The beginnings of the Horror Genre

1. The beginnings of the Horror Genre Horror is an ancient art form. We have tried to terrify each other with tales which trigger the less logical parts of our imaginations for as long as we've told stories. From the ballads of the ancient world to modern urban myths, audiences willingly offer themselves up to sadistic storytellers to be scared witless, and they are happy to pay for the privilege. Horror movies have long served both purposes. They deliver thrills by the hearse load, 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. Nosferatu (1922) is not simply a tale of vampirism, but offers heart-rending images of a town beleaguered by premature and random deaths, echoes of the Great War and the Great Flu Epidemic fatalities.

2. Horror in the 1940’s In the early 1940s, a world living under the shadow of Hitler's predatory tendencies identified a part-man, part-wolf whose bestial nature caused him to tear apart those who crossed his path as their bogeyman. In the 1990s however, there was no need for a part wolf component: Jonathan Doe (Se7en 1994) and Hannibal Lecter (Manhunter 1986, Silence of the Lambs 1991, Hannibal 2001) were entirely human in their calculated and stylised killing methods. As we move on into the twenty first century, the ghosts and zombies are back in vogue as Eastern and Western superstitions converge.

3. So where did the genre originate from? Some of the greatest mid- nineteenth century novelists tried their hand at horror fiction, paying tribute to the dying traditions of the gothic. • Emily Bronte steeped her novel Wuthering Heights in gothic situations and sensibilities. • Dickens wrote a number of ghost stories (the best perhaps being The Signalman, the best known A Christmas Carol). • Herman Melville incorporated many supernatural elements into Moby Dick, as did Nathaniel Hawthorne with The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables.

4. Early horror Silent film offered the early pioneers a wonderful medium in which to examine terror. Early horror films are surreal, dark pieces, owing their visual appearance to the expressionist painters. Darkness and shadows, such important features of modern horror, were impossible to show on the film stock available at the time, so the sequences, for example in Nosferatu, where we see a vampire leaping amongst gravestones in what appears to be broad daylight, seem doubly surreal to us now.

5. Sound & horror • The advent of sound, as well as changing the whole nature of cinema forever, had a huge impact on the horror genre. The dreamlike imagery of the 1920s, the films peopled by ghosts floating silently through the terror of mortals, were replaced by monsters that grunted and groaned and howled. • 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.

6. Horror & the war 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 made in Hollywood purely in response to the domestic audience. No risks could be taken, so the studios stuck with tried and tested ideas. This was not an age of innovation If the horror movies of the 1930s had dealt in well-established fictional monsters, looking back towards the nineteenth century for inspiration, the 1940s reflected the internalisation of the horror market.

7. Hitchcock & horror Although there are moments in all his major works that cross the line between horror and thriller it is only Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963) that can truly be described as horror films. He proved himself expert at scaring audiences with both an internal and external threat. Psycho presented us with Norman Bates, the monster so close to normal it was only in the final section of the film that he revealed how monstrous a man could be. Psycho has become iconic in a way few other movies have ever become. Everyone "knows" the story; the name Norman Bates is familiar to those who have never seen the film. The screeching soundtrack and the flashing of the knife blade in the shower scene seem condemned to perpetual rerunning in horror films to this day.

8. Hitchcock & horror

9. Hitchcock & horror The Birds, Daphne du Maurier's short story was originally set in Cornwall. Hitchcock transposed it to Bodega Bay, California, and turned a simple tale of the malevolence at the heart of nature into a morality play. Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is a bad girl. The extent of her badness is never fully revealed, but we know that she has spent her time frolicking naked in fountains in Rome, and impersonating pet shop assistants in San Francisco. She is also prepared to clear her diary and follow home a man she fancies. Her arrival in Bodega Bay, in hot pursuit of Mitch, coincides with the beginnings of strange behaviour from the birds.

