The Horror Genre - An Overview

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The Horror Genre- An Overview
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ORIGINS

• THE HORROR STORY IN LITERATURE arose from Gothic
  tradition in literature dating from the 18th and
  19th Centuries tales of terror and often
  repressed sexuality in historical setting of
  dark, brooding menace.

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• Described at the time as Romantic literature,
  Mary Shellys Frankenstein and Bram Stokers
  Dracula are the most enduring, but the Werewolf
  and the Mummy can also be traced back to novels
  from this period.
• Nosferatu (1922) based on Dracula
  http//www.youtube.com/watch?vUDZURPwzkRg
• Frankenstein (1931) http//www.youtube.com
• The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920)
  http//www.youtube.com/watch?vxrg73BUxJLI

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• Film versions of these stories have been remade
  many times from Universal in 1930s, to Hammer in
  1950s and 60s to recent versions by Coppola and
  Kenneth Branagh and Stephen Sommers Van
  Helsing.
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vptVG0F55vIU
  Branagh Frankenstein 1994

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• The American Gothic tradition derives from the
  work of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Roger
  Corman made several films in the 1960s based on
  Poes novels.
• See handout on The Raven.

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• THE FURTHER INPUT OF TWO EUROPEAN ARTISTIC
  MOVEMENTS COMBINED TO CREATE THE CLASSIC HORROR
  FILM OF THE 1930S
• Expressionism
• Surrealism
• Find out about these 2 styles and how they
  contributed to classic horror. Blog on your
  weebly.

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• German expressionism was an artistic movement of
  the early 20th Century that was characteristic of
  much architecture, painting and theatre in
  Germany during this period. German theatre in
  particular featured low key shafts of light,
  sets that were off-kilter, often without right
  angles or with exaggerated perspectives, black
  and white make up.

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• The idea of expressionism was to express emotions
  rather than external reality by projecting a
  characters state of mind onto his environment.
  German expressionism is recognisable by its use
  of symbolism and by its use of exaggeration and
  distortion.

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• In the 1930s films by Universal Studios,
  expressionism is evident in the use of shadows
  and low tilted camera angles and camera
  movements, and high-ceiling sets. German and
  Austrian emigres working for Universal brought
  movement over with them to the United States.

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• Key names from this movement in horror are Karl
  Freund and James Whale. Freund was a German
  cameraman and later director who had worked with
  Murnau (amongst others) before moving to the
  States for a contract with Universal. James Whale
  was a British stage director who likewise went
  over to the States

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• Surrealism
• The art movement concerned with representing the
  unconscious and dreams. Surrealism drew on
  psychologist Sigmund Freuds ideas on sexuality
  and The Uncanny. This is represented in the
  horror film by the flow of disturbing imagery and
  the presence of a monster which externalises
  our personal and group fears.

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CLASSIC THEMES OR NARRATIVE CONVENTIONS

• In his book Dark Dreams, Charles Derry charted
  the emergence of three distinct sub-genres in the
  decades following Psycho (1960), but has traced
  their historical predecessors in the classic
  horror movie and other genres

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Hauntings and Demonic Possessions

• These films play on our fear of the unknown,
  superstition and the idea that evil forces exist
  in the world. These forces can remain spiritual
  presences (Dont Look Now) or can take the guise
  of witches (Blair Witch Project), ghosts (The
  Haunting) or demons (The Exorcist).

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• The characters fall prey to an evil force that is
  trying to victimise them in some way. The evil
  entity is doing this perhaps to gain vengeance eg
  in Blair Witch the witch is taking vengeance on
  the characters for trying to expose her.

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• In Nightmare on Elm Street Freddie is taking
  revenge on the people who killed him by haunting
  the dreams of their children and stalking them in
  their dreams. In many haunted house stories the
  ghost simply resents the presence of the people
  who have just moved in.

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• Sometimes the evil force wants to corrupt its
  victims - to make them do evil. Eg The Shining.
• In this case the evil force wants to take control
  of its victim - take over his body or his mind or
  soul. Vampires and werewolves turn you into one
  of their own kind.

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• Often at the heart of these stories is the fight
  between good and evil in the Christian sense-
  temptation and sin. So there is usually a
  counterpart to the evil force - a symbol of good.
  Eg Draculas counterpart is Van Helsing. In the
  Exorcist, the Catholic priests fight the Devil
  for the soul of the girl

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• Witches, vampires and demons have their roots in
  folklore. Before modern medicine many disorders,
  blood diseases and psychological illnesses were
  attributed to supernatural causes eg, epilepsy
  was thought to be caused by possession by demons.
  So these mythologies are in our collective
  unconscious and are bought to the surface by
  horror films.

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Apocalypse

• In this subgenre mankind is threatened with
  extinction by inhuman creatures that rise up and
  take over the world. Sometimes the threat comes
  from outer space (Day of The Triffids, War of The
  Worlds). Sometimes the threat is a plague or
  virus that threatens to wipe out mankind. (Dawn
  of the Dead, The Crazies). David Cronenbergs
  film Rabid depicts an outbreak of rabies in
  Montreal. The film was very successful in Britain
  where rabies was, at that time (1977), a national
  phobia.

