History of Horror

Frankenstein, Dracula and Mr Hyde - Horror roots in classic literature.

Frankenstein:

It was written in 1818 by a woman called Mary Shelley, the genre of the film is obviously a horror however its also slightly science fiction and romance. This is because Frankenstein was a science project and was created by a mad scientist. Frankenstein is responsible for the beginning of the science fiction genre and has been the inspiration for many films, even now. Some people however complained about the 'graphic' and 'Horrific' scenes that were shown in the film. One of these scenes is where a small girl is near the river making flowers float down the river, Frankenstein's monster pics the child up and throws her in the river.

Dracula:

The film was produced in 1931 and in the film Count Dracula arrives in England and targets Mina. Although Dracula was a vampire which of course are not real, he could turn into a bat which gave the sense of realism in the film. The thing that also scared people was that it could be seen as being a disease or an infection which again gave it a sense of realism.

Monsters and Mad Scientists:

Horror was reborn in the 1930s and had mad scientists and monsters feature in the film. Sound played a vital role in the movies as it would build suspense and this has become a huge part of horror since. The films of this decade are often set in far off places and the characters dress in period costumes. Universal studios became popular because of their famous horrors such as Frankenstein and Dracula, these two monsters are hugely famous and are recognised around the world by all ages. Some of the most famous films from this time are:
Frankenstein
Dracula
King Kong
Freaks
the Mummy Bride of Frankenstein
Enthusiasm for horror became huge between the 1920s and the 1930s. The cinema provided an escape from the depression and the ominous war. 80 million people attended the cinema weekly in the 1930s period.
The 2 actors from Dracula and Frankenstein are still associated with horror even though they played the parts over 8 decades ago. In 1933, the year Hitler came to power the mad scientist genre had reached its peak due to the dictatorship being too similar to the characters in the film. However these three years saw the making of successful films such as The Invisible Man and The Island Of Lost Souls.

Primal Animal Within -
Werewolves and Cat People - 1940s

The Wolf Man
Cat People
Frankenstein and The Wolfman
The Curse of the Cat People
During this era world war II was happening and this was the reason why Werewolves and Cats were used. Adolf means Noble wolf in old German and various Nazi party HQ's were named after wolves such as the Ukraine HQ which was called Werwolf which means man wolf. Hitler also made his sister change her name to Paula Wolf and one of his favourtite secretaries was called Joanna Wolf and he referred to her as Wolfin (she wolf). These are all factors which the media industry used within their films to scare people in the 1940s.
So why were Werewolves used? Many people died in the 1940s because of the war and this was the main fear people had at the time, knowing that their loved ones could die at any moment, so they used this within the films. Werewolves could be seen as Nazi's, an idea of this is that when a werewolf bites a human, they then transform and pass of the 'condition'. This links to how Hitler was trying to take over the world by making people join his army, he would even let prisoners out of jail so they could join his army. In Wolfman the werewolf dies, this could be seen as Hitler being defeated and giving people that small glimpse of hope. (propaganda). But why were cats used then? During the war the men went away to fight and all the woman were left at home to do the men's jobs such as working in factories etc. The men that made it back then reclaimed their jobs and the woman went back to doing housework like cooking and cleaning. The woman of the world experienced a bit of freedom when the men were away and it was then taken away again when the men returned from fighting the war and of course the woman were not happy about this. This then resulted in films being made such as Cat People. Cat People is a film were females dominate the males and the power within the film by seducing and killing their victims. The reason for cats being linked to woman in films are that they can both be thought to be seen as sly and gracious which links into their key motives to kill in the movies.

