History of Horror

"If movies are the dreams of the mass culture... horror movies are the nightmares"
— Stephen King, Danse Macabre

For as long as people can remember scaring others is something that people enjoy; it triggers a part of the brain that isn't visited very often. Horror is said to be an art form because people are willing to pay to have the sense of fear that you can only accumulate through this genre of media. This genre has become so popular because, not only does it allow people to be introduced to the dark and sadistic side to life and other situations, but it is a visual / auditory / verbal way of understanding the fears and anxieties of society at that present time. A good example of this is Nosferatu as it is not merely a tale about vampires, it is a visual interpretation of the Great War and Great Flu Epidemics by the amount of deaths there was.

Roots in Classic Literature 

Frankenstein(1818) is probably the most famous literary classic with links to the horror genre due to the amount of further publications and imitations it inspired. The novel was created as part of a competition that Mary Shelly was having her husband and his friend whilst away on holiday. They wanted to see who could come up with the best horror / ghost story, and Frankenstein is what Shelley came up with. The novel is actually a hybrid of the horror, science-fiction and romance genres however, it encouraged so many films and basically triggered the science-fiction chain of movies. Because horror films and stories weren't very well-circulated before this time, Christians never had to face it. However Frankenstein was popular and so many people knew it; parents and Christians complained because they either couldn't believe that young children were being exposed to such stories or because they found it insulting and offensive to suggest that a few stitches between body parts and a spark of lightening could steal God's job of creating another human being. Whether good or bad, Frankenstein was well-known and still is now.

Dracula(1931) is another classic as any fan of horror is a fan of this film. It had to have parts cut out of it and then it got re-released due to lengthy screams and purposely frightening epilogues being too offensive for religious groups. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde is another classic horror story which came about in one of Robert Louis Stevenson's dreams. 

These classic stories may be fairly old but they act as the roots and the core to the genre as they changed and inspired many people's perceptions of what horror films can and can't do. The controversy caused due to the reactions of religious groups encouraged people to push boundaries. 

The Horror Silent Era

The very first horror films were based on expressionist art and spirit photography. Spirit photography is created through absurd double exposures that make it seem as though there is a ghost or a spiritual presence within the photograph. These forms of art within horror were used to explore darker stories that had psychological and supernatural themes. Then horror films were created. 

The lack of technology in this era meant that technical codes within the conventions of the horror that we watch nowadays wasn't available  scenes were often filmed in broad daylight which, currently, would be classed as bad film-making had they have included these scenes in a modern horror film. They lacked darkness and shadows in their films and so the symbolic codes were important; the dress, the masks, the make-up, the props etc. One film that backed this up was Le Manoir du Diable(1896).

The film was no more than 3 minutes and a few seconds but within that short amount of time, the very first horror film recorded managed to cram various different props that have become icons of the horror genre today. 

The 'granddaddy' of all horror films, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari(1919) stylised horror films because of the lack of sound in it - having no sound meant that the movies and the settings and characters within them seemed dreamlike because there was no sound to encourage audiences to feel a certain way, viewers just got lost in the movement and atmosphere of the moving image itself.

Monsters and Mad Scientists

Horror was reborn in the 1930's due to the advancement in sound. The dreamlike imagery was replaced with sounds and a new dimension was added to Horror. Because of this new development, cinema and horror were taken to the next level; 80 million people attended the cinema weekly to see horror films in order to escape from the everyday reality that was the Great Depression. A new degree of escapism was formed with the advancement in technology. 

Films recognisable to this era of horror are Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, Freak and King Kong. King Kong displayed how new technologies were taking over. The scene where the plane kills King Kong is a symbolic interpretation of how technology is metaphorically killing nature. These monster movies were fairy tales displaying one's [primal fears about what is lurking outside the borders of civilisation and the society we belong in. 

Not only were monsters becoming increasingly popular, mad scientists were too. They peaked coincidentally in the same year that Hitler came into power; they were displaying the fears of being dictated and controlled by a somewhat sadistic force. 

The Primal Animal Within

Horror movies were popular during war time because of Adolf Hitler. He strongly identified with the iconography behind the wolf because his name 'Adolf' means 'nobel wolf' in old German.  He made his sister change her name to 'Paula Wolf' and his favourite secretary was 'Johanna Wolf' who he referred to as she-wolf. 

