During World War 2, the horror genre shifted from Britain to America as horror films were banned in Britain. Hollywood began producing more horror films to entertain domestic audiences. These 1940s horror films often featured creatures influenced by the war, including Frankenstein, werewolves, and cat people. One influential film was 1941's The Wolf Man, which established werewolf tropes and was written by a man who fled the Nazis. Another success was 1942's Cat People, a psychological thriller produced by RKO that took a different approach than The Wolf Man. By the end of the decade, the major studios focused more on silly sequels and crossovers of their monsters, weakening the genre.

1. Horror In The 1940s

2. Films Of The Decade
During the beginning of the 1940s World War II
was raging. With this came an effect on the horror
industry.
With Horror banned in Britain, America took over
the horror genre. Soon Hollywood began to develop
multiple horrors as a way to amuse the domestic
audience. Universal took hold of the genre at first
and began developing several films.
However it wasn’t just the number of films that
were effected by war, the type of film also was
impacted. The 40’s saw multiple creature and primal
animal films released, bringing in creatures like
Frankenstein, Werewolf's and Cat People.

3. During the 40’s wolves became a key icon of horror.
This was mainly to do with the war and the idea that
Nazi’s were often references as Wolves by Hitler
himself. Adolf in old German even means noble wolf.
The
“One of his favourite tunes came from a Walt Disney movie. Often and
absent-mindedly he whistled "Who's Afraid of The big Bad Wolf?" —an
animal, it will be recalled, who wanted to eat people up and blow their
houses down."
—p27 The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler Robert G.L. Waite (Da Capo Press
1993)
The imagery he used caught on in not-so-flattering
ways. Propagandists of the period habitually depicted
him as the Big Bad Wolf of fairy tales. It seemed the

4. The Wolf Man (1941)
This Universal film really began the Hollywood
trope of Werewolf films. Bringing together the
ideas of silver bullets, full moons and several
other elements into one film which would later
become iconic tropes to the werewolf culture.
The Wolf Man is one of three top-tier
Universal Studios monsters without a direct
literary source.
It was written by Curt Siodmak, a man who
had fled the Nazi’s himself in 1937.
The story follows Larry Talbot who returns to
his ancestral home from America, only to
become infected by a bite from a gypsy. With
a starry cast including Claude Raines, and
spectacular makeup and special effects, the

5. Cat People (1942)
Soon Universal began to drop in the
Horror market and RKO took over
developing the film ‘Cat People’ in 1942.
This film was classed as a psychological
thriller and took a different take than the
one that ‘The Wolf man’ had taken. It
was a great success, earning $4M (off a
$134k original budget) and was followed
by The Curse of the Cat People in 1944
The plot concerns a young lady unwilling
to give in to passion for fear that she
may be a Cat Person, which is to say
someone who turns into a large and
rather dangerous cat when inflamed by
passion or anger.
The film focused on women, showcasing
them as dangerous. This related to how
they were treated after the war. Many

6. However after these successes it
switched from A to B pictures, and
focussed on increasingly silly sequels to
the big franchises: Frankenstein, The
Wolf Man, Dracula and The Mummy.
With films like Frankenstein Meets the
Wolf Man and House of Frankenstein it
crammed its monsters together, on the
basis that if one monster is scary, four
must be four times as scary. Like so
many franchises, it got tired, less artful
and more cynical and soon the iconic
monsters created became less terrifying
and more comical.