Horror• Elicits a negative emotional reaction from viewers

by playing on the audience's primal fears.

• Seeks to startle the viewer.

• Subgenres:

Supernatural—a spiritual evil erupts in the human realm sometimes to avenge a moral wrong, sometimes for no explainable reason

The Exorcist

Paranormal Activity

The Sixth Sense

Psychological—dangers and distortions in the minds of deranged and bizarre individuals threaten normal life

Psycho

Orphan

Whatever Happened to Baby jane

Physical—depictions of graphic violence are more important than the psychology of a character

Saw

Halloween

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Horror• Some of the very first films featured

supernatural elements or were portrayals of literary characters such as Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

• German Expressionist filmmakers would significantly influence later horror films.

The first vampire-themed movie was also made during this time: F. W. Murnau'sNosferatu (1922),

Based on Bram Stoker's Dracula.

• The monsters in early horror films were created through costume, make-up, & prosthetics

Lon Chaney, the first American horror movie star, was known as The Man of a Thousand Faces for just this reason.

Horror• During the early period of talking pictures,

Universal Pictures began a successful Gothic horror film series.

Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), with Bela Lugosi,

James Whale's Frankenstein (also 1931) featuring Boris Karloff as the monster.

• Some films blended science fiction with Gothic horror

Whale's The Invisible Man (1933)

mirrored the earlier German films by featuring a mad scientist

The Mummy (1932) introduced Egyptology as a theme for the genre.

• Universal's horror cycle continued into the 1940s as B-pictures

The Wolf Man (1941), not the first werewolf film, but certainly the most influential, as well as a number of films uniting several of their monsters.

Horror• With advances in technology, the tone of

horror films shifted from the Gothic towards contemporary concerns.

• Two subgenres began to emerge

the horror-of-Armageddon film

the horror-of-the-demonic film.

• A stream of (usually low-budget) productions featured humanity overcoming threats from "outside": alien invasions and deadly mutations to people, plants, and insects. In the case of some horror films from Japan, such as Godzilla (1954) and its sequels, mutation from the effects of nuclear radiation were featured.

Horror• British director Michael Powell's Peeping

Tom (1960) was the first "slasher" movie.

• Next came Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963)

• American International Pictures made a series of Edgar Allan Poe themed films starring Vincent Price, These productions paved the way for more explicit violence in both horror and mainstream films.

• An influential American horror film of this period was George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968).

This horror-of-Armageddon film about zombies blends psychological insights with gore, it moved the genre even further away from the gothic horror trends of earlier eras and brought horror into everyday life.

Horror• The horror genre began to explore the

mysticism of religion and the fight against the devil

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Omen (1976).

• While othe horror movies explored contemporary fears about technology and society

Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

• Meanwhile, the subgenre of comedy horror re-emerged

Young Frankenstein (1974).

Horror• Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) began a

new wave of killer animal stories such as Orca (1977).

• Also in the 1970s, the works of author Stephen King began to be adapted for the screen, beginning with Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976) and The Shining (1980), directed by Stanley Kubrick.

• Many slasher films were made during the 1970s and early 1980s

John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978)

Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980)

Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987).

• This subgenre would be revisited in dozens of increasingly violent movies throughout the subsequent years.

Horror• The horror genre wore itself out with the

proliferation of nonstop slasher and gore films in the eighties.

• To re-connect with its audience, horror became more self-mockingly ironic and outright parodic, especially in the latter half of the 1990s. Wes Craven's Scream movies, starting in 1996,

featured teenagers who were fully aware of, and often made reference to, the history of horror movies, and mixed ironic humor with the shocks.

Along with I Know What You Did Last Summerand Urban Legend, they reignited the slasher genre.

• Japanese films that have been remade in the US The Ring (2002)

The Grudge (2004).

• Another trend was the re-emergence of psychology to scare audiences, rather than gore The Others (2001)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Horror• There was a major return to the zombie genre in

horror movies made after 2000 and featured an update on the genre with fast and aggressive zombies.

Resident Evil (2002)

28 Days Later (2002)

I Am Legend (2007)

Quarantine (2008)

Zombieland (2009)

• A larger trend was a return to the extreme, graphic violence that characterized much of the type of low-budget, exploitation horror from the post-Vietnam years. An extension of this trend was the emergence of a type of horror with emphasis on depictions of torture, suffering and violent deaths Wrong Turn (2003)

Wolf Creek (2005)

Saw

Hostel.

• Low-budget, “found footage” also became popular Blair Witch Project (1999)

Paranormal Activity (2007).

Horror• Horror films were designed to thrill and chill, but

they also addressed serious societal issues

• Early horror films ended with the destruction of the monster, leaving the audience with a sense of security that tended to reflect society of that era

• Contemporary horror often leaves the audience with a sense of unease as these movies leave audiences hanging

Sequels also show a monster returningover and over to wreak havoc, even when it was supposedly killed in the previous film

This reflects a more modern society where monsters are all around us

Horror:Examples• In the following film clips, identify

how each film reflects the conventions and development of the genre.

• Nosferatu (1929)

• The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

• Them (1954)

• Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

• The Omen (1976)

• Friday the 13th (1980)

• Scream (1996)

• The Blair Witch Project (1999)

• The Ring (2002)