H.P - The History of Horror

Why are stories that 'aim to scare their audience' so popular?

• Horror stories play on the fears and worries of people, featuring commonly included themes like death, disease and stalking. They relate to people who recognise these fears and draws them into the story and the action.
•  More recently, the use of 'jump scares' has given horror films an addictive quality, providing the audience with rushes of adrenaline at various intervals during the film, fueling their excitement for the next scare.

What insight can the study of horror monsters give?

• Horror monsters have traditionally been portrayed as representing certain overriding fears and tensions at the time of the film's creation.
•  In the case of Frankenstein's monster, his situation resembles that of the racial tension in the west at the time. He is marginalised in society and is unable to join the culture of the people around him, resulting in his eventual death which resembles the case of lynching. 
• The monster's creation raises questions about the aristocracy and preys on fears about science going too far. At the time of the film's creation in 1932 these were very relevant themes, especially with the eventual dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945. 

What did Nosferatu (1922), one of the earliest horror films use the vampire as a metaphor for?

• The vampire in Nosferatu is rat like in appearance and attacks by invading villages, spreading disease and transferring bodily fluids with victims. 
• This concept for a monster could be seen as a metaphor for the effect of corrupt, expansionist politicians and the diseases that plagued war torn Germany in 1922. 

How has horror changed through the decades?

• In the 1960's films like Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) and Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960) started to create a phase of domesticated horror, films that used normal looking monsters in regular settings. This linked in with the abnormal amount of violence being covered by the media, with the murders of the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King and the images of the Vietnam war being broadcast on the news. 
• This led to the more sadistic human monsters of the 1970's, with films such as The last house on the Left (Craven, 1972 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper, 1974). The horror films of the 70's eventually turned to the subject of social change, including the growth in reliance on science and the increasing number of single parent families. These subjects were made themes of The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1972). 
• In the 1980's, home video led to the growth of cheap, gory slasher films. In one sense the horror genre appears to have lost its way in this decade, as the dominant sub-genre strays from the dominant fears of the time. 
• More recently the sub-genre of torture porn has appeared, dominated by franchises spawning from films like Saw (Wan, 2004). Again these films stray from the dominant fears of the time, but push the boundaries of desensitisation and CGI gore.

According to Steph Hendry a teacher of media at Runshaw College and an AQA examiner, the reason the horror genre still survives is it's ability to adapt and tap into each generation's concerns and it's metaphorical approach deals with issues that relate to a wide audience.