A History Of HORROR Rob Drew

The Early Days Of Horror... Before the concept of motion pictures was widely adopted in the late 1800s, people used to tell each other stories and go to the theatre. A popular genre of these experiences was horror, with many fairy tales being used to frighten and children and theatres such as Le Theatre du Grande Guignol specialised in gory horror live on stage. However, with the arrival of film allowed a totally new horror experience to be made...

Horror Goes Hollywood Hollywood were the first institution to pick up on the new concept of ‘horror’. Films such as James Whale’s ‘Frankenstein’ and Tod Browning’s ‘Dracula’ were really popular with audiences and there were many actors associated with the genre, including Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi. These films had sound, but were in black and white. People fainted in cinemas as they has no idea what this sort of horror film was like.

A History Of Hammer Although horror, it is fair to say, diminished in the 1940s, it came back with a bang in the 1950s on British soil, with companies such as the hugely successful Hammer Films creating iconic horror films, such as The Curse Of Frankenstein, Witchfinder General and Dracula. Again, there were general actors in these films, such as Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price.

Back To The US Hammer returned to Hollywood in the 1970s, where more original horrors were being made, rather than literary adaptations. These focused on many things - from Satanist-based horror films, such as ‘The Omen’ and ‘The Exorcist’, and the new ‘slasher’ film genre, with films like ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and ‘Psycho’, to the zombie flicks such as ‘Night Of The Living Dead’ and ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ (the latter I will talk about more later).

Horror Now In recent years, horror has tended to fall into two sub-genres: the ‘supernatural’ horror film, and the ‘torture’ horror film. Torture horror films are those like Saw and Hostel, whereas supernatural horrors are beginning to come into play as well, with films such as ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘Apollo 18’.

The Comedy Horror The comedy horror, a genre mash-up of comedic and horrific elements, is coming more into play nowadays as well. Films such as Shaun Of The Dead (the name a parody of Dawn Of The Dead), Zombieland and Lesbian Vampire Killers all feature dark comedy based on horror. This is the sort of film I will be making (Shaun Of The Dead is actually one of my inspirations, as it features average-Joes fighting off zombies, as my film is very similar to).

an evolution of horror posters...

film magazine covers...