Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, directed by Xavier Burgen, written and produced by Ashlee Blackwell and Danielle Burrows, based on the book Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films From the 1890s to the Present  by Robin R. Means Coleman

Stage 3 Productions, 2019

Not Rated

Run time: 83 minutes

ISBN-13/ASIN: Not Available

Available: Streaming on Amazon, Shudder

“We’ve always loved horror. It’s just that horror, unfortunately, hasn’t always loved us.”

With this opening quote by Tananarive Due, award winning author and UCLA educator (Black Horror, Afrofuturism), viewers begin an essential documentary on Black horror. The film investigates a century of horror films that marginalized, exploited, and eventually accepted and embraced them. Horror Noire is based on University of Michigan professor Robin Means Coleman’s book of the same title. Through new and archival interviews from scholars and creators, we take a horror movie journey through early classics, Blaxplotiation, the Reagan Era, the 90s, and the 2000s. Interviewees include Ashlee Blackwell, who runs the Graveyard Shift Sisters website, Tony Todd, William Crain, Rusty Cundieff, Rachel True, Tina Mabry, Ken Foree, and Jordan Peele.

The documentary starts with a discussion of Black representation in Birth of a Nation and moves into early classics and depiction of Black characters, as slaves, servants, or hapless victims in the 1940s. When the 50s came, horror films basically erased the Black presence, with the exception of Son of Ingara, in Atomic Age science-centered scripts. Change was coming when Night of the Living Dead was released. Blaxploitation provided more screen time for Black actors, but the films remained problematic. The Reagan Era presented the change from “urban to suburban” white flight settings, relegating Black characters to gangsters and villains. In the 90s and 2000s, more Black filmmakers and actors appeared more in the horror genre, with a shift from the focal point of fear to heroes on the big screen.

I recommend this for anyone interested in the sociopolitical history of the horror genre. The use of footage from various civil rights and conflicts that reached the national level interspersed throughout the film helped explain the reception and shift in attitudes about Black horror, and Black horror movies. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker