History of Horror

 History of Horror

Horror is an ancient art form with a purpose to terrify with tales that trigger the less logical parts of our imaginations for as long as stories have been told. They deliver thrills, as well as telling us stories of the dark, forbidden side of life and death. They also provide a revealing mirror image of the anxieties of their time. Horror can be expressed through novels, comics, stories, TV shows but the majority of horror is released through films. Each generation gets the horror films it deserves, and one of the more fascinating aspects of the study of the genre is the changing nature of the monsters who present a threat. The 20's and 30's were the first decades to really show films that intended to scare the audience. Generally the 20's and 30's saw remakes of the classic stories such as Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' and Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'. 

In the 1940's however, there was a serious drop in the amount of films made in general due to war circumstances. But, a few classic horror films such as 'House of Frankenstein', House of Dracula' and 'Wolf Man' (1941)


The 50's and 60's had many advances in technology and this resulted in a shift from Gothic Horror to more contemporary concerns. The horror genre split in half to reveal two subgenres: Doomsday film and the Demonic film. Doomsday films suggested the collapse of Earth's technological civilization whereas Demonic films suggested that the world was miserable because of evil forces the constantly undermining the quality of existence. The nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki influenced Godzilla (1954) this featured the effect of nuclear radiation.

From the 1960s on we begin to see a massive variety of styles into the horror genre as it gained a lot of popularity. It was 1960’s Psycho that shocked audiences into believing horror could be more than B-Film Fare. Unlike the monsters of previous horror films, Norman Bates was rooted in reality – an every day human on the outside but a psychological monster in the mind. Hitchcock would deliver another natural horror with The Birds in 1963. The UK began rebooting Universal’s Gothic Monsters – but adding a lot more gore. Shot in full colour, Hammer’s first Gothic horror reboot was Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein with Peter Cushing as Dr. Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the monster. For the first time in a Frankenstein film, blood was shown on screen and in full chilling colour.

During the 1970's and 80's, due to the success of low-budget horror films during the early parts of the 20th century, more horror films with occult themes were released during the 1970s. Possession, reincarnation and evil-children became popular themes in horror movies. One popular occult horror film was 'The Omen' released in 1976; which was one of the highest grossing films of that year. Also in the 70s many novels started to be adapted as moving pictures, this included the author Stephen King, who wrote novels such as 'Carrie' and 'The Shining'.This was the era where Slasher' films became more popular. Slasher films include a series of violent murders, often using a knife or sharp object by a murderer. One of the most popular slasher movies of all time is Halloween (1978) which went on to create a franchise which has sprouted 7 sequels to date.

When the 90s came around, the slasher cycle had pretty much run its course and was starting to fall into parody. Wes Craven’s self aware slasher film Scream in 1996 about a killer among a group of kids that already know all the rules of slasher films rebooted a new Teen Horror cycle which led to I Know What You Did Last Summer directed by Jim Gillespie and Final Destination directed by James Wong. Today's films are much like the early 2000s with many remakes still being made however the newer films such as Insidious get more horrific as the films go on with Chapter 3 being the most horrific. This applies to many films such as The Conjuring 2 (2016) and Woman in Black 2 (2015). Many of the actors and films from the past are now thought of as cliché and therefore the horror genre has taken on a more realistic attitude to create the sense that its real. Recent Zombie films feed our fears of a medical pandemic and the break down of society fears brought on by the financial meltdown in the mid 2000s. Still going strong with films like World War Z and the long form Television melodrama The Walking Dead, the Zombie Cycle may be seeing it’s fade out as comedic outings like Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead have poked fun at the formula.