James Bowman-Spink A2 Media Blog: 2012

History of Horror 1890s-German Expressionism The first expressionisms of the horror genre were invented by the early film genius George Méliès towards the late 1890’s one of the best being ‘Le Manoir du diable’ otherwise known as ‘The Haunted Castle’ 1896. Japan also made two horrors in 1998. In 1910 Edison Studios produced the first full film version of Frankenstein. German Expressionism Is a series of created movements which started in Germany, influenced by the First World War. It started and was mainly confined to Germany because of the isolation the country received during and after World War I. Germany began banning foreign films which lead to the rise of low budget expressionism films being made in the country. These films became popular among the German people and soon become part of the culture. With the demand for the films on the rise, the German film industry was pushed into a production rise from 25 films in 1914 to 130 films 1918. By 1922 these ‘cheap production’ films had become internationally popular, and so by the time the 1916 ban was lifted Germany had become a big part of the international film industry. German Expressionism was influenced heavily influenced by various European cultures. It featured strange angles and cold lighting, sets which seemed surreal. It was an attempt to express how ‘messed up’ society was at the time, how World War two had left countries such as Germany in poverty. The picture to left illustrates this concept perfectly. It is a picture of a man carrying a body over the warped image of a roof top. However soon Hitler came to power. He wanted to make propaganda videos against Jews and others of the same nature. He first came to fritz Lang to fulfil this task. Fritz fled the country. The majority of other rich film makers saw this coming to and all mostly fled to America. Post war horror After the war, the world’s film makers now mostly resided in America so the American film industry flourished. Universal Studios began a successful series of gothic horror. Some of the most universally known is Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) and James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). Soon people started experimenting with Science Fiction making Sci Fi horrors. Such as the invisible man (1933). During the fifties and sixties technology changed and so did the genres of horror. Instead the overall theme of Gothic horror, two sub-genres began to emerge: the horror-of-Armageddon film and the horror-of-the-demonic film. A series of horror films about humanity having to overcome external threats such as alien invasions or mutants. This is seen in the originally Japanese version of Godzilla, a giant lizard that was mutated by nuclear bomb radiation. The whole horror-of-the-Armageddon sub-genre was a response to the people’s fear of communist take-over. The foul beasts and mutants and monsters threatening to take over or destroy the Earth represented the Russian communists and fear of nuclear war. The fear of nuclear war was often directly expressed by films about nuclear disasters and mutants i.e. Godzilla. Towards the end of the fifties Britain started making horror films with Peeping Tom (1960) being one of the first. It was essentially one of the first ‘horror-of-the-demonic’ films, the plot was about a male serial killer/photographer who captured his victims female victims on camera at they’re last moments. The Hammer Company produced this sort of genre for the first time and made a success of it. They started producing films in colour often starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. They made The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), both making various sequels. In 1960 the first Slasher movie ‘Psycho’ by Alfred Hitchcock was produced. The horror genre was changing. There was a shift from the fear of evil beings and external sources to a fear of people in society, the idea that your next door neighbour could be a serial killer. Towards the seventies and eighties the low budget gore films had been well established and following the success of Rosemary’s Baby, occult films became established with films such as ‘The Exorcist’ (1973). The ‘Slasher’ genre was becoming more and more prevalent, films such as ‘Nightmare on Elms Street’ and ‘Friday the 13th’ came about and soon produced sequels. The eighties saw a wave of low budget ‘B Movie’ gore/slasher films, which at first were attacked by critics but later accepted. Many film franchises continued to produce sequels into the nineties. The same themes from the eighties bled though to the nighties, with man of the big eighties films such as ‘Nightmare on Elms Street’ were bringing out sequels in the nineties. There was a mini-wave of self-reflexive horrors, which made connections between characters and real life-horrors with films such as ‘Candyman’ (1992), ‘The Dark Half’ (1993). However during this period the Horror genre suffered a major blow which set it back majorly in the media. It had worn itself out with the over-production of gore/slasher films. The public became tired of them. The teenage audience that once feasted on these films in the eighties had grown up and were now more interested in the sci-fi and fantasy genres of film. In response to this the horror genre started making comical parodies, self-mocking the horror genre, one of the first being ‘Braindead’ (1992). These parodies took advantage of the splatter genre. These were shortly followed by films such as ‘Scream’ (1996) which featured teenagers who were fully aware of the elements of the history of horror. This strange comic but quite serious parody along with others of its kind re-opened the slasher genre.