Sheaf
October 27, 2011
volume 103 • issue 12 • thesheaf.com
the
The University of Saskatchewan student newspaper since 1912
Brianna Whitmore/Graphics Editor
The evolution of horror on film
A brief history of Hollywood’s everlasting love affair with horror movies
JORDAN CAMPBELL People have had a love affair with all things spooky and perverse for centuries. For as long as there has been language, people have been whispering unsettling fables to make each other’s skin crawl. For as long as there have been doors, people have been jumping out from behind them with the intent to startle. But more interesting than our fascination with terrifying our nearest and dearest
friends is our preoccupation with scaring ourselves. Horror movies have been around since before the turn of the 20th century. In the 1890s, Georges Méliès made several short silent horror films, the most noteworthy being La Manoir du Diable (1886). The threeminute film was an experiment with camera magic in a spooky setting, intended to amuse rather than frighten people. But, honestly, the same could be said about the Saw series.
In 1922, along came Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s German film that everyone has heard of but few have seen. In the true spirit of the film industry, nearly every screen vampire since Nosferatu has been a tribute to Max Schreck’s portrayal of Count Orlok (Dracula). Sunlight was never a part of vampire lore — not until the good Count was (spoiler alert!) reduced to a puff of smoke by the morning rays in the end of Murnau’s unauthorized Dracula adaptation.
In the ’30s, the monster movie was king. These were movies that fused adventure with fantastic abominations. Some of them had the unique ability to make the audience feel like the bad guys (see King Kong, the Frankenstein series and, later on, Godzilla). Others were just exploitative attempts to horrify, an aspect of the genre that has held up well over the years (perhaps with a more politically correct methodology). Freaks, a 1932 film
about sideshow performers, was the most obvious of this kind of film, casting people with actual deformities rather than actors in order to scare the audience.
Horror cont. on
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