THE HISTORY OF HORROR

Horror movies provide us with many purposes. Not only do they thrill an audience but they also provide a revealing mirror image of the anxieties of their time. Nosferatu (1922) is not simply a tale of vampirism,

but offers heart-rending images of a town tormented by premature and random deaths, echoes of the Great

War and the Great Flu Epidemic fatalities. At the other end of the century Blade (1998) is not just a tale of vampirism either, but reflects a fear of the powerful yet irresponsible elements in society, a lawless elite, echoes down the corridor of the growing invincibility of those at the top. Horror movies of the early 21st

century focus on global concerns of contamination (28 Days Later), or sound unreasonable warning notes

about the dangers of leaving moral absolutism behind (The Last Exorcism, The Conjuring). Horror movies provide a unique space for free discourse about the moral, political and societal shifts in our communal

paradigms.

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION ON HORROR MOVIES…

The first depictions of supernatural events appear in several of the silent shorts created by the film pioneer George Méliès in the late 1890s, the best known being Le Manoir du Diable, which is

sometimes credited as being the first horror film.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPmKaz3Quzo

As time went on, this genre of film started to evolve. The first notable horror movies came out in the 1920’s. Horror movies from this decade, focused on dark shadowy characters and reflected the way

in which audiences feared mythical monsters like Dracula and werewolves. There was no sound. One of the first horror movies was ‘Nosferatu’ which came out in 1922. It played on the fact that people were afraid of creatures they found in novels. The main character was a tall hunched back

vampire who would curl his finger nails around the limbs of his helpless victims.Another famous horror movie from this decade is ‘London after Midnight’ which came out in 1927. This again included a vampire (playing on the fear of mythical creatures) in the normal streets of

London. This again made people terrified of what could lurk outside at night.

THE 1920’S…

Horror films were reborn in the 1930s. They were Gothic in character, set in far away, mythical locations and featuring literary- inspired monsters. The first ever female monster appeared in a

horror film of this decade. Movies of this era also saw a new introduction of sound. Sound adds an extra dimension to terror, whether it be music used to build suspense or signal the presence of a threat, or magnified footsteps echoing down a corridor. Horror, with its strong elements of the fantastic and the supernatural, provided an effective escape to audiences tiring of their Great

Depression reality, and, despite the money spent on painstaking special effects, often provided a good return for their studio.

Audiences seemed even more enthusiastic about the horror genre than in the 1920s, and flocked into cinemas to be scared by largely supernatural monsters wreaking havoc on largely fantastical worlds, events far removed from the everyday realities of Depression and approaching war. Horror, then as now, represented the best escapism available for that precious few cents it took to buy a ticket. And cinema was a national obsession — 80 million people attended the cinema on a weekly basis in 1930,

some 65% of the total US population.Two actors in particular were very lucky. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were in most famous horror

movies from this decade onwards.

THE 1930’S

The movie ‘Dracula’ (1931) was the first talking horrors and the main character was played by Bela Lugosi. It was again inspired by 19th century novels and included very traditional vampire costume we see today, for example, fangs, blood and capes. The supporting cast used their stage training to boost it up (this was the very first talking horror film and no one, least of all the director, was sure how to pitch it) and come across as grimacing and grotesque. The mise-en-scene was fine however - the movie practically invented the concept of land of swirling mists, howling wolves, frightened peasants and crumbling castles owned by heavily accented individuals with strange eyes and an interesting taste in evening dress. It was very successful for Universal and paved the way for a series of high profile horror classics.The bride of Frankenstein (1935) was a sequel to the first movie Frankenstein and is often considered one of the greatest horror movies of all time. This is where the first female monster appeared. The images are dramatically framed throughout, from the burning mill surrounded by pitchfork-brandishing peasants at the start, to the collapsing castle at the finish. Karloff brings his usual wounded dignity to the part of the Monster, which speaks for the first time, in wondrous, mangled syllables. Our villain is Dr Pretorius; Ernest Thesiger (who plays the part) relishes his role as the amoral, corpse-stealing former mentor of Henry Frankenstein, who creates miniature people and keeps them in specimen jars. Dr Pretorius is the evil genius behind the new experiments with the creation of life, Henry Frankenstein is reduced to the reluctant helper, who cannot face up to his mistakes of the previous film. Where once he had pretentions to create life, he is here represented as weak, indecisive and bumbling beside the razor-sharp cunning of Pretorius. Elsa Lanchester (who plays the bride), is in full fright wig and make-up, is touchingly confused and vulnerable as the Bride who simply does not want to exist.