Werewolves were used in movies because it was an easy way to portray the events and effects that Hitler, the Nazis and WWII were having on people. Many people dies during World War II as a cause of Hilter's dictatorship and controversial actions. Hitler was portrayed and painted to be the Big Bad Wolf of fairytales; he was the main reason for fear during this period and so people wanted to capture this film. They did this by including werewolves in their films to represent the Nazi's and all of the people that Hitler was controlling. Werewolves are 'satanic creatures with the worst qualities of both man and wolf, but are neither man nor wolf themselves' so it is clear to see just how scared people were during the time of Hitler's power through the characters and animals used in the films at the time. 

Cats were used in movies as a way to give women the power over men. When men went away to fight in the war, the women were left doing their jobs however when they came home, the women were pushed aside and expected to go back to living under man's control. Women didn't appreciate this kind of neglect so films were made about it where cats / cat people were used to represent women. Cats were the animal to do this because of their sly yet gracious qualities. The cat / cat people's main motive in the films were to gain authority and power over men by seducing and killing them.; cats seems approriate because of they have the qualities that allow them to make these kinds of actions possible without being caught / put into trouble because of their actions. 

Films like The Wolf Man(1941) and Cat People(1942) were popular movies during this period because they were some of the first of their kind. They triggered the creation of several other movies with a similar meaning and motif behind them. 

These films are perfect examples of how horror films are used to capture the fears circulating around society.

Mutant Creatures and Alien Invaders

These alien / monster / unknown creature movies were sparked because of a fear of co-existent living with the atom bomb. Citizens watched horror movies containing these non-human characters because it made humans look good; we were the good force stopping these creatures from destroying out planet. People were scared that the advancement in technology would lead to things changing drastically and its users becoming mutated/deformed because of their obsessions with technological progression.

The first alien film, Rocketship X-M came out in the 1950's and sparked a trend in sci-fi based horrors. These mutant creatures became so popular because it demonstrated how non-human characters could be made to seem realistic through the advancement in technology; before now, existing life forms were used as monsters because it was easy to use photographic mediums to capture them however, they progressed into special effects and created creatures that were not known to be true. 

Mutant films were the very first films to make blockbusters and so they act as quite an important part in the history of film. The Blob(1958) inspired two remakes because the social message behind the film was that people (higher forces) feed off one's fears. This is a basic way of presenting the idea that horror isn't only existent in films, it is also present in the minds of some people / creatures. 

Although these kinds of films are still being made, they tend to be more of a mock towards the fear of unknown creatures as opposed to a visual representation of the realistic terror people find in these creatures. Films like Monsters Inc. and Monsters vs. Aliens demonstrate the foolishness behind being scared of creatures that are most likely to have ever existed.

Ghosts, Zombies, Satanism and your Family 

During the 1960's, films were made to demonstrate the fears people had regarding social issues and psychological fears. Many fears were of children and child birth and so children played a key role in some of the films made during this era. The film, 'The Exorcist'  is one of the first and scariest films to have dealt with the fear of children. The Exorcist and other films focusing on this fear demonstrate how children can be unwanted, leading them to do bad and evil things to their parents. This is often because they have been possessed by the devil, which brings in the theme of satanism. The purpose of these films is to warn you that the object of your fears can be found a lot closer to you than you would like to think (your own children etc). 

Ghost stories became popular during the 1960's because they were a reaction to the creature movies made previous decades before. The horror within these films is found in the journey that the hero takes between the phase of sanity and the state of psychosis. 

Films famous from this era, focusing on children and ghosts are Rosemary's Baby, Alice, Sweet Alice, Halloween and The Omen. These types of films, focusing on issues close to him, were believed to be scarier because of the higher extent or realism found within the films. 

Hammer Horror

Hammeris a British film company founded in 1934 however it only became popular during the 1950's where it had its breakthrough. The studios reinvented the Dracula novel by creating 8 different low budget Dracula films. There are still Hammer productions today however they have not reached as high a success as they would have done in the 1950's at their peak. They had a successful run of gothic movies and soon became known as "Hammer House of Horror". 

