatomists, in showing us his corpses, shows us ourselves." (May, 424) Like the horror movies, the monster often represents us, either the idea of a certain inventor or even the human body. We fear the disgusting monsters in movies such as in George A. Romero's work Night of the Living Dead where those zombies are only decomposing humans, us when we will die. As gore it can be, those men are able to withdraw pleasurable and exciting joy from dissecting those corpses just like the