Genre Research

How the Horror Genre has changed

Why do we watch horror movies?• We watch horror movies for many reasons, the main

reason being we as the audience like to be scared or to see if a movie can actually scare us.

• A lot of people crave t feeling of fear and horror.

• Catharsis states that we enjoy being scared.

1920’s - Nosferatu• Information: Released February

17th 1922, it is a silent, black and white horror film with a running time of 94 minutes.

• Plot Summary: Thomas Hutter is sent to Transylvania to visit and stay a new client, Count Orlok, who turn out to be a vampire.Described as eerie and chilling.

• Famous Quote: “Is this your wife? What a lovely throat.”

• I the 1920’s many people were afraid of the monsters you find in literature and therefore were feared basic monsters such as Nosferatu and Dracula.

• As diegetic sound could not be recorded in the 1920’s, film makers had to rely on non-diegetic sound (music) to create a scary tension and mise en scene elements such as costume and setting.

• Nosferatu uses a dark castle with a mythical creature based around the idea of Bram Stokers book ‘Dracula’.

• They also use makeup and costume to make Nosferatu look like a gothic monster.

1930’s – Bride of Frankenstein

• Information: Released on April 22nd 1935, it was on black and white but this time had sound.

• Plot Summary: In the film, a chastened Henry Frankenstein abandons his plans to create life, only to be tempted and finally coerced by the Monster, encouraged by Henry's old mentor Dr. Pretorius, into creating someone for him.

• Famous Quote: It's a perfect night for mystery and horror. The air itself is filled with monsters.

• Horror films during the 1930’s also have the same aspect that they are based around mythical monsters from literature.

• The 1930’s was the first decade to include diegetic sound within movies and therefore movies could include dialogue to the story to hook the audience.

• Costume and setting were still very important aspects of mise enscene that helped to portray a gothic mood to films.

• Although the movie is called ‘Frankensteins Bride’, his bride does not appear until the very end, playing fearful and scared towards her husband due to the patriarchal society in the 1930’s meaning Frankenstein is still the main character.

1940’s – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

• Information: Released on August 12th 1941, it is a black and white film that lasts 113 minutes.

• Plot Summary: A scientist named Dr. Jekyll who drinks a potion allowing him to turn into a werewolf named Mr. Hyde.

• Famous Quote: “Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm. ”

• During the 1940’s horror films were banned from Britain due to the second world war and therefore it was in America where most horror movie’s were filmed.

• The ideas for horrors in the 1940’s were starting to think outside of the box and instead of just monsters from literature, we now started to see the idea of the wear wolf (such as Jekyll and Hyde), sea creatures and more paranormal monsters.

• Women also had more dominant screen time and bigger roles.

1950’s – Creature from the Black Lagoon

• Information: released on December 31st, 1954. Its duration time is 80 minutes.

• Plot Summary: Scientists go to the Amazon river to investigate fossils, however, as they go further down the river they come to a black lagoon which is inhabited by a prehistoric creature, a half man, half amphibious reptile.

• Famous Quotes: “I can tell you something about this place. The boys around here call it "The Black Lagoon"; a paradise. Only they say nobody has ever come back to prove it.”

• During the 1950’s, the main audience for horror movies were teenagers, horror films were now targeted towards teens rather than adults.

• As the 1950’s were just after the second world war, people were most afraid of radioactivity, aliens and science that goes wrong etc. meaning that the target audience were done with traditional monsters and wanting something new to be scared of.

• Movies such as ‘The Fly’, ‘The Blob’ and ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ were very popular and

1960’s - Psycho• Information: released on June

16th, 1960. The film lasts for 109 minutes.

• Plot Summary: A young woman on the run stops off at a motel for the night where she is murdered by Norman Bates, a man who has split personality disorder.

• Famous Quotes: It's not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?

• The 1960’s was quite crucial for the horror genre as Andrew Tudor, a horror historian, claims that before the 1960’s horror films had closed narratives meaning they all end with the monster being destroyed, however, past the 1960’s, horror films now have open endings where it is not always definite that the monster or evil character is destroyed.