Slasher Movies and Body Horror / Gore 

Postmodern Parody, Birth of the Horror Sequel and Horror Franchise

The 1980's saw the advancement of special effects and thus saw the drastic ability to visually represent the most gory thoughts and fantasies through the medium of Horror. There were improvements in terms of animatronics which meant that the human form could be distorted and abused much more graphically and close up. This was aesthetically pleasing to the audiences that enjoyed horror because it took the films to a new level; suddenly the torturous actions seemed realistic and people gained pleasure from seeing this.
During the 80's, Western Society was going through a phase by where letting people know you owned wealthy and important products was actually more important than owning them. The development of special effects corresponds with this 'show-off' theme because sometimes films could be a little over the top with the amount of effects that they used. 

Because special effects were now good enough to show audiences more of the gore they wanted in a more detailed way, more and more films like this were being made however, they weren't new films with new characters, the history of horror just began to repeat itself by seeing the return of ghosts, unknown creatures and vampires, werewolves and zombies. 

New technological advancements meant that film makers could show the audience everything, and so they did. They showed blood and gore in every scene which was thought to be great because this was exactly what had been missing for the past decades however, in showing the audience everything, they took away the fear; there was no longer a fear of the unknown because special effects made everything apparent. Many films gave audiences thrills because of the way they implied what had happened without actually showing it (for example, showing a knife being forcefully moved towards another person and then cutting to the holder of the knife we assume that they've stabbed the other person - this gives us a thrill because we will still be surprised whether we find out if they actually did kill the person or not). 

This era saw the birth of slashers. Slashers conventionally have a psychopathic killer that uses large weapons to mutilate and kill teenagers. These kinds of films allowed room for sequels because unlike the body horror films previously mentioned, there were still elements of mystery for example, Halloween ends with the killer being thought to be dead however missing... 

Video Nasties

VHS cassettes were vital to the success of horror films during the 1980's. Due to cinema being popular, low budget films wouldn't get a large release and so they went 'straight to video' so that they could still reach a large audience without getting a British Theatrical Release. Because they could go straight to cassette they didn't need to worry about content because their films didn't need to be certified; the underground distribution of these films meant that anyone could get their hands on them from corner shops etc. This wasn't always a good thing thought because it wasn't only adults that could watch them, anyone could purchase these gore-filled horrors to watch time and time again and this is exactly what young children did; they knew that they wouldn't have been able to see the movie in the cinema and so they bought it for their own homes. Newspapers began to print headlines about these 'sick films' that were brainwashing the youth of the nation and the government stepped in. 39 films made a banned list however this had a reversal effect; because people had heard that these films were banned, they wanted to see what the fuss was about and so more people tried to get hold of them and watch them. All of the films such as Evil Dead have been put back into circuit and can be purchased, Evil Dead is also now seen a classic within the horror genre. 

In the 1984 The Video Recordings Act was introduced via the government so that the distribution of films could be regulated however as previously mentioned, people were still able to find films un-approved by the act if they tried hard enough to find them.

Although all of the 39 are now available to watch, people's feelings towards young children watching these films hasn't changed. The film Child's Play 3 was thought to be the influence that encouraged to torture and kill a 3 year old called James Bulger. However many disagree with this because people fail to believe that watching these kinds of actions inspire people to imitate them. 

Gore-nography / Torture Porn

"The act of torture represents the ultimate corruption of power; the torturer has absolute dominance over their victim, they control pain which is often of far more consequence than death"

David Edlestein suggested that audiences watch torture films because of the physical reaction they gain from it rather than an emotional one; that is where the term 'torture porn' comes from. Torture has been a part of horror for a long time, for example, when damsels are tied to railways tracks etc, however, the way that this act of torture is portrayed oozes a sense of realism that hasn't been present in horror films until now. Not only was it real, it was topical within the world news; the US Army had been accused of torturing prisoners and the FBI investigated the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and so these stories of torture were actually happening outside of the cinema. 

Torture films may be disturbing as opposed to terrifying whilst in the cinema however once out of the theater, the settings and locations are familiar because of the sense of realism these films had; these films don't leave much for the audiences to image or wonder about, the films are made to realistic to the extent that the visual information we need is fed to us so much so we believe that in order to have made the hacking of that limb so realistic, they would have had to have removed the limb from the actor. 

Gore-nography often includes underage girls and can often use women as their characters in provocative ways. This style of film isn't as popular as traditional horror films because the lack of mystery and 'fear of the unknown' in these films means that the audience don't gain anything from the movies once they leave the cinema.