This is a ground-breaking study, which reveals and emphasises the formative and innovative power of film from Georges Méliès’s Manoir du Diable (1896) to Edgar G. Ulmer’s superbly reflexive The Black Cat (1934). Focusing on twenty-two key films, and referencing other relevant productions, this book involves an inclusive and sensitive approach. It reveals an awareness of the heterogeneity of horror production with the discussion spanning the period of the invention of movies, the expansion from single-reelers to longer and continuous productions, and the advent of talkies.