Media History Shorts: Silent Era Horror Films and German Expressionism

Horror was one of the early essential genres of cinema: from Lon Chaney memorable performance as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) to the German expressionists who turned their war trauma into unforgettable films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Nosferatu (1922), and Metropolis (1927). Coming on after World War I and the Spanish Flu, audiences turned to horror films to both escape and explore the trauma of the era.