through the decades

An analysis of the spooky genre over the years.

story by kareem dadkhah

There’s a lot of debate when it comes to what is considered “horror”. Discourse on what movies should be considered part of the genre, but for the sake of analysis, let’s break down the word “horror.” The official definition of horror is: an intense feeling of fear, shock or disgust.

Ghost and monster stories have been a part of mythology and literature for ages, but the horror film genre didn’t really start being established in America until about the 1920s. Titles like “Dracula” in 1931 by Universal Studios were highly well received and are now seen as “classics” in the world of horror. After the critical and commercial success of “Dracula”, Universal released “Frankenstein” later that year. Universal Studios went on to become one of the trailblazers for early horror cinema.

1910-20s - Horror in the first decade of the twentieth century tended to be centered around ghosts, the devil and skeletons. This can be observed in the films of Walter R. Booth, a magician who used trick photography to make the impossible possible. Some of his popular films include “The Sorcerer’s Scissors”, “When the Devil Drives” and “The Airstrip Destroyer.” Toward the end of this period, the films shifted from comedic to more serious. For example D. W. Griffith’s “The Sealed Room”, a film that tells the tale of two unfaithful lovers being bricked off in a room left to suffocate.

1930-40s - During this era of horror films filmmakers in the west looked to cashout on film adaptations of gothic literature. Universal Studios ushered in an age of big budget monster movies. After the horror tropes began to be repackaged and sold to the point of parody, films started to focus more on mood and suspense, with lower budgets and production value. “Cat People”, a 1942 film about an American man who marries a Serbian woman who is terrified that she will turn into the cat person of her homeland’s fables exemplified this focus.

1950-60s - By this time, the world had seen first hand the catastrophic power of atomic weaponry. The tensions of the Cold War hinted at the extinction of the human race and fear manifested in the horror movies at the time, focusing on atomic monsters, aliens and experiments gone wrong: “The Creeping Unknown” 1955. By the ’60s we started to see our first slashers, as the genre yet again stepped away from its previous trends. These new films were far more gruesome and sexual than anything that had been seen before. One of the most popular was the 1960 classic Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, not only considered one of the best horror films, but one of the best films, it was nominated for four academy awards, which was groundbreaking for the genre. “Night of the Living Dead” and “Rosemary’s Baby” were also very critical for the evolution horror during this time, introducing flesh-eating zombies and the topic of satanism.

1970s - “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Halloween” would further popularize the slasher subgenre of horror, while “Jaws” would pave the way for a new type of animal horror. In 1976, the film adaptation of the Stephen King novel “Carrie”, would introduce a new wave of teen horror films. One trend from the 70s that would change film making as a business was young filmmakers making lowbudget horror films that would gross millions at the box office, big film studios were eager to emulate this technique.

1980s - Paramount pictures found just what they were looking for when they put out “Friday the 13th” in 1980, very similar to “Halloween” but with less story and more gore. This was the age of film franchises, horror icons like Jason Vorhees, Freddy Kreuger, and Michael Myers were born. Big studios would put out endless sequels to movies regardless of quality. Horror became even more of a money game.

1990s-2000s - After the 80s’ golden age of campy gore, horror started to become a little more self aware with smart films that acted as commentary on the already established genre. For example “Scream” the iconic ghost-faced slasher series. There was also a new wave of “found footage” horror movies, none more well known than “The Blair Witch Project” a flim about three film students that vanished after traveling into a Maryland forest to make a documentary about the local witch legend, leaving only their footage behind.

This article was written with information gathered from “One Hundred Years of Cinema” and IMDb.