• “The old horror was either dead or dying; a new horror was about to be born.” – Peter Hutchings

• Things people were scared of in the 50’s were not feared as much anymore.

• The rise of drugs, fashion, freedom and sexual liberation occurred

• The rise of exploring the human mind and how it can go wrong came about.

• Monsters in movies were in human form and the idea of the killer became very popular.

1970’s – Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Information: released on October 1st, 1974. This film lasts 90 minutes.

• Plot Summary: A group of teens break down in a remote town in Texas where they meet an odd family containing a serial killer who uses a chainsaw to decapitate his victims.

• Famous Quote: “My family's always been into meat.”

• The 1970’s was the end of optimism and therefore horror movies gained a better quality, with better plots and more inventive ideas.

• Colour pictures were also becoming increasingly popular during this time.

• Horrors now contained society's fears making movies more scary and realistic and more movies contain teenagers as the main characters.

• The idea that the evil antagonist could be in your house scared people and therefore it became a lot ore popular within the future.

• Because the 70’s was around the time the defective pill ‘Thalidomide’ came out, a lot of society's fears were based around children which is what made The Excorcist (1973) so popular.

1980’s – A Nightmare on Elm Street

• Information: released on November 9th, 1984. It lasts 92 minutes.

• Plot Summary: After children accuse a man of molestation, their parents burn him and he eventually comes back to kill them as teenagers in their dreams.

• Famous Quote: “Whatever you do... don't fall asleep.”

• The 1980’s saw a huge technological change and therefore special effects were more prominent making horror movie’s look more realistic.

• SFX, brighter colours and more gruesome killings came out during this decade.

• The VCR was also created in the 80’s meaning people could view horror movies from their own homes.

• A Nightmare on Elm Street was the decade’s most famous movie including a lot of gore through special effects and brightly lit sets.

1990’s – Scream• Information: released in

1996 on December 20th. The film duration is 111 minutes.

• Plot Summary: High school teens are being murdered by an unknowing killer obsessed with horror movies who is disguised in a scream mask and costume who calls his victims up before killing them.

• Famous Quote: “What's your favorite scary movie?”

• By the 1990’s audiences were bored of the predictable stories that horrors

• Therefore intelligent, physcological horror films became very popular.

• Movies such as Scream were made where the audience has to guess who the killer is out of all the characters. And Silence of the Lambs (1991), a movie about a cannibal who helps a detective catch a serial killer.

• Wes Craven says that audiences enjoy it when a character within the film acknowledges and mocks horror conventions.

2000’s - Saw • Information: released on

October 1st, 2004. This film is approximately 103 minutes.

• Plot Summary: A disturbed man makes people play deadly games with violent choices through devices he has made to make them appreciate their lives more.

• Famous Quote: “He doesn't want us to cut through our chains. He wants us to cut through our feet!”

• Because of the o0ccurance of 9/11 people were more fearful and scared of what can happen in the real world.

• Physcological and supernatural horrors are/ were still popular and are set in places and situations that could really happen.

• As this decade was less than ten years ago, the effects that you can get for movies are of a very high standard making it easy to show gore and deadly scenes that might have been more difficult to film/ present in the past.

• Movies such as Saw and REC. are especially popular due to gore and real life situations the victims are in (REC is shown through a POV and filmedusing a handheld camera)

• Spoofs of horror movies are especially popular today such as Scary Movie and Shaun of the Dead

By looking at and researching the horror genre through the history of film I have seen which horror conventions have changed and also seen which conventions have stayed the same. I have seen how this has happened through means of technology and also how society’s fears and events influence what people in society are scared of at that point in time. For our movie we have chosen to do a supernatural horror as this seems to be becoming a popular genre for this decade as movies we have looked at such as Annabelle and Paranormal Activity have such high ratings and gross a lot at the box office.