3. The first horrors were silent movies produced at the
beginning of the 20th century. They were surreal,
dark pieces with appearances based on
expressionist painters work and narrative style on
the stories played out by the Grand Guignol Theatre
Company. Darkness and shadows were impossible to
create using the filming equipment that was
available to them at this time, and these are such
important conventions of the horrors nowadays.
Therefore when watching these original horrors it
seems strange. The films relied on music and sound
effects to make the piece scary. Early horror films
drew upon the folklore and legends from around the
globe and rendered the monsters into a physical
form. German expressionism of the time created a
strong visula style of these early horrors; using
distorted worlds and strange angles. Examples of
these are Caligari and Nosferatu (which was the very
first vampire film).
4. Wartime horrors were produced in this time
period but were purely an American product as
they were banned in Britain. So America cranked
out a lot of these to amuse the domestic
audience. This era was also the birth of animal
horrors, focusing on the "animal inside" and
working out the scariest possible way of putting
this onto film. Two popular ones of the time were
Wolfman and Cat People. Hitler himself strongly
identified with the iconography and legends of
the wolf. The name 'Adolf' means "noble wolf" in
Old German. This may be how some of these
films came about. Also in 1940, Disney's pinoccio
was released, in which the bad boys are turned
into donkeys. This animal transformation is
something that lives on now with the obvious
"werewolf" stories.
5. Big changes occurred between 1940 and
1950. The war had ended and the genre
changed once again. The faces of horror
monsters began to look somewhat
human. However in this era the horror
genre was neglected a little.
Homecoming soldiers and bereaved
widows had no time for horror films
when they had enough of their own to
tell. Also studios were too busy
incorporating technical changes such as
widespread colour production and trying
to meet the challenge posed by TV to
have much time to concentrate on horror
films. Although some other studios and
producers stayed true to the horror
genre and produced films such as The Fly
Tarantula, Mutants and Alien Invaders.
6. 1960s saw a great change in what the public
perceived as horrible. They wanted horror that was
more rooted in reality, more believable, more
sophisticated, that dealt with some of the issues
they faced in a real world. Thrillers and horror were
intertwined; there was a lot more onscreen violence
and nudity. Films like Phsyco and The Shining were
made in this sexual era. However this decade also
introduced a completely different kind of horror..The
beginning of the 1960's introduced ghost stories
such as The Haunting. Using black and white
photography and minimal special effects, all these
films required was the audience to believe a little in
the supernatural. These ghost stories throb with
psychosexual tension, and take a sadistic satisfaction
in the suffering of the beautiful heroine. The
protagonist is a final sacrifice rather than a Final Girl.
7. One genuine fear apparent in the horror films
of the 1970s is the fear of children, and the
fear of the painful and often fatal process of
childbirth. Author David J Skal identifies this
fear with the introduction of the contraceptive
pill and the birth defect horror forced on the
Western world by thalidomide. All in all the
films of this decade were pretty grim. The
crumbling family unit becomes the source of
much fear and mistrust. Different to earlier
films; this time around 'the enemy within' is
not a shapeshifting alien from another planet.
Now the enemy is to be found in your own
home. The Excorcist, 1973, was voted the
'scariest movie of all time' in 1999 by Total Film
Magazine. Also this decade introduced a new
wave of monster horrors with more realistic
monsters.
8. At the beginning of this decade, special
effects finally caught up with the gory
imaginations of horror fans and movie
makers. This began with Alien, which was
actually released in 1979. Everything that
lurked in the shadows in films of the 1950's
was now out in the light, all bigger, better and
more gruesome than before. The main
demographic for audiences of horror movies
in the 1980s was 15-24 year old men; an
audience seeking thrills as a rite-of-passage,
to prove that they have strong enough
stomachs to sit through these gut-wrenching
gore fests. Horror films of this era included A
Nightmare On Elm Street and slashers,
Halloween and Friday 13th.
9. By the end of the 1980's the grossness that
once terrified had kind of worn off; by this
time all they did was amuse the audience. A
lot of dark, disturbing films of this time
labelled themselves thrillers, yet they shared
an awful lot of the same codes and
conventions used in horror films. Phscokillers
are introduced at the beginning of this decade
with The Silence of the Lambs and The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre. In 1996 Scream was
released; this mixed the slashers of previous
decades and the new serial killer genre
together and produced a parody for those
that had grown up with the original slasher
horrors.
10. The beginning of the 2000's gave us hypergory movies and portrayed the moral panic
around gore-nography or torture porn. Final
Destination mixed gore and phsychological
horror together and produced a film where
death takes the form of the scary killer.
Apparantly "death is hunting you down one
by one" in the order that you would of died
in an accident. In 2002, 28 Days Later was
released and started off a long chain of
zombie movies. However the zombies are
not dead, just contain a deadly virus that is
gradually killing off the world's population.
Torture porn hit the tabloids in 2007 when
the poster for film Captiviy caused a moral
panic. A definite line was crossed with this
and there was even a call for the posters to
be removed.
