Horror fiction and films have evolved significantly over the centuries. Early Gothic literature in the 1700s-1800s helped establish horror as a genre. In the late 19th century, some of the first horror films emerged, adapting novels like Frankenstein. German expressionist films of the 1920s influenced Hollywood's classic horror films of the 1930s featuring Dracula and Frankenstein. Subgenres continued expanding in the following decades, including psychological horror in the 1940s-50s and slasher films in the 1970s-80s. Modern horror encompasses many styles such as supernatural, creature features, torture porn, and found footage films.

2.  Ghost stories, murderers and the imagination of beasts has been in
people’s lives for thousands of years, but horror started to develop much more
recently.
 In the late 1700’s and onwards to the early 1900’s Gothic Horror became a
new genre, ‘Gothic’ referred to the locations of these stories e.g. dark castles
and gloomy woodlands.
 Authors in these eras include Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and Bram
Stoker.

3.  ‘The Manor of the Devil’ by Georges Méliès is through to be the
first horror film ever made, this was in 1896.
 It involves a dark castle location, bats, a troll and demon like
figures.
 It was a silent film and was followed by the first adaptations of
Frankenstein and Dante’s Inferno.

4.  After World War One, German’s creatively convinced the military set
up a national film unit, but these soon went out of business due to the
economy
 These ideas, however, caught the interest of Hollywood, so Paramount
and MGM paid money to buy the rights the German’s UFA (national film)
company and ideas forming Parufamet Film.
 These German influences have stayed in Horror since the company
first began in 1925.

5.  Universal Studios had the biggest hits in silent horror in America,
producing the first ‘Phantom of the Opera’ and ‘The Hunchback of
Notre Dame’.
 After sound was introduced to the industry, the studios went into a
Gothic Horror genre, producing the first ‘Dracula’ in 1931, this was
followed by ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘The Mummy’ (1932).
 This finally ran out of steam and the horror genre turned to low
budget companies with low budget films.

6.  In the late 1940’s a low budget film called ‘Cat People’ used
shadows and tone to create the scares, becoming the first
psychological horror film.
 During the war, horror films were mainly being produced for
teens, as they wanted thrills and didn’t really mind ridiculous plots,
which is where pulp science fiction horror comes in for example,
‘Godzilla’ and the original ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’.

7.  In the1960’s a massive range of horror genres came to light, the film ‘Psycho’
and ‘The Birds’ by Alfred Hitchcock introduced a new aspect of how horror films
could be.
 In the UK the Hammer Film Studios made a range of Gothic films from
monsters such as ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ and were the first to show on screen
blood, they also did ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ in 1975.
 The use of sex and gore in these films was started to push the genre in
something that should be taken seriously even in the A-List Hollywood community.

8.  The supernatural and religious or satanic films started to become a
big interest in the late 60’s early 70’s, starting with ‘Rosemary’s Baby’
and including classics like ‘The Exorcist’ in 1973 and ‘The Omen’ in
1976.

9.  In the 1970-90’s horror began to have a lot of sub-genres, and
became very high end films, a lot of money was being put into the
films.
 Supernatural horrors remained, but new genres such as Creature
horrors (e.g. Jaws), Sci-Fi horrors (e.g. Alien), Teen horrors (e.g.
Carrie) and Psychological horrors (e.g. The Shining) and more all
became part of the big genre that is horror.

10.  The first slasher film is though to have been Psycho in 1960, but in the 1970’s, a
new style of slasher films occurred, the first to be ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, the
rawness of the gore sparked a macabre interest in slasher style films.
 However ‘Halloween’ in 1970 was done in the style of Hitchcock and didn’t
show much gore at all, but has still been one of the most successful horror films
ever.
 The slasher film style has made many sequels out of the popular originals and
continues now to be one of the most popular genres.

11.  Parodies of earlier horror films were starting to come about, such as ‘Scream’ and ‘Final
Destination’, films that were almost funny because of the ridiculous concepts and gore.
 A new genre of horror has been born in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s with torture
becoming increasingly more popular in franchises such as ‘Saw’ in 2004 which has now had six
films all together.
 Found footage horror has also become a new genre, where the details of an eyewitnesses last
horrifying moments are caught of camera or it is filming a home invasion e.g. ‘The Blair Witch
Project’ or ‘Paranormal Activity’.
 Zombie horror has become a cycle very recently with films and tv e.g. ‘The Walking Dead’,
but this is slowly starting to fade out as well.