Ruth Gordon won Best Supporting Actress for 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby, but in the Best Actor category, before Anthony Hopkins won for The Silence of the Lambs, you’d have to go all the way back to the fifth ever Academy Awards in 1932 to find a horror winner, when Fredric March won for his dual role in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
As ‘The Substance’ becomes the first body horror film ever nominated for Best Picture, Kevin E G Perry looks back at the Academy’s long-running fear of scary movies.
Before the success this year of French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s unhinged body horror The Substance, just six scary movies had ever been nominated for Best Picture – despite Academy Awards being handed out for almost a century.
The Exorcist is the most nominated horror film of all time with a total of 10 nods, but it ended up winning just two Oscars, for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound.
The Substance has far outdone that film in nomination terms, with Fargeat also up for Best Director and Moore considered a hot favourite to take home Best Actress.
