1. History of Horror
The first traces of horror films can be found in the 19th century with the
famous film pioneer Georges Méliès who in 1896 released The Haunted
Castle which brought with it some of the most used special effects in the
early 20th century including the superimposition of images and the stop
trick which made people and objects appear and reappear.
The silent era in film had brought some of the great but forgotten horror
films through German Expressionist cinema, a contorted and antirealist
movement that began in Germany in the 20s and produced terrifying
masterpieces such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu.
The 1920’sand 1930’s saw the beginning of films that were intended to
scare the audience and could be considered as horror movies. The
movies that were being release were film adaptation of Bram Stokers’
Dracula. Other films that were released were Bride of Frankenstein and
The Mummy. These were influenced by the strong interest in gothic
horror, which continued through the decades until the 70’s and the film
Psycho with its famous shower murder scene, which introduced horror
with a very realistic touch.
The 1960’s also say films, which innovated what was to come next with
the Night of the Living Dead, which introduced zombies, which is still
popular today. Blood Feast began the vogue for extremely violent and
bloody gore movies also Rosemary’s Baby Scared People with religion,
which was used again years later with the exorcist.
Today following the 1999 success of The Blair Witch Project (one of the
most profitable films in history, given its paltry production budget) it
became fashionable to make movies using the hand-held camera style of
shooting. Torture films such as the Saw saga and Japanese ghost films
(often-called “girl with the dirty hair” movies) as in Ring or Dark
Water followed.