Horror Genre

Horror films traditionally leave the audience with fear, disgust, and horror. The object of these movies are to scare the viewer. Therefore, macabre and supernatural means are commonly and successfully used. The thriller genre is commonly confused with horror. However, thriller is more tension and excitement rather than the fear from horror. The plot of horror films commonly contain morbidity, serial killers, a disease or virus outbreak, surrealism, and anything else designed to frighten the audience. Common characters in this portion of films include fake characters such as werewolves, vampires, ghosts, demons, zombies, etc. What is considered to be a horror film has rather drastically changed as the decades pass. Currently, most horror films are gory and contain jump scares or supernatural content. For example, Saw films, The Strangers, and The Ring. Early films, on the other hand were based much more off of classic literature. Examples of these are Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Phantom of the Opera. The first horror films were created in the 1890s. There were several silent films produced by film Pioneers like Georges Méliès. In the early years, horror films were a common trend for the Japanese directors. In 1910, the first version of Frankenstein was created by Edison production. However, it was lost for many years until found by film collector Alois Felix Dettlaff Sr. in 1993 and he release the movie. The era of the German Expressionist films gave birth to many fantastic horror movies. Many of these films greatly influenced future film productions, including those made in Hollywood. The hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Monster (1925) were both some of the first Hollywood horrors. These movies both starred Lon Chaney, Sr. He was the first American horror movie star. One of the very first horror films, also made during this time, was called Nosferatu. Nosferatu was a vampire film. The next years if films were the 1930s-1940s. This is the time period when American directors and produces become much more prevalent. For example, Universal Pictures popularized horror films such as Frankenstein and Dracula. They began to blend science fiction with gothic horror. This is also when actors first decided to dedicate themselves completely to the horror genre. One of the greatest make-up artists of all time came from this age. His name was Jack Pierce and he immigrated to the United States from Greece. He helped with the make-up for Universal Studios’ 1931 adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Two of the most famous movies from this period were Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Paramount, 1931) and Michael Curtiz's Mystery of the Wax Museum (Warner Brothers, 1933). Although not the first werewolf film, The Wolf Man (1941) was the most influential Werewolf film. As the years approached the 1960s and 1970s the gothic horror films were becoming less popular and films were becoming more relevant to a late-Century audience. This is also when horror films split into two categories. These categories were the horror-of-armageddon film and the horror-of-the-demonic film. This was a time of very low-budget productions. Many alien, abduction, and mutation films were introduced in this period. Japan also got involved in horror at this time. This is also when 3-D horror films began being produced. In the 1900s horror films faced two major problems. First, the genre wore itself out with non-stop gore films. Second, the desire of the audience was changing. They previously Horror films are commonly made into sequences or series of movies. Ghosts and monsters have remained popular from the very beginnings of horror films and are still used to frighten the audience. The end of the Production Code of America in 1964 was when films began including the Devil as a fear tactic. The devil would possess pregnant women and possess children quite often.  Exorcism movies are still made today such as “The Last Exorcism” or “Paranormal Activity” uses the devil in some way. Many movies made in the past have recently been remade with special effects. This has become very common in the 2000s. Some of these include Friday The 13^th, A Nightmare on Elmstreet, The Wolfman and many more. The early 2000s did not release many movies for the horror genre. It seems as if recently the zombie genre has returned. Another trend that is reappearing is the extremely graphic violence that is made from a low-budget. This exploits the Seventies and the post-Vietnam years. There are many types of horror films that are popular that will come and go through popularity trends and continue to be desired by the viewers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film

http://www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms2.html

http://www.horrorfilmhistory.com/