Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film (2009) on Netflix

Plot summary

The documentary traces the American horror film across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, asking what draws audiences to the genre and how it has moved with the country's fears. Filmmakers, producers and historians give interviews, with narration linking their accounts. From the silent era comes a connection between films that cast disfigured people as the antagonist and soldiers who returned from World War I with injuries. After sound arrived, European directors adapted horror literature from Europe for American viewers, as in Frankenstein. Paranoia about nuclear weapons during World War II and the Atomic Age produced a wave of 1950s B movies. The 1960s and 1970s grew more violent and sexually explicit, and hits like The Exorcist and Jaws brought the genre mainstream recognition.