Wood believes horror monsters are the personification of suppressed sexual desires. Jones believes horror monsters are the personification of suppressed sexual morality.

Jones questions Wood's trajectory. If Wood's interpretive theory is correct, then horror's popularity should parallel society's "surplus suppression" of sex. Instead, since the 1970s, horror's popularity has risen while sexual suppression has fallen. Jones offers this as proof that horror reflects suppressed morality rather than suppressed sexuality. (Wood might dispute that "surplus suppression" of sex has significantly diminished.)

Whatever the reason for horror's popularity, Wood and Jones seem to agree that horror will lose its appeal once its "dark truths" are no longer suppressed. But perhaps there are enough fears for everyone? Wood may concede Jones's point that Cronenberg's films reflect horror as suppressed sexual morality (Wood has called Cronenberg's work "reactionary"). But Jones is mute on I Married a Monster From Outer Space, a film that portrays "bourgeois morality" as stifling.

Monsters From the Id has been both lauded and excoriated. Most praise pertains to Jones's analysis of Frankenstein and the French Revolution, which fills over a third of the book. Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a feminist and Enlightenment advocate (and victim) of free love. Wollstonecraft moved to France in 1792 (the heady period following the Revolution) and practiced what she preached with an American, Gilbert Imlay. Wollstonecraft expected to settle down in America with her revolutionary soul mate. Instead, Imlay got Wollstonecraft pregnant, then abandoned her in Paris just as the Terror was intensifying.

After losing many friends to the guillotine, Wollstonecraft returned to England, married Enlightenment political philosopher William Godwin in 1797, and died the following year. In the interim, Wollstonecraft gave birth to their daughter, Mary Godwin.

Despite Wollstonecraft's misfortunes during the Revolution, Mary was raised with Enlightenment values, which were encouraged by her future husband, and free love advocate, Percy Shelley. Percy was married to Harriet, but like Wollstonecraft, Percy practiced what he preached. He first committed adultery with Mary, then altogether abandoned Harriet for Mary. Harriet, mother to Percy's children, committed suicide.

Here is where Jones's interpretive theory kicks in.

Mary was struck with remorse over her part in Harriet's suicide. But because Mary Godwin Shelley believed in Enlightenment values, she could not admit that she and Percy had behaved immorally. They'd only practiced free love; Harriet had made her own choice. Unable to confront, or even understand, her guilty conscience, Mary could not repent her sin and be free of guilt. So she sublimated her guilt in Frankenstein, a character who espouses Enlightenment values (a mechanistic universe in which men are free of moral restrictions) as a means to human progress and happiness. But instead of happy progress, Frankenstein is baffled to discover that his noble intentions result in a monster that destroys both the Enlightenment practitioner and the innocents around him. The monster is remorse, both Frankenstein's and Mary's.