History of Horror

Horror movies have long served both purposes. They deliver thrills by the hearseload, as well as telling us stories of the dark, forbidden side of life (and death) - cautionary tales for grownups. They also provide a revealing mirror image of the anxieties of their time.

1920’s
Darkness and shadows, such important features of modern horror, were impossible to show on the film stock available at the time, so the sequences, for example in Nosferatu, where we see a vampire leaping amongst gravestones in what appears to be broad daylight, seem doubly surreal to us now.

1930’s
Horror movies were reborn in the 1930s. The advent of sound, as well as changing the whole nature of cinema forever, had a huge impact on the horror genre.The dreamlike imagery of the 1920s, the films peopled by ghostly wraiths floating silently through the terror of mortals, their grotesque death masks a visual representation of 'horror', were replaced by monsters that grunted and groaned and howled.

1940’s
if the horror movies of the 1930s had dealt in well-established fictional monsters, looking back towards the nineteenth century for inspiration, the 1940s reflected the internalisation of the horror market. The Americans looked at themselves as “safe”, whereas everything else, particularly anything hailing from that frightening, chaotic, unreasonable and uncontrolled place known as Europe was dangerous.

1950’s
In ten short years the concept of a horrific monster had altered irrevocably.  Faces who had fought on both sides in WW2, the developers of the atom bomb and the death camp, mad scientists indeed whose activities would have unnerved even Victor Frankenstein or Dr Moreau.

1960’s
The 1960s horror that was more rooted in reality, more believable, more sophisticated, that dealt with some of the issues they faced in a rapidly changing world.

1970’s
One genuine fear apparent in the horror films of the 1970s is the fear of children, and the fear of the messy, painful and often fatal process of childbirth. Children are the focus of horror in many key 1960s films Village of the Damned(1960) really reinforces that kids can be spooky  and unwanted.
1980’s
Horror movies of the 1980s (which begin in 1979 with Alien) exist at the glorious watershed when special visual effects finally caught up with the gory imaginings of horror fans and movie makers. Technical advances in the field of animatronics, and liquid and foam latex meant that the human frame could be distorted to an entirely new dimension, onscreen, in realistic close up.

1990’s

It can be argued that the so-called psychological thriller took precedence over horror in the first half of the 1990s, and indeed, many dark, disturbing films of this period describe themselves as thriller, not horror. Yet directors such as Jonathan Demme were adopting the codes and conventions of the horror genre, when pacing their plot, when representing their characters, and when manipulating the shock/suspense mechanisms of their audience.

2000

In It seems that audiences wanted a good, group scare as a form of escapism. The monsters have had to change, however. Gone were the lone psychopaths of the 1990s, far too reminiscent of media portrayals of bin Laden, the madman in his cave. As the shock and awe of twenty first century warfare spread across TV screens, cinematic horror had to offer an alternative, whilst still tapping into the prevailing cultural mood.