History of Horror

Horror is a very unique genre of film compared to other genres, they almost always follow the same pattern, with always having at least one or more murders and deaths involved. But in older movies such as the silent ones this is not the case.

Here are the era of horror starting with the oldest first

The origins of horror

Horror has always been around since the dawn of time, it was only when horror stories and books where written and documented when a common trend of horror was appearing. Some of the first fictional texts of horror were first written in the Egyptian times, these where mostly stories about gods and their worshipers. 

The first time the term horror was used was in a book called The Castle of Otranto this book was filled with supernatural mysteries. The book was released in the year 1764 during the gothic era, this era is used a lot as an aesthetic style within films of the 1930; you can see this in films like Dracula (made in 1931) which used this aesthetic style as the backdrop for most scenes.

Horror in the silent era

Horror in the silent era was very odd and hard to do, but there are a couple of films to come out during this era which it big in the box-office, one such film calledThe Cabinet of Dr.Caligari was one of the most popular movies of it time (1920). The film consisted of a man who was taken control by the mad doctor. The controlled man predicts the death of a close friend of one of the main characters. His predations come turning him into the main suspect of the murder. Being only silent, the film used word cards, which is where the text of what they are saying pops up after the conversation.

Monster horrors

During the 1930 horror transformed in to retelling books like Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula on to the main screen. These film were recreated time and time again right up to the second world war, this was because of how quickly technology was evolving enabling them to try new forms and conventions; Over three Dracula movies were released in the 1930s with all of them being very successful.

Horror during the great war

During world war two horror movies were mostly American product coming only out of Hollywood, this was because for a short period lots of horror films were banned in the UK during world war 2. Interestingly, many of the films to be released During this era were animal horror movies such as the wolf man which contained a werewolf and cat people which consisted on woman turning into cats.

Post war Horrors

After the war many people were already faced with the horror of war, so during this era lots of films used things like aliens, monsters and other beings which were created as an alternative to the normal horror. Alien were mostly used because UFO sighting in 1947 this spark a number of movies like the 1956 film Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.

1960 female Horror roles

After the war females were seen in a different light as instead of them being a normal house wife they showed that they could work normal jobs that normally men do during this era. This was brought up in the horror movie industry where a female would be the leading antagonist role in the film. One film The Birds 1963 used this, by have the female known to be a “bad girl”.

Birth of Slasher

during the 1970s murderers were not uncommon news heard of, this sparked a fear with how anyone could be the murder, even someone you knew. The horror film industry too advantage of this and showed how even a normal person could be a murderer. One film called Halloween (1978) set the chemistry for ‘slasher’ film creating a sub-genre for other movies to follow

Stereotypical Horror

During the 90s horror was starting to become stale and predicable, this sparked the interest in parodies and satire movies, one film, Scream, pokes fun of horror cliché’s, one instant would be how the killer talks on the phone with one of the characters mocking them for asking who's there.

Modern Horror

Horror nowadays try to make themselves very unique from one another, they do this by making the storied unpredictable, and hard to understand. Also many film are getting remakes, and reboots, this is probably because of the advancement of CGI and 3D (although 3D has been around for a while its only now that film maker are taking advantage of the new 3D glasses).