Aliens and Monsters:

People were first introduced to mutant creatures and aliens in the 1950's. The first movie to feature aliens and monsters was a low budget movie called Rocketship X-M. This then started a trend of sci-fi films. Some of the most popular films of the genre were ' The Thing', 'The day The Earth Stood Still', 'Invasion of the Body Snatcher', 'It came From Outer Space' and 'World Of The Worlds' these 1950's were the first blockbusters. In the 1950's there was a huge technology scare, people were worried that we were ahead of our time in terms of technology and were scared that it would take over out lives. People lived in fear that the effects of technology was going to mutate and deform people. The film after the war didn't decide to focus on the war and the fighting as this no longer scared anyone as it was over, instead they focused on the technology that was used in the films such as the Atom Bomb the guns and machinery. The Space Race was also a huge thing in the 1950's The new obsession with aliens and mutant creatures meant that countries wanted to explore space and see if there actually was any other kind of life forms out there. The main competition was between USA and Russia. Even now there's still a alight obsession with space and whats really out there. People are always coming up with new ideas of what creatures may look like and we are creating the technology that will allow us to do that.

Ghosts, Zombies and your Family:

This era is where the big budget horrors returned. These films mainly addressed genuine psychological fears. One of the recurring fears was of children and the fear of childbirth. One of the main films that dealt with children in this era was The Exorcist. It was banned from the UK until 1999 and was voted the scariest movie of all time. The crumbling family becomes the source of fear here as you create a connection with the family, they also use the child's innocence against you. Satanism also comes into the film as the child is possessed by the devil and the exorcism is the only way to remove it from the body. Many ghost stories also appeared in this era. The horror lies in the journey the protagonist takes between sanity and psychosis. These reflect preoccupation with change, with mainly woman being the first (and often the only people) to be destroyed by it. Famous films from this era include:
Rosemary's Baby
Carnival of Souls
The Stepford Wives
Alice, Sweet Alice
The Omen
Halloween

Slasher Movie and Body Horror:

Slasher is a type of sub genre to the horror genre. It depicts a person/killer that mutilates a person with the use of knifes, razors and other such weapons. Body horror, a genre of horror that's main feature is to graphically show destruction and degeneration of a human body or bodies. Some of the most famous of these genres are:
Scream
Halloween
Child's Play
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Psycho
Friday 13th
Slasher films first came about in the 80s due to advances in technology which allowed directors to use different types of special effects and play around with more ideas. This allowed them to show much more explicit scenes which the target audience would soon love hence why so many squeals and films were made. The audiences grew to love the killers from the slasher movies and body horrors such as Freddy Krueger, Jason, Micheal Myers, Chucky and Ghostface. This lead to the creation of many sequels and spin offs such as Jason vs Freddy. Scream was a little different to the normal slasher movies. Scream decided to challenge the conventions of slashers and body horrors by using completely different motive for killing people other than for things such as revenge. He would kill people if they didn't know facts about horrors making it very self aware.

Video Nasties

Almost all of the films went directly onto VHS and they were blamed heavily for changing Britain. They had absurd titles, gory story lines and gruesome covers and people even filed court cases against the films. They were also huge accessible and available even after a law was passed against them. So why did they become so popular? Horror movies became increasingly popular within the home as opposed to the cinma because of the refusal of a British theatrical release. They were also over advertised and dealt with taboo subjects. Absurd, Blood Bath and Axe are just a small minority of banned films.

Gore-nography and Torture porn:

'Gorenography' is a genre of film which focuses purely on showing brutal, gore where there is no plot, story or any real main characters. The popularization of extreme graphic violence in the horror film franchise such as Audition and Wrong turn took their cues from The Last House On The Left and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This helped with the emergence of a type of horror that emphasis on depictions of torture, suffering and violent deaths. Ed Gein inspired Texas Chainsaw Massacre and once his house was searched, some disturbing things were found, such as:
Whole Human bones and fragments
Nine masks of human skin
Bowls made from human skulls
Ten female heads with the tops sawn off
A Belt made of female nipples.
So why do people like this kind of film/genre? People imagine disturbing thoughts in their heads such as What if this happened? This can be represented within films as it is fiction, allowing sick films to be deemed 'ok'. To get a thrill out of them (fear factor). People like to see how far horror and gore can be pushed and some people feel the satisfaction of the feeling of being out of their comfort zone. Eli Roth is a horror film director and producing explicitly violent and bloody movies, most famous for the film 'Hostel'.