America took over the creation of horror films in this decades. There were no major developments, although many featured

animals or characters that were half man/ half beast. Wartime horror movies were purely an American product. Banned in Britain,

with film production curbed throughout the theatre of war in Europe, horror movies were cranked out by Hollywood solely to amuse the domestic audience. The studios stuck with tried and

tested ideas, wary of taking risks that might suggest they had no measure of the zeitgeist, and trotted out a series of variations on a theme. This was not an age of innovation, but horror movie were,

nonetheless, evolving.

THE 1940’S

A famous horror movie of this decade was ‘Wolf- man’. Although there was a well established werewolf mythology extending back to the ancient world, there was no single established story (as with Dracula and the vampire myth) ripe for easy adaptation. It fell to screenwriter Curt Siodmak (who had fled the Nazi wolves himself in 1937) to pen a story to fit the title Universal had been knocking around for a while. The Wolf Man (1941) is a mishmash of several wolf legends, with added ingredients. Set in a contemporary Wales (where no one has ever heard of the war), the story follows Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr) who returns to his ancestral home from America, only to become infected by a bite from a gypsy named Bela (Lugosi). With a starry cast including Claude Raines, and spectacular makeup and special effects, the picture was a big hit.The movie ‘Cat- People’ was another triumph. Cat People follows the story of Irena, a young woman who carries with her the belief that she is cursed, and will turn into a large, dangerous cat if she consummates her marriage. A mainly psychological thriller, much is made of what lurks in the shadows (particularly in the famous swimming pool scene), and the audience is left to make up their own mind.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfbGJrAVWUo

During this decade, audiences feared the effects of scientific experimentation and nuclear war. Cue horror films with scientific edge and featuring mutated creatures, etc. The military action of WW2 had left over 40 million dead, and millions more exposed to the full spectrum of man's inhumanity to man. Homecoming soldiers and bereaved widows had too many horror stories of their own to appreciate fantasies on the big screen, and much preferred the silliness of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein et al. The world could never be the same again, and the dawning of post-war posterity in America brought with it a new breed of monsters, adapted specifically

for survival in the second half of the twentieth century.People lived with the fear of war, which became more unnerving than war itself. The messages from WW2 were clear: no matter how heroic your men, how skilled your generals, how staunch

your supporters on the Home Front, at the end of the day it was technology that counted. Bigger. Better. Deadlier. Like the atom bomb. The more advanced the technology, the more

powerful the nation.Because of this fear, horror films usually incorporated mutated creatures such as giant killer

insects.

THE 1950’S

A famous film from this decade was ‘Wasp Woman’ but for the wrong reasons. It was an attempt to mimic a previous movie ‘The Fly,’ but this time included a female character whose DNA gets mixed up with that of a

fly. She meets Zinthrop, who has been experimenting with wasp royal jelly, rather than the bee kind, and decides she will become the first human test subject for his anti-ageing serum. So far so good, especially

when, desperate for results, she injects herself with a super dose of the serum and emerges the next morning looking 18 years younger.

In accordance with conventions, it all goes badly wrong. Starlin and her scientist friend must be punished for their presumption. Zinthrop is knocked over by a truck and ends up in hospital, in a coma, unable to

monitor his experiment. Starlin's secretary and friends start snooping around, suspicious that Zinthrop is trying to rip her off. She alas, has developed a taste for ripping off the heads of helpless snoopers, as, rather

unfortunately, the high doses of wasp jelly intermittently turn her into a Wasp Woman.However, it was rather disappointing, mainly because the main character looked nothing like the poster.

Instead of having the body of a wasp and a head of a beautiful woman, the character had the head of a wasp and the body of a woman. Although, the movie did have an interesting twist of having a female antagonist.

In this decade, the nuclear and idyllic family unit began to break down, while the devastating effects of the morning after pill, Thalidomide, caused many women to give birth to deformed babies. Audiences feared the complete disintegration of

family life and women were scared to give birth. The horrors of this decade featured demonic babies/ children or the threat that came from within the family unit.

Despite the often tragic events of this era, there was a seeming feeling of optimism, the sense that humanity was moving forward, onward and upward. The concept of Cold War lost heat, and, in 20-odd years without nuclear holocaust, the threat of

mass-death-by-radiation had receded. The mutant monsters of the 1950s now looked a little silly. No aliens had turned up either. Rather than focusing on external

threats, counter-culture thinking involved a re-examination of the social psyche — traditions, stereotypes, prohibitions. If every generation gets the monsters it

deserves, then the horror movie goers of the 1960s got themselves.

