In honor of Halloween, let's have an intellectual discussion on the meaning of various movie monsters and horror themes

OP has way too much free time on his hands.

For starters, Laurie Strode wasn't a slut and even though Nancy Thompson had a boyfriend (Johnny Depp), she was pretty virginal too.

It's all about the fear of the "other."

Fear and revulsion of rape or sexuality.

Fear of death.

Not done r3 as u forgot fear of oneself, inner demon, etc.

Are you limiting this to modern day movies? Dracula was a Victorian era graphic novel, Frankenstein was a book as well. Modern interpretations aren't quite the same.

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers", Meg Ryan comes to mind....

"Body Snatchers" ---Red Scare.

Modern zombies represent the poor of the downsizing era.

They are ugly and ragged, stripped of their humanity, repulsive, but the truly thing about them is that we can become them in an instant.

I'll bite, r8. Do tell!

Modern vampires represent the modern rich.

They live by feeding off of us (well, our labor), they are totally indifferent to our welfare and feel free to use us, destroy us, and throw us away when they're done. But we don't hate them for it the way we should, instead we're fascinated by their glamour and want to become them, rather than defending ourselves from them.

Am I right or what!

The second Romero zombie film (Dawn) was clearly about consumerism.

Yeah you right, baby...

The Frankenstein monster has always represented, to me at least, someone who has been turned into something they were never meant to be. I always felt sympathy for the monster--he never asked to be re-animated and turned into a green-skinned, zipper-necked freak. That is why he was so violent and vengeful. I always felt like he was suffering physical pain and mental anguish due to his transformation. Oddly enough the Mel Brooks version of him is the best and most sympathetic of all even though it is a spoof.

I haven't read the book for a while, but my memory is that the monster wasn't violent and vengeful at all, until turned that way by society's cruelties towards him, which resulted from fear of his outward appearance. The Mel Brooks version is correct in that way.

In the original the monster was an amalgam of parts from various dead bodies - not zippered but multiply surgically stitched. He was basically analagous to an aged diva with too much plastic surgery and too many implants, except his stitches were visible.

I wonder if bride of Frankenstein had a vaginoplasty

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein protagonist is a metaphor for the industrial revolution and their fear of machines taking over for humans.

The Exorcist is about change, things we can't control, things we don't understand and overcoming our fears.

To expand on what R5 said about Dracula, essentially Stoker's novel was written at a time in English history (dawning of the 20th century) when attitudes towards women and European immigration were radically changing, and the bloodsucking Eastern-bloc bloke represented their worst fears combined.

The Shining is about child moleststion.

One theme that runs through many horror movies is that the creature kills or turns against its creator.

Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy, Metropolis, 2001: A Space Odyssey...

Even more modern sci-fi employs this trope -- Extant, Terminator, Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes (reboot)...

And of course, Adam and Eve turned against their creator as well...

Holy shit, R8, I freaking LOVE YOU!

The Shining is about the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Don't forget the gay themes in Nightmare on Elm Street II.

The Wolf Man is about adolescence, and not being in control of the changes in your body. And the hairy palms are significant, too.

The Shining is about the mistreatment of Native Americans.

Cujo is about the evil that is dog.

What was Halloween about?

I forget who said that Frankenstein's monster represents the adolescent male, but it's stuck.

Thrust into the world without understanding why and barely able to control his own body, the monster is ungainly, innocent, unintentionally destructive, angry, resentful, inarticulate, and obsessed with finding that one girl who won't reject him.

The Shining was about gold.

Child's Play was about the perils of misgendering.

Everyone knows Godzilla and other Japansese monsters were a working out post-bomb traumas, and a general fear of nuclear/radioactive poisoning of humanity and mother nature.

Fright Night was about coming out.

Godzilla 1998: No personality, just legs you sporadically see. Just like the corporate overlords responsible for this travesty.

Mary Shelley had a huge amount of death in her life, from a very young age. IIRC she lost both parents, and then had several miscarriages, all well before the age of 25.

In Victorian England, seances and ghosts were all the rage, so given her background she probably thought a lot about the concept of bringing loved ones back to life. Then she thought it through, and voila, a masterpiece. The innocence of the Creature and the readiness of humans to express fear through violence are key to what makes it so.

Frankenstein's monster represented our struggle with death and quest for eternal life.

Much of horror reflects the collective fears and a particular society's relationship with its institutional structures at the time the book/film/tv show is released. This is why films such as Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931 were terrifying to audiences then, but not so much now and certainly not for the same reasons. Religion was widely accepted and revered in literature and among the movie-going public. The horror of vampirism was the link to the unnatural state of the living dead and rejection of the natural order. Dr. Frankenstein presumed to play god by creating life, thus creating an "abomination" through his hubris and sacrilege. Over time the public's concerns gave way to war and nuclear fears which were reflected in the sci-fi and "red scare" films of the 50s. The Vietnam era/Civil Rights era ushered in the counterculture movement which saw the breakdown in trust of our institutions and leadership. We no longer could rely on a singular source to affirm and distinguish between good/evil, right/wrong. Thus entered the anti-hero, nihilism, identification with the villain, the destruction of innocence in the form of demonic possession, slashing, torture, and so on... Look back every ten years or so. Whatever we seem to be going through culturally and socially is often reflected through the horror films and themes of that time. Our collective fears.

Theories!