See Lugosi’s ‘Dracula’ cape and Hannibal Lecter’s mask at the Academy Museum’s ‘The Horror Show’

An exhibit that opened last month at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures asks the question: Why do horror films matter so deeply to so many people?

The Horror Show claims to blur the line between museum presentation and chilling spectacle, taking visitors on a journey through scary cinema. It features artifacts, costumes and props from more than 100 years of film.

"Horror has been around basically since film's inception," says Nicholas Barlow, an assistant curator at the museum. He spent more than two years putting together this exhibit with Jessica Niebel, a senior curator.

Barlow says horror can be treated as a cult genre by today's audiences, but it's played a major role in Hollywood history.

"Horror films saved and really propped up Universal Studios, moving that studio from a smaller studio to a kind of major player in the 1930s,” Barlow says. "It's always been there. It's always been profitable. It's always been finding audiences, and audiences have always been seeking out horror films."

A scare for all tastes

The Horror Show isn't collected chronologically. Instead, it's organized into six themed galleries: gothic, psychological, science, slasher, religion and ghosts. Each gallery invites visitors into iconic settings, where they encounter their favorite creatures, monsters and objects.

"In our gothic gallery, we have a spotlight on several different vampire films from the 1930s until contemporary titles," Barlow says. "From Tod Browning's Dracula with Bela Lugosi to Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula in the '90s to Sinners. So, we were able to really dive into this kind of recurring figure of the vampire through props and costume elements and production design drawings. They're really beautiful, really incredibly rare objects and materials."

One of the exhibition's crown jewels is Bela Lugosi's cape from the 1931 Dracula, on display for the first time. The museum worked with Lugosi's family to obtain and preserve it. Another is the original costume of Hannibal Lecter from 1991's The Silence of the Lambs, restrained in a straitjacket on a hand truck with his iconic mask.

"One of the things that we're really excited about is we were able to work with filmmaker Jonathan Demme's family," Barlow says. "We were able to work with the family to borrow all of these original elements from the film and put them on display."

The exhibition also explores representations of identity, sexuality and ability in horror films, which Barlow says the genre is the perfect venue for.

"Part of the exhibition in the religion gallery looks at witchcraft through the feminist lens of the witch," Barlow says. "We also have a spotlight on The Exorcist, and we really look at the ideas of ability and illness represented in film."

Horror as a mirror of its time

The Horror Show also offers insight into the real-life issues of the eras in which these films were made.

"In the 1960s, in a film like Rosemary's Baby, there's this focus on reproduction and the battle over the female body," Barlow says. "In the 1970s, with films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, there's this dual thing happening, which is a kind of response to the Vietnam War and witnessing the carnage of that war, and also the de-industrialization of America. Horror is this really amazing venue to react to what is going around and also speak towards darker and maybe psychological threads that are not being mined in pop culture."

Barlow says he hopes visitors will appreciate the filmmakers as much as the monsters.

"One of the things that's really exciting about the exhibition is not just the iconic images and materials from horror movies that people will recognize," Barlow says. "But it also is a deep dive into the stories of the people who make horror and who create horror."

The Horror Show is open through July 25, 2027. The Academy Museum is located at 6067 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tickets are $25 for adults under 62, $19 for adults 62 and over and $15 for students with a valid ID. Children 17 and under are free.

You can get tickets here.