The fabled Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris was and continues to be a source of endless fascination. Located at 20bis Rue Chaptal in the notorious Pigalle district, it was known for the horrific and often quite gory melodramas staged therein, which imparted the nickname the “Theater of Blood.” Of course the Guignol also included comedies and straight dramas in its nightly line-up, but it was the bloody horror plays for which it remains best known.
The connection with such a despised genre probably explains why so few English language books have been devoted to the Grand Guignol. As of 2019 only three major non-French language publications exist about the theater, all of which I’ll be covering below: THE GRAND GUIGNOL: THEATRE OF FEAR AND TERROR by Mel Gordon, GRAND-GUIGNOL: THE FRENCH THEATRE OF HORROR by Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson, and CHAPEL OF GORE AND PSYCHOSIS: THE GRAND GUIGNOL THEATRE by Jack Hunter (in addition to an updated edition of the first book and three offshoots of the second and third, which I’ll also be discussing).
Of the three books Gordon’s remains the most easily accessible. It was the first to appear, from the late Amok Press back in 1988, after which it was acquired by Da Capo Press in 1997 and eventually reprinted in an expanded edition—under the title THEATRE OF FEAR AND HORROR: THE GRISLY SPECTACLE OF THE GRAND GUIGNOL OF PARIS 1989-1962—by Feral House in 2016.
The response wasn’t entirely positive. A 1995 FUNERAL PARTY article on the Grand Guignol by Barry Alan Richmond accuses Gordon of not honoring contracts and fudging facts, with the overall book written off as “a superb example of poor scholarship carried to a high degree of perfection.” Furthermore, much ink has been expended on one especially grievous error in the book’s initial printing: the claim that “in March 1963, with much fanfare, the building that housed the Grand Guignol was totally destroyed,” which in the revised edition was updated to read “in March 1963, with much fanfare, the portico and front entrance of the Grand Guignol were totally destroyed.” Yet for the most part Gordon’s text is highly revered, as evinced by novelist Robert Levy, who dedicated his 2019 novel ANAÏS NIN AT THE GRAND GUIGNOL to “Mel Gordon, who showed us the way to 20bis Rue Chaptal.”
As described by Gordon, the Grand Guignol can be viewed as, essentially, the grindhouse of its age. The term grindhouse (for the three of you who don’t know) refers to big city movie theaters that thrived in the US during the 1970s and 80s by showing ultra-sleazy exploitation films. Those films included THE WIZARD OF GORE, THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW and BLOODSUCKING FREAKS, all of which were in the Grand Guignol tradition of conte cruel (described by H.P. Lovecraft as a form “in which the wrenching of the emotions is accomplished through dramatic tantalizations, frustrations, and gruesome physical horrors”).
Profusely illustrated with photos, posters and cartoons, GRAND GUIGNOL: THEATRE OF FEAR AND HORROR is an enjoyable piece of work first and foremost. Gordon, a former NYU professor who went on to author the popular Feral House publications VOLUPTUOUS PANIC: THE EROTIC WORLD OF WEIMAR BERLIN and HORIZONTAL COLLABORATION: THE EROTIC WORLD OF PARIS 1920-1946, lays out his information in an inviting, layperson-friendly (i.e. non-academic) manner.
I’d argue that he buys a little too readily into the myths about the Guignol, most notably that of the many patrons who allegedly fainted during its performances. Still, Gordon provides a reasonably thorough history of the Grand Guignol, from its beginnings as the Naturalist based Théâtre Libre to its grand opening in April of 1897, courtesy of the Libre’s co-founder Oscar Méténier, to its rise under the leadership of Max Maurey, to whom Méténier sold the theater in 1898, and its eventual demise in November of 1962. Also covered are the career of the theater’s star performer Maxa, who was apparently “murdered more than 10,000 times and in some 60 ways,” and the short-lived attempts at exporting the Grand Guignol to London and New York, in addition to plot summaries of 100 Guignol productions.
Among the extras are, in the Amok Press edition, translations of the Guignol plays THE SYSTEM OF DOCTOR GOUDRON AND PROFESSOR PLUME by Andre de Lorde and THE LABORATORY OF HALLUCINATIONS by de Lorde and Henry Bauche, which were replaced in the Feral House edition with A CRIME IN THE MADHOUSE by de Lorde and Alfred Binet and ORGY IN THE LIGHTHOUSE by Leopold Marchard. Further extras include six pages of vintage photos documenting the Grand Guignol plays ON THE TELEPHONE, A CRIME IN THE MADHOUSE and ORGY IN THE LIGHTHOUSE (excised from the updated edition), an essay by de Lorde entitled FEAR IN LITERATURE, and a brief memoir by Maxa that appears only in the updated edition, in which she relates the (likely fabricated) details of her debauched life, which naturally parallel those of the lurid plays in which she appeared.
It took over a decade for a subsequent book on the Grand Guignol to appear in English, in the form of GRAND-GUIGNOL: THE FRENCH THEATRE OF HORROR by the British drama professors Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson. Published in 2002 by University of Exeter Press, the book was popular enough that it went through three printings and inspired two sequels, in the form of LONDON’S GRAND GUIGNOL AND THE THEATRE OF HORROR and PERFORMING GRAND-GUINGOL.