THE 1960’S

Films from this decade include the very famous ‘Psycho’ which entailed Norman Bates. This movie showed how monstrous the human mind can be. Based on the real- life story of Ed Gein, which has since proved fruitful for movies as diverse as Silence of The Lambs and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho has become

iconic in a way few other movies have ever become. The very famous shower scene made women scared to be alone even in their own homes and the silence of the killer sent chills to the audience as they were not able to see inside of his

mind.Another very famous film from the 1960’s was the movie ‘Night of the living

dead’. Whilst NOTLD works on a instinctive, shock horror level (there are some manic shots of zombies munching on the barbecued remains of two characters)

it also functions as serious social mockery. The living people barricading themselves in against the shambling dead represent all that is/was unhappy

about American society.

This decade saw a change to the character of horror films. As audiences began to fear the dangerous

capabilities of the human mind, the ‘monster’ changed from something mythical that could be killed easily to

something completely human that was difficult to killed. Horror movies of the 1970s reflect the grim mood of the decade. After the optimism of the 1960s, with its sexual

and cultural revolutions, and the moon landings, the seventies were something of a disappointment. By 1970, the party was over; and in many senses it was downhill

all the way from there. However, when society goes bad, horror films get good, and the 1970s marked a return to the big budget, respectable horror film,

dealing with contemporary societal issues, addressing genuine psychological fears.

THE 1970’S

Although the theme of children did play a huge part in the 1960’s and did continue throughout the 70’s, people started to fear the horrors within the family, whether it be your mother (Shivers), your father (The Shining), your

brother (Halloween), or your sister (Alice Sweet Alice). In this decade, one of the most famous horror movies emerged, The Exorcist.

The Exorcist had been voted 'the scariest movie of all time' (Total Film magazine October 1999) and is hugely significant to any study of the genre. It brought intellectual respectability back to horror movies The special effects (created

mechanically, on set, rather than added in post production) seem dazzling even by today's standards, and they are combined with deft cinematography and

exemplary use of sound (awarded an Oscar). The film is a chilling experience because it, unusually for horror films, takes itself and its subject seriously.

There is very little humour here, apart from odd touches of irony. The Exorcist is very much a 'grown-up' horror movie, and marks the beginning of a new part of

a cycle in the genre.

Key technological change took place, allowing for more special effects and more advanced use of make up/prosthetics. The horror this period reflected the

‘showy’ character of the decade. Technical advances in the field of animatronics, and liquid and foam latex meant

that the human frame could be distorted to an entirely new dimension, onscreen, in realistic close up. This matched with the materialistic ethos of the 1980s, when having it all was important, but to be seen to be having it all was

paramount. People demanded tangible tokens of material success - they wanted bigger, shinier, faster. In the same way, horror films during this decade delivered

the full colour close-up, no-strings-attached, special effect in a way that previous practitioners of the art could only dream about. Everything that had lurked in the shadows of horror films in the 1950s could now be brought into

the light of day. The monsters were finally out of the closet.

THE 1980’S

A Nightmare On Elm Street had a relatively low body count for its time (four), but each of the killings was like a mini-movie in itself, with a separate location, build-up and mode of despatch. Another notable thing about A Nightmare on Elm Street is how brightly lit most of it was, and how many of the scenarios took place in ordinary, uncontested spaces - a school hallway, a teenager's bedroom. There are no warnings as the narrative shifts from reality to nightmare, and there are seemingly no rules about where Freddy can strike (in English class, in the bathtub). Freddy himself springs from a dark place, a boiler-room full of rust and steam, and it is only when Nancy acknowledges this ("Okay, Krueger, you bastard. We play in your court.") and deliberately goes to seek him out that she has any chance of defeating him. Nancy makes a resourceful Final Girl as she pulls the monster out of her nightmare into the real world, where he becomes a slapstick figure, falling for her booby traps, tumbling down the stairs, and flailing around with his arms on fire. But he still manages to kill her Mum.Another psychopathic killer of this decade was Chucky from the 1988 movie Childs Play. It followed the story of Charles Lee Ray (his name is a combination of notorious killers Charles Manson, James Earl Ray and Harvey Oswald), who has possessed a doll named Chucky. He has bright, polymer-blue eyes make him seem innocent of any wrong-doing. Chucky can go places and do things (mainly kill people) that Charles Lee Ray could only dream of, and this is a key part of the doll's appeal throughout the franchise. Chucky is terrifying, his toddler clothing, foreshortened limbs and freckles juxtaposed against a deadly snarl. Yet he is also fascinating, a very human non-human, no longer subject to the laws of the living, but bound by plastic restrictions. We want to run from Chucky, but part of us wonders what it would be like to be him.

