Wednesday, August 11, 2010

A Brief History Of Horror Movies

By Adriana Noton

Horror movies are a type of film that can be traced back to the beginning of film making. To better understand the horror movie it will be best to start with horror literature. When you understand the literature it is possible to have a better idea of where the movies come from.

It is the horror stories in literature that gave this genre the push it needed to make films. If the legacy that the literary work had not been there horror movies would not be as we know them. In fact the term horror itself comes from the book The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole written in 1764 which was a book of the supernatural. Other great literary minds like Edgar Allan Poe propelled this genre with works like The Raven. These old horror stories are the bases of many different films including Dracula and Frankenstein which were written during the 1800's.

At the beginning of horror movie history these movies were often ones that had the supernatural in there. In the late 1890's short silent films was where these movies start. The Frenchman Georges Melies is thought to be the creator of the first horror film with his 1896 short silent Le Manior du diable. Around this time the Japanese also tried their hand at this genre with Bake Jizo and Shinin no Sosei.

The full length horror film was first seen as a version of the hunchback of Notre-Dame. In the early 1900's the German expressionist film was at its peak meaning most of the first horror films were made by Germans. These German films have acted as influential works for many modern film makers like Tim Burton. The 1920's brought about the first Hollywood dabbling in the genre and the first American horror star in Lon Chaney Sr.

The Hollywood popularization of these movies came about in the 1930's. At this point movies like Dracula and Frankenstein were made as well as other gothic horror and supernatural mixture movies. The Wolf Man is an iconic movie about werewolves made in 1941 by Universal studios. You should keep in mind that this was by no means the first werewolf film but it is known as the most influential. The 1945 movie The Body Snatcher and other B pictures also came about at this time.

Technological innovations in film making changed the face of horror films in the 1950's. At this point horror films were classed into two categories. These two categories are demonic films and Armageddon films. Many of the social concerns and fears of the times were indirectly placed into the horror films of this era as well.

It was during the 1960's that many other iconic films were made including Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. This movie is one of the first American Armageddon movies set in a modern backdrop. Zombies were made into what they are today in the movie Night of the Living Dead made at this time. This movie also changed the look of horror films into what we know them as today.

Tracing the history of horror movies will take you back to the start of movie making. It is possible to see how movies changed from Gothic horror to what we see today. - 40726

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