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Speculative fiction. The history of horror films was described by author Siegbert Solomon Prawer as difficult to read as a linear historical path, with the genre changing throughout the decades, based on the state of cinema, audience tastes and contemporary world events. Films prior to the 1930s, such as early German expressionist cinema and ...
Oct 8, 2011 · By Jason Zinoman. Roman Polanski's 1968 horror film, Rosemary's Baby, follows a woman who believes her husband is planning to sacrifice their child in an occult ritual. By the late 1960s, classic ...
Aug 21, 2024 · The 1930s and 1940s were marked by iconic Universal Monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man. These films established archetypes and set a high standard for storytelling, character development, and atmosphere in horror. The Rise of Psychological and Supernatural Horror. The 1950s and 1960s introduced new themes and ...
Oct 30, 2020 · These films incited a rediscovered obsession with supernatural horror that complimented the rise of author Stephen King and led to many slasher films that continue to redefine the genre. The film adaptations of Carrie (1976) and The Shining (1980) made way for films like Poltergeist (1982), The Thing (1982), the Halloween franchise (1978- present), The Blair Witch Project (1999), and even the ...
- The Literary Years
- The Golden Age of Horror
- The Atomic Years
- The Gimmicky Years
- All Hell Breaks Loose
- The First Horror Movie Slashers
- The Doldrums
- The Present Day
- The Future of Horror Films
After the first horror movie, sometime between 1900 and 1920, an influx of supernatural-themed films followed. Many filmmakers—most of whom still trying to find their feet with the new genre—turn to literature classics as source material. The first adaptation of Frankenstein was released by Edison Studios in these early days, as well as Dr. Jekyll ...
Widely considered to be the finest era of the genre, the two decades between the 1920s and 30s saw many classics being produced and can be neatly divided down the middle to create a separation between the silent classics and the talkies. On the silent side of the line, you’ve got monumental titles such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosf...
Freakswere banned for thirty years in the country that really came into its own during this period: Great Britain. The Hammer horror company, while founded in 1934, only started to turn prolific during the fifties, but when it did, it was near global dominance (thanks to a lucrative distribution deal with Warner and a few other U.S. studios). Once ...
3D glasses? Electric buzzers installed into theatre seats? Paid stooges in the audience screaming and pretending to faint? Everything and anything was tried during the 50s and 60s in an attempt to further scare cinema audiences. This penchant for interactivity spilled over into other genres during the period but quickly died down in part due to the...
Occult was the flavor of the day between the 70s and 80s, particularly when it came to houses and kids being possessed by the Devil. The reason for this cultural obsession with religious evil during this period could fill an entire article on its own, but bringing it back into the cinema realm, we can boil the trend down to two horror milestones: T...
If there’s one trope that typifies the 80s, it’s the slasher format – a relentless antagonist hunting down and killing a bunch of kids in ever-increasing inventive ways, one by one. Arguably kicked off by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1974, the output became prolific over the next decade. For every ten generic slashers, however, there was one fli...
Suffering from exhaustion in the wake of a thousand formulaic slasher movies and their sequels, the genre lost steam as it moved into the 90s. The advent of computer-generated special effects brought with it a number of lackluster CGI monster titles that did little to revive the genre, such as Anaconda (1997) and Deep Rising (1998). But it was a co...
The state of the horror industry is hotly contested. With the genre seemingly relying on churning out remakes, reboots, and endless sequels, many argue that it’s languishing in the doldrums once again with little originality to offer a modern audience. The resurgence of ‘torture porn’ is also derided as a subgenre, having come back into the fore in...
With perhaps more subgenres than any other branch of fictional filmmaking, it’s difficult to see how anyone can expand or advance on anything that has come before in cinematic horror. However, there’s no doubt somebody will, and that motivated and imaginative film schoolstudents become the Alfred Hitchcocks of tomorrow.
Sep 22, 2017 · Cover art by Nathan Zankich/Art Director. 1980s-Present Day. Riding the success of the 1973 big-budget “Exorcist” film, the horror genre rebooted again. The next wave came in the form of ...
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Oct 11, 2020 · The first horror movie was a silent movie premiered one hundred and twelve years ago. The 1908 film, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is not available for viewing today. ... he invented modern horror ...