10. Hitchcock & horror Later in the movie a townswoman screams at her "What are you?", blaming her for the catastrophe. Melanie does not answer.Whoever or whatever has caused them to attack, the birds are fearsome opponents. A variety of special effects (much blue screen work and some animation provided by Disney technicians) plus the spooky soundtrack - a combination of deathly silence and artificial bird noises - create a many-headed monster, flapping and screeching and pecking.

11. Hammer Horror Horror had been established by the monster movies of a decade earlier as a low budget, high grossing genre: the audience's seemingly insatiable demand for thrills combined with a willingness to suspend disbelief meant that there was a steady stream of production. In Britain, Hammer Films produced a slew of horror pictures, becoming known as Hammer, House of Horror. Although their first real success was The Quatermass Experiment(1955), a sci-fi venture, they soon decided that monsters in human form were better... and cheaper! Also, the glut of monster pictures in the 1950s meant that audiences, as ever, sought a new direction. or an old one. Hammer began to rehash all the horror stories so beloved of Universal in the 1930s: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy etc etc, but added a touch of erotica.

12. Hammer Horror

13. Hammer Horror Whereas the Universal movies were wholesome family fare, Hammer prided themselves on their 'X- ADULT ONLY' certification. That X-rating was earned by a soft-focus erotic flavour which seems curiously chivalrous to us now, but was very daring in a world that had not long left the Hay's Code behind. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were played a succession of villains and monsters. They too have become paradigms of the genre.

14. Horror in 1970’s One genuine fear apparent in the horror films of the 1970s is the fear of children, and the fear of the messy, painful and often fatal process of childbirth. Children are the focus of horror in many key 1960s films. They are unwanted and do bad things to their parents, culminating in Rosemary's Baby. Yet this theme dominates the 1970s, as the crumbling family unit becomes the source of much fear and mistrust. It's your Mum (Shivers). Your Dad (The Shining). Your brother (Halloween). Your husband (The Stepford Wives). Your little boy (The Omen). Your daughter (The Exorcist). It's the people you see so often you don't really see them any more (Carrie). The seventies were about deep-seated paranoia, and the fear that the moral shift of the 1960s had created a culture of monsters - the archetypal successors of the shuffling zombies in Night of The Living Dead.

15. Horror in 1970’s

16. Horror in 1970’s The 1970s is also the decade when the first so called movie brats (the first generation to grow up with television and the level of visual literacy that brings) leave film school and get let loose on their own movies (Spielberg, Scorsese, Lucas, de Palma et al). Also, writer Stephen King hits the bestseller lists with his 1974 debut, Carrie. These are people who grew up watching the Universal horror classics and The Addams Family on TV. They knew intimately how a horror film should look and how a monster should behave - and how a skilled director might start playing variations on the well worn themes. Steven Spielberg took the well-worn theme of the monster movie ("It's coming to get you! Run! Hide!") and produced the sublime Jaws (1975), proving his worth as a director even with a budget of $12M.

17. Horror in the 1980’s The horror films of the early 1980s show a new energy and delight in the genre, as special effects creators fell over each other to create sequences that had never been attempted on film before. There were to be no more monsters with zippers up the back. Towards the end of the decade, horror movies were considerably 'dumbed down' to attract their target audience, with body counts through the ceiling, and little attention being paid towards plot and credibility. Friday the 13th (1980), the first of the horror genre's most recognizable horror series - with an astonishing number of sequels (ten), ripped off more original films of the 70s with tales of terrorized teen camp counsellors. It also inspired a TV series and several spoofs. Jason, like the psychopathic Freddy Krueger before him in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, became a landmark name.

