Evolution of Horror
Cameron Pulcher
October 17, 2011
Filed under Columns, Opinion
The evolution of the movie genre horror over the past half century has led us to the present day scares we so fondly get goose bumps over. From the birth of the genre, horror movies have always intended to frighten the audience, do instill a sense of fear within that reminds us that we’re alive.
Lets start the horror timeline at the swinging sixties, where even the communists were capable of scaring a man to death. The sixties gave birth to the classic horror film Psycho during 1960. I’m sure the sale of see-through shower curtains skyrocketed during the sixties due to the classic scene of the shower curtain murder. This is the reason people don’t allow knives in their bathrooms; just the thought of being surprised by a knife-wielding psycho is enough to send a chill down my spine. The creation of zombie movies also occurred in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead, now millions fantasize over zombie apocalypses. The struggle between the seven people and an unstoppable force of endless zombies for the first time instilled dread in this classic horror movie.
Fast-forward five years to 1973 and we have possibly my favorite horror movie of all time: The Exorcist. The exorcist was the first of its kind to mix childish innocence with demonic possession, and it did so terrifyingly well. The special effects of projectile pea soup vomit and Regan’s head spinning round and round may make us laugh nowadays, but back then people were fainting in fear. The present day equivalent, Paranormal Activity, was modeled after the premise of The Exorcist, and continues with a third installment this October. A whole year later, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out, reinventing the slasher subcategory, and you can’t spell subcategory without gory. Countless chainsaw wielding knock-offs shortly followed after The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and is even partly responsible for the rise of slasher films in the late seventies and early eighties. Another subsequent successful year gave birth to the classic Jaws during 1975. Jaws is widely considered the best horror movie ever, and has definitely ruined the beach and deep-sea fishing for millions of Americans. No one has been able to truly emulate Jaws incredible success, not even Jaws 2 and Jaws 3-D. The iconic soundtrack is now globally renowned and mocked at every beach around the world. The seventies were plagued with genre refining horror films, including Halloween, the master of slow-walking serial killers. Horror film directors everywhere learned adding an eerie soundtrack to an unstoppable and slow walking man-slaughterer scares well. The seventies brought us possibly the best classic horror movies that are still being emulated to this day.
The eighties built on the foundation of the many subcategories of horror founded during the seventies, replacing intensity with creativity. The eighties opened up with one of Jack Nicholson’s finest piece of work The Shining. “Here’s Johnny,” became a sort of catch phrase during the early eighties, depicting the loss of sanity perfectly. Two years later Poltergeist made its debut, copying the creepy girl formula of the exorcist and adding the new element of an angry ghost and addition of a spirit world found through the television screen. The release of Aliens during 1986 added the multiple creatures picking off multiple humans genre, with space marine blood everywhere. Then at 1988, things kind of fell apart with the abomination known as Child’s Play. Having a toy doll kill people not only seemed implausible, but laughably bad with poor acting and special effects.
The nineties redeemed the colossal mistake of Child’s Play with the addition of unique subcategories and successful emulations of on the older categories. The nineties opened up with the unique Misery, depicting the fear of an admirer gone insane. Next year followed the intriguing The Silence of the Lambs, reinventing the maniacal genius character with a thirst of blood. In 1999, two excellent original movies came out: The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense. The Blair With Project took an interesting aesthetic approach, with the entire movie being filmed from the hands of one of the main characters searching for a witch. The Sixth Sense was unique in that the twist left the audience shocked; the main character was dead the whole time.
With the constant addition of creative horror movies coming out each year, make sure to give credit where credit is due: the founding horror movies that have actually started as early as the twenties. The wide variety of horror movies today, be it the psychological thrill of Saw or the apocalyptic 28 Days Later, continue to build upon these bloody foundations, and keep us on the edge of our seats, screaming.
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I like that your columns do more than just tell a story, as they’re supposed to. The columns on this site seem to me as if the kind I’d find on NYT or Washington Post, except less politically based of course. I like the style of this column in particular. It includes a lot of facts, yet still keeps it interesting. (:
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