Digital Filmmakers 7 th period Nov. 7 th

1. Digital Filmmakers 7th period Nov. 7th Horror Films Genre

2. Horror Genre • Horror films are movies that strive to elicit fear, horror and terror responses from viewers. In the plots of such films, themes of the supernatural colliding with our world, are very common. Otherwise the theme can be completely “supernatural” without any trace whatsoever of reality. Horror movies usually include a central villain.

3. Supernatural • Otherwise the theme can be completely “supernatural” without any trace whatsoever of reality. Horror movies usually include a central villain. Early horror are largely based on classic literature of the gothic/ horror genre, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Later horror films, in contrast, often drew inspiration from the insecurities of life after World War II, giving rise to the three distinct, but related, sub-genres: the horror-of-personalityPsycho film, the horror-of-armageddonInvasion of the Bodysnatchers film, and the horror-of-the-demonicHellraiser film.

4. Criticism of Horror Films • Horror films have been criticized for their graphic violence and dismissed as low budget B-movies and exploitation films. Nonetheless, all the major studios and many respected directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Romero have made forays into the genre. Serious critics have analyzed horror films through the prisms of genre theory and the auteur theory. Some horror films incorporate elements of other genres such as science fiction, fantasy, mockumentary, black comedy, and thrillers.

5. 1930’s Horror Classics • It was in the early 1930s that Americanfilm producers, particularly Universal Pictures Co. Inc., popularized the horror film, bringing to the screen a series of successful Gothic features including Dracula (1931), and The Mummy (1932), some of which blended science fiction films with Gothic horror, such as James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933).

6. Alfred Hitchcock • Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) had a more modern backdrop; it was a prime example of a menace stemming from nature gone mad and one of the first American examples of the horror-of-Armageddon sub-genre. One of the most influential horror films of the late 1960s was George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968).

7. A-Movies and B-Movies • With the demise of the Production Code of America in 1964, and the financial successes of the low-budget gore films churned out in the ensuing years, plus an increasing public fascination with the occult, the genre was able to be reshaped by a series of intense, often gory horror movies with sexual overtones, made as “A-movies” (as opposed to “B-movies”).

8. Cult Films • The critical and popular success of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) prompted the 1970s occult explosion, which included the box office smash The Exorcist (1973) (directed by William Friedkin and written by William Peter Blatty, who also wrote the novel), and scores of other horror films in which the Devil became the supernatural evil, often by impregnating women or possessing children. “Evil children” and reincarnation became popular subjects (as in Robert Wise’s 1977 film Audrey Rose, which dealt with a man who claims his daughter is the reincarnation of another dead person).

9. Stephen King & Brian DePalma • Also in the 1970s, horror author Stephen King, a child of the 1960s, first arrived on the film scene. Many of his books were adapted for the screen, beginning with Brian DePalma’s adaptation of King’s first published novel, Carrie (1976), which went on to be nominated for Academy Awards—although it has often been noted that its appeal was more for its psychological exploration as for its capacity to scare.

10. Return to Extreme Graphic Violence • A larger trend is a return to the extreme, graphic violence that characterized much of the type of low-budget, exploitation horror from the Seventies and the post-Vietnam years. Films like Audition (1999), Wrong Turn (2003), House of 1000 Corpses (2003), The Devil’s Rejects and the Australian filmWolf Creek (2005), took their cues from The Last House on the Left (1972), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). The latter two have also been remade: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003, and The Hills Have Eyes in 2006 both followed by a prequel in the same year and a sequel in the following year. An extension of this trend was the emergence of a type of horror with emphasis on depictions of torture, suffering and violent deaths, (variously referred to as “horror porn”, “torture porn”, Splatterporn, and even “gore-nography”) with films such as FeardotCom, Turistas, Captivity, and most recently Untraceable