18. Horror in the 1980’s

19. Horror in the 1990’s By the end of the 1980s horror had become so reliant on gross-out gore and buckets of liquid latex that it seemed to have lost its power to do anything more than shock and then amuse. The 1990’s got the thing they feared the most, the serial killer Top Horror/Serial Killer of 1990’s Silence of The Lambs (1990) Scream (1996) Se7en (1995) Blair Witch Project (1999) Blade (1999) The Sixth Sense (1999) Misery (1990)

20. Horror in the 1990’s

21. The Horror Film & audience Horror films tend to be viewed with critical disdain for a number of reasons: Predictability of form and content Low budgets and poor production values Targeting an adolescent audience Variety of generic sources and subgenres Fantasy worlds – little connection with social or political issues Dependence upon blood, gore, viscera for effect Conservative attitudes towards morality and sexuality

22. The Horror Film “The horror film has consistently been one of the most popular and, at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood genres. The popularity itself has a peculiar characteristic that sets the horror film apart from other genres: it is restricted to aficionados and complemented by total rejection, people tending to go to horror films either obsessively or not at all” Robin Wood, American Nightmare

23. Why are horror films popular with audiences? Stability of form and content provides a predictable set of pleasures Ability to merge with other genres eg crime, sci-fi Emphasis on the impossible and the uncanny Taboo or forbidden subject matter The attraction of fear

24. The Attraction of Fear Psychological: Iconography often linked to primal fears eg darkness, knives, masks Return of repressed desires, especially violent and sexual urges Fascination with the body and its fragility Sex and sexuality as key themes Ultimately reassuring – the diegesis is governed by set rules, chaos is brought under control Questions of morality

25. The Attraction of Fear Social: The diegesis represents ‘normality’; the monster stands in opposition to this Often based around contemporary social fears and tensions Ultimately, society is able to contain and control the ‘abnormal’ Issues of science, technology, religion and psychology as social ‘narratives’ More recently, the family and middle-class lifestyles have been examined as a source of horror

26. Some Horror Trends Traditional, gothic horror Sci-fi horrors Stalk and slash horror Psychological horror

27. Things you should know about horror Iconography – Christian imagery and symbols, haunted castles, graveyards, ruins Setting – Transylvania, haunted houses, small town America Style – sequences of suspense, fright and terror (sometimes using the point-of-view shot to make us see through the eyes of the killer/monster) Narrative – Monsters terrorising communities, vampires preying upon the living, encounters with the supernatural, hauntings, possessions (The Excorcist) Characters – vampires, supernatural beings, demons, The Devil, ghosts, monsters, werewolves, zombies, psychotic killers, female victims, teenagers in peril

28. Things you should know about horror Themes – Horror movies explore the dark side of the humanity - the struggle between good and evil (Dracula); the evils of science and playing God (Frankenstein); civilisation versus superstition; the invasion of the body by supernatural forces. Horror movies often deal with the afterlife and therefore explore Christian themes and the meaning of religion (The Exorcist deals with the demonic possession of a young girl).

29. The Blair Witch project The film is said to have cost only $25,000 to make initially and had no stars, no special effects, cheap use of location and no music soundtrack. It took over $56,000 in the first week, being shown on only 27 screens in 20 states. By the third week, the number of screens had risen to 1100 across the US. Only the release of The Sixth Sense managed to calm the excitement around the film. In total it made $140 million in the US alone.

30. The Blair Witch project The Blair Witch Project was made using an experiemental style of film making that deliberately attempted to blur expectations of fact and opinion. It apparent closeness to reality is achieved through: • Shaky camera • Sudden editing cuts • Rejection of star status actors • Chaotic sound – characters talk over each other • Denarrativised action, the rambling dialogue and poor framing

31. The Blair Witch project The Blair Witch Project operates on a notion of what is horrific. It attempts to make horror a figment of the audience’s imagination. The film plays on associated fears, the dark, the woods, being alone, going missing, being lost etc. The shaky hand held camera, a familiar convention from other horrors illustrate the point of view of a monster or villain but is subverted here by being the POV of the characters in trouble.

32. Look at the following posters and explain what makes them typical of the horror genre

33. Look at the following posters and explain what makes them typical of the horror genre

34. Look at the following posters and explain what makes them typical of the horror genre