Audiences started to become bored of horror during this decade, finding the films too predictable. They also craved something more intelligent and sophisticated. It can be argued that the so-called psychological

thriller took precedence over horror in the first half of the 1990s, and indeed, many dark, disturbing films of this period describe themselves as thriller, not horror. Yet directors such as Jonathan Demme were

adopting the codes and conventions of the horror genre, when pacing their plot, when representing their characters, and when manipulating the shock/suspense mechanisms of their audiences. Serial killer movies

were a central theme in the 90’s. A serial killer fulfils several functions within a film's narrative structure. He (or much more rarely, she) can

play the part of villain, or antagonist, obviously, and can provide a worthy opponent for the protagonist. However, serial killers onscreen are often portrayed as being supremely intelligent or cunning, and find it

easy to foil 'those dumb cops'. Audiences respect this intelligence, and a well-played killer may excite them. Serial killers are those who, by definition, enjoy killing and seek their thrills repeatedly. This puts them

outside the normal boundaries of humanity. Serial killers, also by definition, manage to kill several times before being caught, their skill at escaping detection perhaps suggesting extraordinary good luck, or

supernatural powers. They are not ordinary human beings, and as with any deviation from the norm, we prefer to see them as monsters. There are many films about serial killers, some of them excellent (Silence

of The Lambs, Se7en) some of them grim (Resurrection, The Bone Collector).

THE 1990’S

Scream (1996) was a crowd-pleaser from the get-go, its wit is accessible, and none of the references too mysterious. It makes its

audience feel like they know more about the horror genre than perhaps they actually do - the references are restricted to a narrow

band of mainstream American movies from the 70s and 80s. The nerve-twanging opening sequence aside (Drew Barrymore as the doomed Casey), true horror moments are few and far between. It

made fun of cheerleaders and jocks making the audience some what happy about their deaths. Nonetheless, the movie scored

major box office success ($161M worldwide) and spawned, not just sequels, but a whole sub-genre of lame horror comedies. It seemed

that the core teen audience preferred easy laughs to scares, just like in 1948.

Whilst January 1st, 2000 came and went without much mishap, many commentators have identified the true beginning of the 21st century as

September 11th, 2001. The events of that day changed global perceptions of what is frightening, and set the cultural agenda for the following years. The film industry, already facing a recession, felt very hard hit as film-makers struggled to come to terms with what was now acceptable to the viewing public. Anyone trying to sell a horror film in the autumn of 2001 (as George Romero tried with Land of the Dead) got rebuffed. There was even a call to ban horror movies in

the name of world peace. However, by 2005, the horror genre was more popular than ever.

Several classical horrors were remade and ‘found footage’ style film became more popular. This period brought a lot of variety to genre, while audiences

feared the effects of greed and evil in our world.

2000- 2010’S

One teen-focused horror movie in which protagonists get picked off one by one was Final Destination. By the end of the 1990s the slasher/killer was played out as a horror trope. Not even self-referential parody could make a masked murderer into an interesting antagonist. Even before the first plane hit the North Tower, it seems that audiences were searching for a new source of dread, something less cartoonish, something that couldn't be blamed on an unhappy childhood, or a revenge mission. The

new millennium brought with it a new unease, a feeling that the evil in the world cannot be contained inside one masked, wise-cracking human. Step forward the most ancient and enduring of human

enemies: Death. The Final Destination killer has no awkward back story, no mother waiting in the shadows, no

daughters/sons unaware of their parentage. It has no Achilles heel. It has everyone in its sights and no one - virgins and geeks are in just as much danger as cheerleaders. The rules are clear and simple: if

you are a character in a Final Destination movie, you are going to die. It's just a matter of when, where and - most importantly for the entertainment factor of these movies - how.

The movies Grave Encounters and Paranormal Activities are excellent examples of how found- footage movies rose to fame in the 2000’s. This style of film made the narrative ore believable and made

viewers fear about what could lurk in their own houses.

After 2010, the horror genre was introduced to many sub- genres, for example, psychological, gothic, paranormal, slasher etc. However the most famous had been proven to be paranormal horror movies, with the audience mainly being young teens. This is because it played on the human fear of the unknown, not knowing what was out there after death or looking directly into the face of the

darker side of religion.