Distribution possibilities don’t allow me to give an outright review, but I thoroughly enjoyed this successful overview of the American horror film. Visually, Andrew Monument's Nightmares in Red, White and Blue (2009) [official site] resembles one of those TV docs that pop up around Halloween time, counting down the scariest moments of what-have-you, but while those programs want only to be top ten lists of memorable movies, Nightmares takes it a step further by contextualizing those successful scares. More than any other film genre, horror is an industry that has grown along with its viewers, adapting to what makes its audiences afraid—World Wars, genocide, government paranoia, etc. Even trashy film can be a wonderful chronicler of the human experience, directly or indirectly, because it will always be a product of the times in which it was made. With talking heads from horror bigshots like John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and George Romero and narrated by Lance Henriksen, I have to say: I took a class on the horror film in college and Nightmares is very much a condensed but equally insightful version of that information, for thousands of dollars less in tuition.Cross-published on Ornery-Crosby and Twitch.
