Night after night, from 1894 until 1962, people from all over Paris would gather and watch in fascination as screaming heroines were lowered into acid vats, as eyeballs were slowly and horribly bisected by long silver blades, as bodies were torn limb from limb, spraying scarlet freshets of blood in all directions. The victims of these indignities were not really hurt, of course, but night after night they tried very hard, with the help of ingenious special effects and gallons of fake blood, to make the audience believe that the shocking torture taking place on the stage was really happening. The killers and victims were actors, and the venue was the famous — and notorious — Grand Guignol.
History of the Grand Guignol
Though the phrase “grand guignol” is today generally used to describe something grisly or horrific, the theater itself actually featured plays in all genres, including farcical comedies. It opened in 1897 in the Pigalle section of Paris, named after Guignol, a traditional French puppet character.
It was a tiny venue, an erstwhile chapel that only contained 293 seats, but founder Oscar Méténier hoped to make it the premier venue for plays in the naturalist vein, such as those performed at André Antoine’s Theatre Libre. Naturalistic plays strove for absolute realism, and often dealt with “low-life” characters and situations — prostitutes, thieves and other criminals — that were frowned upon in the works on offer at other Paris theaters.
From its earliest days, the format at the Grand Guignol barely wavered — audiences would witness five or six short plays in an evening, running the gamut from crime dramas to sex farces. Horror plays were usually only a small portion of the entertainments, but they quickly became the biggest draw, particularly after new director Max Maurey focused more on them after taking the helm in 1898.
Grand Guignol and the Horror Genre
The genre for which the theater is remembered today might be called early splatter horror, as the performers and special effects technicians took great care in making the scenes as realistically gory as possible, measuring their success by the number of audience members who fainted during the performances. Many of the horror plays, like Un Crime dans une Maison de Fous, revolved around madness, and no doubt benefited from the expertise of experimental psychologist Alfred Binet, who collaborated with prolific playwright André de Lorde on many Grand Guignol works.
Equally important to the horror plays’ popularity was the dedication of the actors — Paula Maxa in particular was a big draw, as she suffered rape, torture and bloody murder thousands of times beginning in 1917. But probably the biggest attraction for Paris audiences — much like horror fans of today — was the gore. Technicians at the Grand Guignol used every trick at their disposal — fake blood, collapsing knife blades, tubes, dummies and trapdoors — to make the audience believe they were seeing real death and dismemberment occurring before their eyes.
World War II and the Decline of the Grand Guignol
As popular as the horror plays were in the early part of the twentieth century, it ironically took some real-life horror to make audiences lose their appetite for the fake stuff. The gruesome horror of the Grand Guignol had been slowly giving way to more psychological horror and drama since Jack Jouvin took the reins as director in 1930, though the bloody splatterfests still drew respectable crowds. All that changed with the onset of World War II and its parade of very real and very shocking atrocities; suddenly the over-the-top bloodbaths of the Grand Guignol began to seem rather tame and tawdry by comparison, and audiences slowly drifted away. The theater itself closed its doors in 1962.
Modern Revivals of the Grand Guignol
Even though the venue is long gone, the spirit of the Grand Guignol lives on, and not only as an oft-uttered phrase among horror aficionados. Several theater groups in the United States have attempted to recapture the glory days of the Grand Guignol, performing some of André de Lorde’s famous plays and writing new ones in a similar style. The Queens Players in New York, Thrillpeddlers in San Francisco, and the Molotov Theatre Group in Washington DC have been instrumental in keeping the soul of the Grand Guignol alive, and its particular aesthetic has been a profound influence on scores of artists, musicians, and film directors.
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