History of Horror

Horror first embedded its roots in the 19^th century with the three great horror stories which were Frankenstein, Dracula and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Frankenstein, the first Gothic horror story, was released in 1818 by Mary Shelley followed by Dracula being published in 1879 by Bram Stoker. It was from these stories that the first horror films found inspiration as the genre was so popular in both books and theater at the time even though the term horror did not come into use for film until the 1930’s. Still, filmmakers showed an interest in the genre as it can be seen from ‘Spook Tale’ from 1895 created by the Lumiere brothers.

In the early 20^th century, silent films were still exploring the possibilities with this new medium and several experiments were carried out including Frankenstein adapted by Thomas Edison’s studios in 1910. Including ‘The Manor of the Devil’ which is considered to be the first horror film with iconographic bats, castles, trolls, ghost and a demon created by George Méliès created in 1896. However, the heart of horror in silent films would start only after the First World War in Germany.  

During the First World War, German Expressionism started to rise and without the arrival of an already internationally powerful Hollywood, the German cottage film industry grew quickly. A group of German industries came together and convinced the German military of the importance of a German film unit. This would become the Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (the UFA) but by the time the company was operational, Germany had lost the war, and the UFA turned its goals to producing films for profit. German Expressionism is the style of cinema that emphasizes expression over realism and it wasn’t until 1920, a full 2 years after the First World War, that a horror film was created, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is a German Expressionist horror film directed by Rovert Weine and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. The story is about an insane hypnotist who uses a sleepwalker to commit murders. Another film to be made in this decade was Nosferatu which is claimed to be the first vampire movie released in 1922. After World War 1 electricity was scarce and as a result the German industry allocated power on a quota basis. The UFA had almost used their entire quota of electricity and in result they had to paint their shadows on set as they couldn’t create them with natural lighting. This gave German Expressionism a distinctive and artistic cinema style. It was after this that in 1925, Hollywood saw an opportunity to bring German Expressionism to their country.

In the 1930’s, there was one studio responsible for the first cycle of horror films, Universal Pictures. During the silent era, Universal was responsible for the few achievements in American horror most notably The Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notre Dame. But in the 1930s, they took movies back to their literary roots and based their style on 19^th century gothic horror. Their first hit was ‘Dracula’ directed by Tod Browning and then ‘Frankenstein’ directed by James Whale. Other films to be released in the 1930’s were ‘The Invisible Man’ and ‘The Mummy’. However towards the end of the 30’s literature based movies began to die down due to repetitive sequels.

During the 1940’s, World War 2 had been at its worse state which in turn affected the film industry. Adolf Hitler was the main inspiration for wolf movies as Adolf in old German means noble wolf and from this propaganda was used to portray Hitler as a Big Bad Wolf. This caused Universal Pictures to choose wolves as their antagonist’s for their films within the 1940’s. Their first film was ‘The Wolfman’ which was produced in 1941. The Wolfman is one of the top three tier Universal monsters and it was even written by a man who escaped Germany himself, Curt Siodmak. Whilst Wolfman was to represent males, ‘Cat People’ were the female alternative. Both of these were supposed to represent the primal animal within both of the genders. ’Cat People’ was produced in 1942.

In the late 1940’s radioactive weapons started to come into reality and this created the fear of a nuclear war. From this fear, filmmakers took this opportunity to make films based on these fears and created the new ‘mutant creatures’ sub-genre. As well as monsters, invasions were also feared among the general public, as if they were attacked then America would become a communist country which was feared the most at the time. This fear of invasion created the sci-fi horror genre. During the 1950’s, horror films got relegated to B-movie Status, which is a low budget movie designed to play before a main feature film. However these films were still popular with teens at the time. Horror films started to use the audiences fears with their cycle of Pulp Science Fiction films like ‘The Thing From Another World’ and ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ both from 1951. The fear of nuclear war also created the Japanese nuclear monster ‘Godzilla’ which was produced in 1954.

As horror moved into the 1960’s, we begin to see different styles and cycles into the horror genre as it gained in popularity, prestige and freedom once censorship became less strict and the production code was abandoned in 1964. The 1960’s showed that horror was more than a B-movie with Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’. Unlike the monsters of previous horror cycles, Norman Bates was an every day human on the outside but on the inside he was a psychological monster  and then he would go on 3 years later to produce ‘The Birds’. Zombie films also started to become more popular compared to what they were like within the 1930’s and George A. Romeo gave audiences a brand new experience with his ‘Night of the Living Dead’ bringing horror and comedy into one. As well as zombies, ghosts also became more popular such as ‘Carnival of Souls’ in 1962 and ‘The Haunting’ in 1963.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Hammer Films Productions within the United Kingdom had begun rebooting universals Gothic Monsters but adding sex and gore. Hammers first gothic reboot was ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ which was filmed in full colour. Between 1957 and 1974, Hammer put out 7 Frankenstein movies, 6 Draculas, 9 other vampire films, 2 Jekyll & Hydes and 3 Mummy films. This made Hammer a complete success from their colour reboots and put the United Kingdom on the map for film.

As the 1980’s came around horror took a different approach with their gory slashers and body horror, such as John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ 1978 and Wes Craven’s ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ 1984. However, whilst making these they didn’t realise that too much gore has the opposite effect of horror and people become desensitized to it which makes the audience not find it scary or effective.  Although people didn’t find this effective, the ethos of the 1980’s was ‘excess is best’ which saw films have lots and lots of gore. This in turn, made the slasher genre fall into a pit of predictability and parody from the ever repeating story line. Also the 1980’s saw the birth ‘Scream’ and this created the successful sequel.

As film progressed, technology also became a lot more advanced and this meant that directors could make films look more realistic and this made them more terrifying than ever before. This created the ‘Video Nasties’ which were films considered to be too violent or pornographic. This saw the demise of films such as ‘The House by the Cemetery’ and ‘The Evil Dead’.

n the 2000's it was mainly fantasy but realism was starting to appear through films such as 'Final Destination' and 'American Psycho' with the introduction of animal films such as 'Crocodile' and 'Python'. Final Destination was so successful because it introduced everyday horrors that could occur; for example the plane crash scene was far more horrifying after the 9/11 attacks that happened a year later. 28 days later was an iconic movie in the 2000's because it was the first film since 9/11 and final destination that once again took realistic potential horror to the big screen. This was done by exaggerating a flu virus and how devastating it could be to our economy and way of life. This was such a big hit because there were two strains of avian flu that were of huge concern to the government’s and public safety. Much like Ebola was feared in 2014. As horror progressed through the years, around 2009 the realism aspect of the genre wasn’t as effective and paranormal films became popular due to Japanese culture and American remakes. This was due to the release of the popular film paranormal activity in 2007 which caused a huge increase in demand for paranormal and supernatural films. In 2016 the films that have been released still follow the trend of being paranormal and supernatural orientated films. However, lots of the new horror films are going back to similar roots to the early 2000's where they would play on basic human rational fears and exaggerating them. This is most visible in the new paranormal film called 'lights out' which plays on the basic human fear of the dark. This makes the film so effective because it plays on an everyday and common fear. As well as paranormal films, gore films also make a comeback within the 2000’s are were as popular as ever. It takes inspiration from Hammer Horror era with lots of blood and gore and some iconic gorenography franchises such as ‘Saw’ which is one of the most successful horror franchises ever created.