The History and the Genre of Horror

The history of horror

The first ever noticeable horror film created was Georges Mélés “The house of the devil” it was made in 1890’s. George Mélés made other horror films and is one of the founders of the genre of horror in films.

Since George Mélés there have been thousands of horror films made, but in the 1910 – 1920 is were horror films really started becoming more popular, such great horrors as “The Phantom of the Opera” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”.

In the 1930 – 1940 the Americans started producing horror films, coming up with horror films such as “Dracula”, “Frankenstein”, “The Invisible Man” and “I Walked with a Zombie”. All of these types of monsters are still very popular. With Dracula been a vampire like the ever popular “Twilight”.

The 1950 – 1960 we saw one of the greatest horrors of all time, “psycho”, had one of the most popular scenes in horror history. This scene was so great mainly because of the excellent camerawork, mise en scene, sound and editing of the piece to create a horrifying effect, terrifying the audience. We also saw zombie in more depth with the classic “night of the living dead” and the creation of aliens and mummy’s.

In the 1970 – 1980 horror films finally became “mainstream” with popular films such “Alien”, Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “Halloween”, “Nightmare on Elm Street” “The Evil Dead” and “Jaws”. Audience in the 1980’s found themselves enjoying the thrill and excitement of terrifying themselves half to death. This put a lot of pressure on horror film writers so try and make the audience run out of the cinema crying.

In the 1990, the craze for horror films started to die down, with only sequels to original horror classics such as “Jaws 2”, “Halloween 2” and “Nightmare of Elm Street 2” been released. But there were some new ideas for example, “Child’s Play” was a horror with a twist, the murders or monster of the film was also the weakest.

In the 2000’s, the type of horror films, which were released were more torturous. This is were the bad guy or monster tortured it’s victim. Such films as “Saw” started this off because of it been horrifyingly clever in its storey line adding twist after twist to keep the audience on the edge of there seats. Overall the 2000’s were full of remakes of classic’s or films with cleverly constructed storey lines.

The Genre of Horror

In anytime typical horror film, it will have a bad guy who is trying to kill the main character, or a group of people trying to kill the main character. Usually the bad guy gets killed at the dead by the main character and everything ends happily for the main character.

It is always set in low-lit places and the main sets are the bad guys laree and the main characters safe house. The sound will usually be quiet and eerie to create tension or loud and drum beats for a chase scene.

The bad guy will always have is own costume to define hime, such as Jason having his hock mask, scream having his grim reaper costume etc. the main character will usually be set out to be venerable at the start wearing typical clothes, but at the end looking more and more powerful usually with a costume change to make them look more powerful such as, “Aliens” when riply having loads of guns strapped to her.