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• Sometimes the threat comes from the everyday
  traditionally harmless creatures with whom we
  share the planet. All at once these creatures
  decide to gather together against us and take
  over the world. The most famous film of this type
  is Hitchcocks The Birds.

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• In the seventies there was a whole spawn of films
  featuring all types of creatures rats (Willard),
  bees, worms (Squirm), ants (Phase 4) even giant
  rabbits (Night of the Lepus).

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• The films have a set structure theres a sudden
  proliferation of these creatures as if from
  nowhere and they descend upon a group of
  survivors who have barricaded themselves in a
  house. Usually the story ends with the people
  dying and the creatures winning out.

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• A characteristic of these films is that there is
  often no explicit reason for the creatures
  suddenly rising up against us. But there is a
  subtext there to do with fears of ecological
  unbalance, or a sense of revolution with the new
  order usurping the old.

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The Human Monster

• Generally dates from Psycho (1960). Deals with
  horror of the personality psychopathology and
  murder (the serial killer) or psychosis and
  insanity. So the audience is taken inside the
  mind of a killer (Henry Portrait of a Serial
  Killer) or of a person who appears to be going
  insane (Repulsion, Jacobs Ladder)

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• The monster in the human (eg, Jekyll and Hyde)
  deals with mankind s propensity for evil. Often
  children are the subject (The Bad Seed, Apt
  Pupil). The idea that some people are born bad,
  with no sense of morality.

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• The human in the monster (eg Frankensteins
  monster) deals with the sympathetic monster. We
  can feel some kind of understanding for these
  monsters because of their loneliness. They did
  not want to be created and are vilified by normal
  society.

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ICONOGRAPHY OF THE HORROR FILM

• Symbolic images which recur throughout the
  history of the horror film include
• The haunted house (forbidden chamber)
• Symbols of death
• The disfigured face or mask
• The screaming victim (in modern horror the final
  girl)
• The phallic murder weapon knife, stake,
  chainsaw.
• Binary oppositions of good and evil eg
  Dracula/Van Helsing.
• Darkened places where the monster lurks woods,
  cellars.
• Blood and body parts (body horror)

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• In the documentary, Universal Horror (Kevin
  Brownlow, 1999), links are made between the
  iconography of 1930s horror films and images from
  World War 1 such as disfigured troops suffering
  horrific war wounds.

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• Similarly in the documentary, American Nightmare
  (Adam Simon, 2000), links are made between the
  iconography of 1970s horror films and media
  images from that period of American history
  Vietnam, Kent State, public lynchings in the deep
  South, assassination of JFK and Martin Luther
  King etc.

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THE HORROR FILM - PHASES OF POPULARITY

• The American horror film can be seen to have
  phases of popularity linked to periods of
  socio-political unrest and upheaval. These are
  major cycles of American horror films

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• Universal Studios Horror Films (1930-48)
• The significance of these films is thought to be
  linked to working class discontent arising from
  the Great Depression which led to mass
  unemployment and famine (eg Frankenstein, 1930)
  and to the horrors of the world wars. The source
  of Horror is seen as arising from Europe.

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• The Cold War Sci-Fi Horror Film (1950s)
• Linked to cold war paranoia (Invasion of the
  Body Snatchers, 1957), the development of the H
  bomb and the national obsession with UFOs.
  Narrative conventions from the science fiction
  genre merged with those from the horror genre
  the monster was commie.

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• The Modern American Horror Film (1968-79)
• Linked to American Civil Rights unrest Vietnam
  the assassination of Kennedy and Martin Luther
  King. (Eg Night Of The Living Dead, Last House on
  The Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). These
  films reflect Americas disillusionment following
  the Vietnam war.

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• The Slasher Movie (1978-82)
• Seen as a backlash against feminism as women
  became the main victims of violent and graphic
  murder perhaps horrors lowest ebb. On-screen
  gore increasingly became the main ingredient. (eg
  Halloween, Friday The Thirteenth)

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• The Postmodern Horror Film (1983 onwards)
• Starting with The Evil Dead, horror films
  became increasingly self-referential leading to
  Scream. Then remakes (The Haunting, Psycho, The
  House on Haunted Hill)

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THE HORROR GENRE THROUGH TIME

• As with any genre, the horror film has changed
  over time. Several factors have contributed to
  the changing face of horror. These are

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• Changes in Industry Practices.
• The 1930s films were studio-produced. Universal
  was, at the time, one of five top Hollywood
  Studios with its own sound-stages and production
  personnel. Although modestly budgeted, the 1930s
  horror films were fairly lavish productions
  filmed in the studio with, for their time,
  elaborate sets and special effects.

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• The horror films of the 1970s, by comparison,
  were produced independently , often outside of
  Hollywood (such as Night Of The Living Dead -
  shot in Pittsburgh) for very low budgets, shot on
  location with unknown actors.

