The Basic History of Horror

The Basic History of Horror

Horror is one of the most recognisable genres of film, with several key features that happen during every film which will capture the audience’s attention and terrify the audience along the way. The horror genre has many subsections including paranormal and the sci-fi section of genre. Often films are hyped before vanishing again which is referred to as the boom and fade cycle. It often has a low budget requirement yet everyday horror is changing its way of presenting itself to audience.

The deliver thrills to the audience and can sometimes help get across a true story behind the horrors that have happened to people. There are various different subgenres of horror;

  Ø  Action Horror for example Resident Evil

Ø  Body Horror for example Cabin Fever

Ø  Comedy Horror for example Scary Movie

Ø  Gothic Horror for example Dracula

Ø  Physiological Horror for example The Ring

Ø  Science Fiction Horror for example Alien

Ø  Slasher Films for example PSYCHO

Ø  Paranormal Horror for example The Poltergeist

Horror has been a genre since before films began starting with the classic books such as Dracula and all the way back to ancient myths such as Medusa. The first horror films started in around 1896 with the first horror film on record Le Manoir du Diable. It isn’t much over three minutes however it contains all the iconography of horror such as bats, the devil and other creatures.

Horror films were made with sound in the 1930’s with the music and people talking to bring even more suspense to the movies however they were still using traditional stories such as Frankenstein and Dracula to gain ideas.

After the war Hollywood began to make more Horror films to try and establish the genre of horror to all over the world in around 1940’s. Films such as Werewolf of London (1935) and Hungry like the Wolf Man (1940) fed on people’s fears at the time and slowly became successes with domestic audiences.

Between 1940 and 1950 large changes were made to the Horror genre with the monsters becoming more horrifying with things that would horrify most audiences. The aim was to thrill people with an action front behind them. The films included more films including mutations. In these years films such as Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and The Mummy (1959) became highly popular featuring two different mutations.

The 1960’s the public thought of very different things for horrible due to the awful things that happened in these years such as the Manson Family murder. Instead of thrilling audiences horror was now uses to scare people and make them scared. Highly popular films such as PSYCHO (1960) and The Birds (1963) that show presences watching people and waiting to strike leading to people being scared of their own shadows.

Somewhere in 1970 horror movies earned some of the highest profits of the year. They looks at the fears of children and feed on them by making families scared of each other. It shows how children can be scary to certain audiences and do awful things to people and how the enemy is in your own home. Films such as The Exorcist (1973) which was voted the best horror film of all time and Jaws (1975) came out in this year which were just some of the classic horrors of all time that came out in this year.

1980’s were the year of special effects for horror with technical advances allowing the films to become more distorted and realistic with the special effects allowing them to make the monsters more realistic leading to more fear in the audiences. With popular films such as The Shinning (1980) and The Thing (1982) it was close with the success of the previous decade.

The 1990’s followed the gore from the 1980’s and it continued with his theme despite shocking audiences instead of thrilling them. It was now that horror began to become over familiar with audiences. This generation found the scariest thing to be psycokillers leading to this generations films such as Scream (1996) and Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Through the 2000’s film makers struggled to make films that were acceptable after the many horrific events. By 2005 the horror movie was back to being popular and usually topped the box office despite the monsters being changed leaving the industry with films such as Final Destination (2000) and Woman In Black (2012).