Of GRAND-GUIGNOL, it offers a more scholarly and academic, and so less edifying, take on its subject than Gordon’s book. Hand and Wilson are far more skeptical than Gordon was about the Guignol’s selling points (the fainting patrons, etc.), and insist on frequently belaboring their topics (as in the chapter “The Topography of Horror,” which provides far more information than was necessary about the theater’s setting). Ultimately, though, GRAND-GUIGNOL stands as a solid piece of scholarship whose major selling points are the premiere English translations of ten Guignol plays, including essentials like THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS by Paul Autier and Paul Cloqeumin (a Guignol staple and the basis for the 1929 film of the same name) and THE TORTURE GARDEN by Pierre Chaine and Andre de Lorde (adapted from the notorious Octave Mirbeau novel of the same name).
What those plays, and the ones contained in the Mel Gordon book, tell us about the Grand Guignol is that its allure was built as much upon hype and showmanship (of the type that would come to be perfected by the likes of William Castle) as it was on content—which is, frankly, negligible at best. In another connection with the grindhouse films of the 1970s and 80s, the Guignol plays presented here are largely uneventful affairs constructed around a few highly charged shock sequences (which more often than not tend to involve amputations and eyeball gouging), and overall don’t seem nearly as terrifying or appalling, even by early 20th Century standards, as the Grand Guignol’s reputation suggests. That, however, doesn’t stop Hand and Wilson from providing vastly overwritten introductions to each play that enumerate their apparent historical and cultural significance.
Of the two follow ups to GRAND-GUIGNOL, 2007’s LONDON’S GRAND GUIGNOL focuses on the British iteration that ran from 1920-23 at London’s Little Theatre. It was apparently a “much more genteel, indeed British affair” than its Parisian forebear, as “where disembowelings and throat-slittings were nightly events on the stage of the Parisian Grand-Guignol, at the Little Theatre a poisoning or a strangulation was generally preferable.” Hand and Wilson once again belabor their points, providing a vast over-abundance of information on this mini-phenomenon that was adequately covered in the summaries contained in the Gordon book and earlier Hand-Wilson volume. Also featured are ten plays that were performed at London’s Grand Guignol, which are considerably less exciting than those of the Parisian Grand Guignol.
2016’s PERFORMING GRAND-GUIGNOL recycles information from Hand and Wilson’s first volume about the history of the Grand Guignol, followed by instructions on how to effectively mount such a production in the 21st Century and workshop versions of several Guignol plays, along with another 11 English translations of Grand Guignol plays. The latter are once again given extremely involved introductions, and include the comedic HORRIFIC EXPERIMENT by Octave Mirbeau, the satanically inclined MAN WHO MET THE DEVIL by Gaston Leroux, and THE MAN WHO KILLED DEATH by Rene Berton, an early (1928) example of a talking head narrative.
This leaves us with 2011’s CHAPEL OF GORE AND PSYCHOSIS, from the late Creation Books, the most notorious and, frankly, least of the books discussed here. It was credited to Jack Hunter, a pseudonym for Creation’s founder James Williamson, who was hit with allegations of plagiarism. Specifically, French author Agnès Pierron claims Williamson “plagiarized two of my books, LE GRAND GUIGNOL: LE THEATRE DES PEURS DE LA BELLE EPOQUE (1995) and LES NUITS BLANCHES DU GRAND GUIGNOL (2002),” and adds that “He should be pursued by the law.” The fact that no footnotes or glossaries appear anywhere in CHAPEL OF GORE AND PSYCHOSIS would seem to reinforce Pierron’s claim, as would the copious photographic reproductions of Grand Guignol playbills that constitute the undoubted highlight of CHAPEL OF GORE AND PSYCHOSIS, which are presented without attribution of any sort, and according to Pierron were taken, unauthorized, from her private collection.
As for the info presented in CHAPEL OF GORE AND PSYCHOSIS, it’s quite brief, and nothing that wasn’t already covered in the earlier books. The form in which it’s presented is, however, somewhat eccentric. That’s particularly true of the opening pages, which enthusiastically detail the nineteenth century crimes (such as those of Francois Bertrand, the so-called vampire of Dusseldorf, and the “underground cult of necro-sadism” that apparently flourished in fin de siècle France) that helped give rise to the Grand Guignol.
One area in which Hunter/Williamson/Pierron actually outdo their forebears is in a section that quite extensively details the films that grew out of the Guignol, which included the Grand Guignol series of 1920s-era shorts as well as the aforementioned likes of THE WIZARD OF GORE and BLOODSUCKING FREAKS. This information is rather important given that cinema and its more technically advanced horrors were primarily responsible for finishing off the Grand Guignol—a point upon which the Gordon, Hand-Wilson and Hunter-Pierron books all agree.
Also contained is (once again) an English translation of THE SYSTEM OF PROFESSOR GOUDRON AND PROFESSOR PLUME (different from the one in the first edition of Gordon’s book)—which strikes me as the foremost Grand Guignol play, having been adapted from a text (Edgar Allan Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether”) that lends itself particularly well to the theatrical format—and another translation of the Manx memoir that appears in THEATRE OF FEAR AND HORROR. THE SYSTEM OF PROFESSOR GOUDRON AND PROFESSOR PLUME, incidentally, was reissued in 2011 by the Creation Books offshoot Elektron Ebooks, along with a lengthy introduction consisting of portions of the text of CHAPEL OF GORE AND PSYCHOSIS.
The Grand-Guignol is something that resists easy classification or summarization, meaning that three—or, perhaps more accurately, six—books are not enough to do this subject justice. Two of those books, at least, are eminently worth reading.