American Nightmare

A documentary about past times, and therefore this time

I discovered last week that one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen is available on YouTube for anybody to just, like, watch.

It’s called American Nightmare and was directed by my (wise) friend, Adam Simon. As an example of how medium and message and subject matter and its treatment can be mixed into one compelling whole, I’ve seldom (if ever) seen it bettered (including the use of music by God Speed You Black Emperor). I remember being transfixed when I saw it at the London Film Festival back in 2000. It’s popped back into my head many times since, but I’d somehow never thought to ask how I could see it again.

Well, here it is... and I urge you to watch it.

It’s ostensively about American horror movies of the late 60s and 70s — virtually all of which were directed by one or other of the people Adam interviews, from Night of the Living Dead to Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Shivers to Last House on the Left to Halloween — but the underlying focus is on examining how these films reflected and embodied societal unease and psychological chaos in the face of everything from Vietnam to racial violence to the fight for women’s rights to the shootings at Kent State.

“All those films tell us over and over: the apocalypse isn’t now… the apocalypse has always been ongoing.”

— Professor Adam Lowenstein

Interviewees include seminal directors Wes Craven, David Cronenburg, Tom Savini, John Carpenter, George Romero, Tobe Hooper and John Landis, along with academics Professor Carol Clover, Professor Tom Gunning and Professor Adam Lowenstein. Each of the contributors offers piercingly acute analyses of the intersection between what we view on screen and the undercurrents of real life: every single one of them has something fascinating to say about horror, film in general, how they reflect and interpret modern society, and the nature of that society — or all of the above.

The documentary is nearly a quarter-century old but has never felt more timely. Because, think about it: if you watch the news right now — with campus protests over American involvement in foreign wars, the fall of Roe vs Wade, and venal opportunists circling the White House like a pack of jackals — doesn’t it feel like we’re being dragged back to those issues more viscerally than at any time since?

Let me — and Adam — know what you think in the comments…

(Viewer discretion is advised: the horror movies of that era didn’t pull any punches, and neither did real-life events — hence the age restriction on the link below).