1. HISTORY OF HORROR FILMS
Charlotte Joyce

2. 1890S - 1920S
After the beginning of motion picture
technology in the late 19th century,
filmmakers begun to experiment with the
horror genre. As shown by French director
Georges Méliès' 1896 short The House of the
Devil, often credited as being the first horror
movie.
However America was home to the first
Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde movie
adaptations, the most influential horror films
through the 1920s came from Germany's
Expressionist movement, with films like The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu influencing
the next generation of American cinema.
Actor Lon Chaney, meanwhile, almost
singlehandedly kept American horror afloat,
with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom
of the Opera and The Monster, which set the
stage for the Universal dominance of the '30s.

3. 1930S
Building upon the success of The Hunchback
of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the
Opera, Universal Studios entered a Golden
Age of monster movies in the
'30s, releasing a string of hit horror movies
beginning with Dracula and Frankenstein in
1931 and including the controversial Freaks
and a Spanish version of Dracula that is
often thought to be superior to the
English-language version. Germany
continued its artistic streak in the early
'30s, with Vampyr and the Fritz Lang thriller
M, but Nazi rule forced much of the
filmmaking talent to emigrate. The '30s also
witnessed the first American werewolf film
(The Werewolf of London), the first zombie
movie (White Zombie) and the landmark
special effects blockbuster King Kong.

4. 1940S
Despite the success of The Wolf Man early in the
decade, by the 1940s, Universal's monster movie
formula was growing old, as evidenced by sequels
like The Ghost of Frankenstein and desperate ensemble
films with multiple monsters, beginning with
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Eventually the
studio even resorted to comedy-horror pairings, like
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which met with
some success. Other studios stepped in to fill the
horror void with more serious-minded
films, including RKO's brooding Val Lewton
productions, most notably Cat People and I Walked
with a Zombie. MGM, meanwhile, contributed The
Picture of Dorian Gray, which won an Academy
Award for cinematography, and a remake of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, while Paramount released the
highly regarded haunted house picture The Uninvited.
Notable international entry Mahal marked India's
first foray into horror.

5. 1950S
Various cultural forces helped shape horror
movies in the '50s. The Cold War fed fears of
invasion (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The
Thing from Another World, The Blob), nuclear
proliferation fed visions of rampaging
mutants (Them!, The Beast from 20,000
Fathoms, Godzilla) and scientific breakthroughs
led to mad scientist plots (The Fly).
Competition for increasingly fed-up audiences
led filmmakers to resort to either gimmicks
like 3-D (House of Wax, The Creature from the
Black Lagoon) and the various stunts of
William Castle productions (House on Haunted
Hill, The Tingler) or, in the case of Great
Britain's Hammer Films, explicit, vividly
colored violence. International efforts include
the first full-length Japanese horror movie
(Ugetsu), the first Italian horror movie in the
sound era (I Vampiri) and the acclaimed
French thriller Diabolique.

6. 1960S
Perhaps no decade had more
influential, acclaimed horror films than the
'60s. Reflecting the social revolution of the
era, the movies were more edgy, featuring
controversial levels of violence (Blood
Feast, Witchfinder General) and sexuality
(Repulsion). Films like Peeping Tom and Psycho
were precursors to the slasher movies of the
coming decades, while George Romero's Night
of the Living Dead changed the face of zombie
movies forever. Horror personalities of the
time included Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, The
Birds), Vincent Price (13 Ghosts, The Fall of the
House of Usher, Witchfinder General), Herschell
Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast, Two Thousand
Maniacs), Roman Polanski (Repulsion, Rosemary's
Baby) and Mario Bava (Black Sunday, Black
Sabbath).

7. 1970S
The '70s pushed the envelope even further
than the '60s, reflecting a negativism born of
the Vietnam era. Social issues of the day were
tackled, from sexism (The Stepford Wives) to
consumerism (Dawn of the Dead) to religion
(The Wicker Man) and war (Deathdream).
Exploitation movies hit their stride in the
decade, boldly flouting moral conventions
with graphic sex (I Spit on Your Grave, Vampyros
Lesbos) and violence (The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes), the latter
reflected particularly in a spate of zombie
movies (Dawn of the Dead) and cannibal films
(The Man from Deep River). The shock factor
even pushed films like The Exorcist and Jaws to
blockbuster success. Amidst the chaos, the
modern slasher film was born in Canada's
Black Christmas and America's Halloween.

8. 1980S
Horror in the the first half of the '80s was
defined by slashers like Friday the 13th, Prom
Night and A Nightmare on Elm Street, while
the latter half tended to take a more light-
hearted look at the genre, mixing in comic
elements in films like The Return of the
Living Dead, Evil Dead 2, Re-Animator and
House. Throughout the '80s, Stephen King's
fingerprints were felt, as adaptations of his
books littered the decade, from The Shining
to Pet Sematary. Fatal
Attraction, meanwhile, spawned a series of
"stalker thrillers," but despite the efforts of
newcomers like Sam Raimi (The Evil
Dead), Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator), Joe
Dante (The Howling, Gremlins) and Tom
Holland (Fright Night, Child's Play), horror's
box office might had diminished by the end
of the '80s.

9. 1990S
The early '90s brought unrivalled critical acclaim for
the horror genre, with The Silence of the Lambs
sweeping the major Academy awards in 1992, a year
after Kathy Bates won the Oscar for Best Lead
Actress for Misery and Whoopi Goldberg won for
Best Supporting Actress for Ghost. Such success
seemed to spur studios into funding large-scale
horror-themed projects, such as Interview with the
Vampire, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Wolf. In
1996, Scream's runaway success reignited the slasher
flame, spawning similar films, such as I Know What
You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend. At the end of
the decade, Blade foreshadowed the coming flood of
comic book adaptations, and Asian horror movies
like Ringu and Audition signaled a new influence on
American fright flicks. Meanwhile, 1999 witnessed
two of the biggest surprise hits of the
decade, regardless of genre, in The Sixth Sense and
The Blair Witch Project.

10. 2000S
Twenty-first century horror in the US has
been identified with remakes of both
American (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Dawn
of the Dead) and foreign films (The Ring, The
Grudge), but there have been innovations
within American horror -- most notably the
"torture porn" of Saw and Hostel fame.
Outside of the US, there is as great a
variety of edgy and innovative material as
there has ever been in the genre, from
Canada (Ginger Snaps) to France (High
Tension) to Spain (The Orphanage) to the UK
(28 Days Later) and, of course, Asia, from
Hong Kong (The Eye) to Japan (Ichi the
Killer) to Korea (A Tale of Two Sisters) to
Thailand (Shutter).