HISTORY OF HORROR Gabby Rodgers
FIRST HORROR MOVIE CREATED The first horror movie to be directed is known as Le Manoir Du Diable (The Devil's Castle – UK NAME/The Haunted Castle – USA NAME). It was produced in 1896 by the imaginative French filmmaker called Georges Melies. The film was silent through out and in fact only lasted roughly three minutes. The film tells the story of an encounter with the Devil and various attendant phantoms. It was produced to create a sense of a amusement for the audience rather than fear because of its characters and themes, although it is still the first horror movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBArxsdF2rs
TIME LINE OF HORROR HISTORY We can see from the time-line that ‘The house of the devil’ was then followed from Frankenstien, arguably one of the most well known classical horror movies. However it wasn’t until the 1920s that the need for horror movies really went up, with atleast 12 films were produced over 7 years. The most influential horror films through the 1920s came from Germany's Expressionist movement, with films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu influencing the next generation of American cinema.
1896: The House of the Devil 1910: Frankenstein 1913: The Student of Prague 1920: Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920: The Golem: Or How He Came into the World 1920: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1922: Haxan 1922: Nosfertu 1923: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
1924: The Hands of Orlac 1924: Waxworks 1925: The Monster 1925: The Phantom of the Opera 1926: Faust 1927: The Cat and the Canary
INTRODUCTION OF SLASHER FILMS Slasher films are a subgenre of American horror films which typically involve a violent psychopath murdering several victims, often equipped with some sort of bladed weapon. The first slasher film that we saw was known as ‘Halloween’. Halloween was directed by John Carpenter and his girlfriend Debra Hill. Halloween became the genre-defining film with a simple yet effective plot of an escaped mental patient stalking unsuspecting teens. Wanting to keep costs to a minimum, producers decided the film should take place at few locations and over a brief period of time, a technique that would be copied in almost all slasher films to follow, this is one of the main reasons for the creation of more, because they were cheap to make yet very successful. Successful films to follow were ones such as ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’, ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and also ‘Friday the 13th’ Slasher – A horror film, especially one depicting a series of violent murders or assaults by an attacker armed with a knife or razor.
EVOLUTION OF HORROR MOVIES Since the advancement of our technology, horror movies have developed over the years in terms of the quality of horror movies. They have drifted from the classical vampire to full on blood baths and from blood that looked so unrealistic to blood that could easily pass for any humans genuine blood. •
1900s – The horror movies created now would then be re-done later with better effects and quality.
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1910s – Silent horror movies saw the likes of werewolves and Frankenstein which was produced by the inventor of the light bulb, Thomas Edison.
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1920s – Waxworks and The monster were produced, and they were beginning to run for a longer time, Waxworks lasting for roughly 63 minutes.
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1930s – We finally had sound to accompany the film and we saw Dracula being produced in 1931 and in a few years we had a source of colour for our movies.
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1940s – Cat People was produced in 1942 and in 1943 I walked with a zombie was.
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1950s – 1950s set of horrors focused on creatures as well as the sci-fi aspect.
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1960s – The horrors of the 60s seemed to be more sexually aware than past generations
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1970s – The horror movies seemed to focus on broken families, and we saw the creation of Halloween.
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1980s - The 1980s famous movies consisted of The Gremlins and also The Shining. As well as being famous for their outrageous fashion and music, they also produced some classic horror movies.
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1990s - This was the time for serial killers, the movies had to move to something new rather than just concentrating of grossing out the audience.
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2000s – Films from any genre could be fused with horror to produce a horror movie, now technology has evolved so have our movies, there is no limit as to what can be created.
HISTORY OF HORROR