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• The input of influential filmmakers
• Whereas the directors of the 1930s were mostly
  inspired by expressionism, from the 1960s onwards
  directors adopted the stylistic conventions of
  realism hand-held camera work, naturalistic
  lighting, location shooting, direct location
  sound, the use of 16mm film stock This was
  partly due to low budgets. The main directors -
  George A. Romero, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, were
  independent filmmakers working outside of
  Hollywood, and had backgrounds in documentaries.

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• Changes in Audiences Expectations
• Extensive news coverage of the Vietnam war had
  brought graphic images into the American home in
  the 60s, redefining the nature of screen horror.
• Realist movements in cinema (such as the French
  New Wave) in second half of the 20th Century also
  affected the presentation of content.

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• In the 30s and 40s shadows and suggestion
  whereas-
• 60s Vietnam - for the first time the American
  People saw graphic war footage on the daily
  news. From that point onwards cinema become
  increasingly graphic in its depiction of horror

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THE CLASSIC HORROR FILM

• Production Context
• Stars (Lugosi, Karloff, Chaney,)
• Studio Produced (Universal, RKO)
• Medium budgets
• Genre Codes Conventions
• Foreign Monster
• Monster is a supernatural being
• Equilibrium is restored - good triumphs
• Society ie. religion, science, family is good.
• The horror is suggested off-screen
• Expressionist lighting style, hard shadows
• Classical Mise-en-scene continuity editing.

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The Modern American Horror Film (1968 - 1979)

• Production Context
• Independent Productions
• Unknown Actors
• Filmed on location
• Low budgets
• Genre codes and conventions
• Indigenous monster
• Monster is psychopath/cannibal
• The horror never ends - nihilism pervades
• Society is to blame. The family is seen as an
  instrument of repression.
• Graphic on-screen horror
• Documentary realism, flat lighting, location
  sound.
• Post French New Wave camerawork and editing.

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• Why do audiences enjoy being scared to death by
  horror films so much?

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• Carlos Clarens believes that the horror film
  renders on film the immanent fears of mankind
  damnation, demonic possession, old age, death.

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• Ernest Larson believes that horror films that
  incorporate the apocalypse theme advance the
  notion that modern technology is so overwhelming
  that it tends to obliterate any possibility of
  its liberatory use...science has, in the
  hand-maiden of capitalism, created an
  uncontrollable monster.

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• Charles Derry believes that films inaugurated by
  Psycho represent a response to the escalation
  of violence in American culture.

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• Walter Evans attributes the popularity of horror
  amongst young audiences to the most universal
  and horrible of personal trials the sexual
  traumas of adolescence.

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• Robin Wood argues the monster represents all the
  things we repress in order to function as
  monogamous, heterosexual, bourgeois patriarchal
  capitalists, namely sexuality (in its fullest
  sense) and creativity. The tensions caused by
  such repression and the threatened return of the
  repressed are siphoned off through the
  projection onto the Other (the monster) of what
  is repressed within the Self, in order that it
  can be discredited, disowned and if possible
  annihilated

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SELECTED FILMS (in chronological order)-

• The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Ger. 1919, Dir.
  Robert Weine)
• Nosferatu, ein Symphony des Grauns (Ger. 1922,
  Dir. F.W Murnau)
• Dracula (USA. 1931, Tod Browning)
• Vampyr (Den. 1932, Carl Dreyer)
• Frankenstein (USA. 1932, James Whale)
• Cat People (USA. 1942, Jacques Tourneur)
• The Thing (USA. 1952, Christian Nyby)
• Curse of Frankenstein (UK. 1957, Terence Fisher)
• Black Sunday (It. 1959, Mario Bava)
• Psycho (USA. 1960, Alfred Hitchcock)
• The Birds (USA. 1963, Alfred Hitchcock)
• Masque Of The Red Death (UK. 1964, Roger Corman)
• Repulsion (UK. 1965, Roman Polanski)

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SELECTED FILMS (in chronological order)-

• Witchfinder General (UK. 1968, Michael Reeves)
• Night Of The Living Dead (USA. 1968, George A.
  Romero)
• The Exorcist (USA. 1973, William Friedkin)
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (USA. 1974, Tobe
  Hooper)
• Shivers (Can. 1975. David Cronenberg)
• Carrie (USA. 1976, Brian De Palma)
• Eraserhead (USA. 1976, David Lynch)
• Suspiria (It. 1977, Dario Argento)
• Halloween (USA. 1978, John Carpenter)
• Alien (USA/UK. 1979, Ridley Scott)
• The Shining (USA. 1980, Stanley Kubrick)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (USA. 1984, Wes Craven)
• Hellraiser (UK. 1987, Clive Barker)
• The Silence of The Lambs (USA. 1990, Jonathan
  Demme)
• Scream (USA. 1996, Wes Craven)
• The Blair Witch Project (USA. 1999, Daniel Myrick
  Eduardo Sanchez)
• Jeepers Creepers (USA. 2001, Victor Salva)