Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The 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.

The supernatural was the main theme of the horror movie when they first came about. Short silent films were the first place horror films were found in the 1890's. In 1896 the short silent film Le Manior du diable is thought to be the first horror film. At the same time as Georges Melies made this film the Japanese also made horror films Shinin no Sosei and Bake Jizo.

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.

It was in the 1930's that the horror film was first popularized by Hollywood. Along with the classic Gothic films Frankenstein and Dracula there were also films made with a mix of Gothic horror and the supernatural. In 1941 The Wolf Man was an iconic werewolf movie created by Universal studios. This was not the first werewolf movie made but is known as the most influential. During this era other B pictures were created like the 1945 version of The Body Snatcher.

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.

The 1960's were the time when many iconic movies came about. Hitchcock's movie The Birds was against a modern backdrop and was one of the first American Armageddon films. Perhaps one of the most influential films of this time was Night of the Living Dead. This movie brought zombies into the mainstream and it also moved these movies from the Gothic horror to what we know today.

The history of horror movies goes back to the beginning of movies. The long history shows how they changed from Gothic classics to what we know today. - 40728

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