Don’t know your Blaculas from your Blackensteins? Just in time for Halloween, Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror makes it’s way from horror network Shudder to Amazon Prime to help you out, with a fascinating and incredibly comprehensive look at Black lives on screen in horror and other genres, over the decades.
Based upon the book Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present, by Robin R. Means Coleman, PhD., Horror Noire celebrates the spotlight that Jordan Peele’s Get Out shone on the black cinematic experience, before diving back into the early days of cinema, all the way to the racist portrayal of The Birth of A Nation, before charting the ups and (far more frequent) downs of Black on-screen representation.
I Mean, a Man Has to Got to See His Face!
Featuring appearances from Dr Coleman herself, alongside canny pairings of Black horror icons like Keith David (The Thing, They Live) with Ken Foree (1978’s Dawn of the Dead), the documentary mixes personal recollections with a more historical approach, tying the major films of each era into the societal issues of the time.
Director Xavier Burgin assembles alumni from various horror films, from the aforementioned Blacula to Poltergeist, The Return of the Living Dead to younger filmmakers like Meosha Bean, to provide real insight into what seeing people on screen who look like you means to people of differing generations. Jordan Peele even turns up to talk about Get Out, as does the Candyman himself, Tony Todd.
The documentary rightly shines a light on the work of directors like Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams, who combated the racist caricatures of the 1920s, 30s and 40s by showing professional, well spoken Black people on screen as lawyers and doctors, just doing normal things, a rarity at the time, before Black characters disappeared almost completely, during the atomic age of sci-fi horror of the 1950s.
The documentary also examines the the rise of tropes like the “magical negro” and “sacrificial nergro,” and evaluates the importance of films like Candyman to Black cinema without shying away from examining some of the issues with that film. (For context, Todd’s Candyman preys on poor Black people in project housing, whereas it might be more fitting if he attacked their affluent white neighbours, who have more in common with the people who tortured and killed him.)
Be My Victim
The personal touch, along with its brisk 83 minute runtime, avoids any fatigue that usually results from just watching a standard talking heads documentary.
Even for a fan of horror, there are plenty of movies highlighted here that have passed me by. Ones that I’m eager to seek out. Films like Bones starring Snoop Dogg, Def by Temptation, Tales from the Hood, and Eve’s Bayou.
It’s also fascinating to see the importance of U.K. based films like 2016’s The Girl With All The Gifts and 2011’s Attack the Block, thanks to the prominent role of Black actors. As empowering as the end of Alien Vs Predator might be, however, it’s still not a great movie.
If you have any interest in horror movies whatsoever, or are intested in seeing the world from a different perspective, then Horror Noire is well worth a watch. At the very least you’ll learn to tell your Blaculas from your Blackensteins (Blacula, and its sequel Scream Blacula Scream, is hailed as a classic, while Blackenstein is seen as an underlit mess).
Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror
Amazon Prime, Shudder
83 mins
Director: Xavier Burgin
Cast: Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman, Ashlee Blackwell, Keith David, Loretta Devine, William Crain, Tina Mabry,William Crain, Rusty Cundieff, Ernest R. Dickerson, Tananarive Due, Richard Lawson, Tina Mabry, Miguel A. Núñez Jr., Ken Sagoes, Monica Suriyage, Tony Todd, Rachel True, Jordan Peele and Paula Jai Parker
Follow Us