The Body Snatcher: The Horror Genre

It’s hard to imagine going to see a horror movie today and not seeing some kind of violent and gory death, this was not the case for earlier horror films. When the horror genre began to make a name for itself back in the early 1900s, filmmakers got a lot of pull back from the Production Code Administration. From the beginning the horror genre was considered one of “the problem genres” (Prince) and was heavily scrutinized by the PCA. One of the main issues the PCA found with the horror genre was the depiction of violence in its films. The Production Code stated that “Brutal killings are not to be presented in detail” (Maltby). Because of this, filmmakers had to go about shooting these films in ways that more alluded to violence, than actually

One example of this is Robert Wise’s 1945 film The Body Snatcher. In the correspondence between the filmmakers and the PCA, the PCA expressed their concerns with the film by saying the first draft of the scrip was “unacceptable under the provisions of the code” because of the subject matter dealing with “grave-robbing, dissecting bodies, and picking bodies” (Wise, Letter 2). The PCA stated that “before the basic story could be approved” they would have to make some changes to the script “to replace the objectionable matter” (Wise, Letter 2). The issue with dead bodies was a reoccurring issue with the PCA, it wasn’t until the filmmakers made some revisions to the scrip on this subject matter that the PCA was willing to give any kind of approval. Though the PCA found issues with The Body Snatcher subject matter, the film didn’t seems to be as “violent” or as “gruesome” as earlier films like the Bride of Frankenstein. It seems that during the 30s and 40s PCA were very hard on films that planned to show violent acts in their films and advised filmmakers that if they wanted these films to be approved they would have to be creative in the way they showed these violent