The American Nightmare

The documentary sets American horror films of the late sixties and the seventies alongside the news images of the years that made them. Footage out of Vietnam, riots in the cities, assassinations and the violence television was carrying into living rooms for the first time cut against the images of the films shot in those same years. The argument is plain: these films were not escape but the country's answer to its own pictures. The people speaking are the ones who made them: George Romero, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, David Cronenberg and the makeup artist Tom Savini. The connection Savini draws between what he saw as a combat photographer in Vietnam and the work he later did on screen is the most uncomfortable stretch in the film. At seventy-three minutes the documentary is not trying to narrate the history of a genre; it picks a few films and asks why they appeared when they did.