In early 1931 — just as their new movie, Dracula, was set to premiere — Universal Studios executives realized they weren’t sure how to describe it. The horror genre was still fairly new, after all. Eventually, they settled on promising the audience “chilling horrors of the night.”
Later that same year, when the studio released Frankenstein, it felt much more comfortable telling audiences to expect a “superb epic of terror.”
Now, almost a century later, the genre is well established. Moviegoers know that a “chilling horror of the night” or “superb epic of terror” is one of the ways to scare themselves silly. (Haunted houses, Ouija boards and after-dark visits to cemeteries are a few other options for those feeling frightful.)
