Ìý User Rating 
Somewhere in the grainy hand-held horror of 1970s gore films I saw something that shocked me to the core. After seeing "American Nightmare", I know what it was - the cold fear of human violence.
These films were made by a society terrified of itself. The unparalleled cruelty and violence of films like "Last House on the Left", the parasitic sexual frenzy of Cronenberg's "Shivers", and the bleakness of Romero's zombie trilogy were intimately linked with the social fragmentation and political upheavals of the time. Traditionally written off as exploitative and artless, director Adam Simon argues that the low budget gore-films made between 1968 and 1978 represent an honest reaction to the ugly side of that decade.
This was the era of the shootings at Kent State University, the war in Vietnam, race riots, and the breakdown of the family. The old closed world of righteous authority, nationhood, and community was fading, and it was becoming harder to tell the difference between good and bad. This point is convincingly emphasised in the film by juxtaposing horrific scenes from films with equally - if not more - brutal newsreel footage until the viewer cannot tell them apart.
This is a very intelligent and thought provoking documentary. Through fascinating interviews with some of the greatest horror directors of the period (Romero, Craven, Carpenter, etc.) it asks important questions about what frightens us, and why this sub-genre of films will always rank as some of the most terrifying and disturbing ever made.
"American Nightmare" will be released theatrically, or broadcast on television, sometime in 2001.
