Horror films are movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Their plots frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental illness. Many horror movies also include a central villain.
Early horror movies are largely based on classic literature of the Gothic/horror genre, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
More recent horror films, in contrast, often draw inspiration from the insecurities of life after World War II, giving rise to the three distinct, but related, sub-genres: the horror-of-personality Psycho film, the horror-of-armageddon Invasion of the Body Snatchers film, and the horror-of-the-demonic The Exorcist film.
The last sub-genre may be seen as a modernized transition from the earliest horror films, expanding on their emphasis on supernatural agents that bring horror to the world.
Horror films have been dismissed as violent, low budget B movies and exploitation films. Nonetheless, all the major studios and many respected directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, John Carpenter, William Friedkin, Richard Donner, and Francis Ford Coppola have made forays into the genre. Serious critics have analyzed horror films through the prisms of genre theory and the auteur theory. Some horror films incorporate elements of other genres such as science fiction, fantasy, documentary, black comedy, and thrillers.
The firsts depictions of supernatural events appear in several of the silent shorts created by film pioneers such as Georges Méliès in the late 1890s, the most notable being his 1896 Le Manoir du diable (aka "The House of the Devil") which is sometimes credited as being the first horror film. Japan made early forays into the horror genre with Bake Jizo and Shinin no Sosei, both made in 1898. In 1910, Edison Studios produced the first film version of Frankenstein, thought lost for many years, film collector Alois Felix Dettlaff Sr. found a copy and had a 1993 re release.
The early 20th century brought more milestones for the horror genre including the first monster to appear in a full-length horror film, Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Many of the earliest feature length 'horror films' were created by German film makers in 1910s and 1920s, during the era of German Expressionist films (A German style using symbolism and mise en scène to add mood and deeper meaning to a movie, concentrating on the dark fringes of human experience). Many of these films would significantly influence later Hollywood films.
It was in the early 1930s that American film producers, particularly Universal Pictures Co. Inc., popularized the horror film, bringing to the screen a series of successful Gothic features including Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), some of which blended science fiction films with Gothic horror.
With advances in technology that occurred in the 1950s, the tone of horror films shifted from the gothic toward concerns that some saw as being more relevant to the late-Century audience. The horror film was seen to fall into three sub-genres:
Horror-of-personality film- Each narrative will either document an unbalanced person's descent into madness, or else follow somebody on the trail of a murderous psychopath. The settings are often deceptively ordinary, such as cheerful suburban homes or shabby hotels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror-of-personality
Horror-of-the-demonic film- The idea of vengeance, the corruption of innocence, mystic phenomena, especially possession, and the emphasis on Christian symbology. Usually film dealing with the undead or the supernatural would fit into this category. This includes horror films where the antagonist is a vampire, or a ghost, or a zombie, or a werewolf, or even an alien.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror-of-demonic
http://www.horror-fiction.info/demonic-horror-movie.html
Horror-of-armageddon film
A stream of low-budget productions featured humanity overcoming threats from "outside": alien invasions and deadly mutations to people, plants, and insects, most notably in films imported from Japan, whose society had first-hand knowledge of the effects of nuclear radiation. In some cases, when Hollywood co-opted the popularity of the horror film, the directors and producers found ample opportunity for audience exploitation, with gimmicks such as 3-D and "Percepto"
With the end of the Production Code of America in 1964, and the financial successes of the low-budget gore films of the ensuing years, the 1970s started referencing the occult, occultism; the genre also included gory horror movies with sexual overtones, made as "A-movies" (as opposed to "B movies" exploitation films and grindhouse cinema). Some of these films were made by respected auteurs.
In the first half of the 1990s, the genre continued many of the themes from the 1980s. Sequels from the Child's Play and Leprechaun series enjoyed some commercial success. The slasher films A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween all saw sequels in the 1990s, most of which met with varied amounts of success at the box office, but all were panned by fans and critics, with the exception of Wes Craven's New Nightmare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film#1990s-2000s
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) horror silent film based upon Robert Louis Stevenson's novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and starring actor John Barrymore.
The film was directed by John S. Robertson and co-starred Nita Naldi, and is now in the Public Domain. This story of split personality, has Dr. Jekyll a kind and charitable man who believes that everyone has two sides, one good and one evil. Using a potion, his personalities are split, creating havoc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Jekyll_and_Mr._Hyde_(1920_film)
Frankenstein (1931) horror film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and very loosely based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley as well as the play adapted from it by Peggy Webling. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features Dwight Frye and Edward van Sloan. The story of Henry Frankenstein, and obsessed scientist, who tries to discover a way to make the dead walk. He succeeds and creates a monster with parts from exhumed corpses who has to deal with living again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_(1931_film)
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