The 1950s introduced the world of science fiction horror to films. The increasing demand for science fiction reduced the production of dedicated horror movies at first, although many film makers geared their Sci-Fi features towards the horror market to appeal to the drive-in movie couples. These films where usually low-budget black-and-white B-movies, which would precede the main color feature. However many of these B-movies eventually achieved a good following. However, toward the end of the decade, mainstream horrors made a huge comeback. Hammer film studios transformed their productions towards the horror market with great success. In 1951 the earliest noteworthy sci-fi/horror combination film, The Thing from another World (The Thing), came out. This film is about a group at an Antarctic research station, who find an alien body trapped in ice, and they soon discover that he is still alive and not very friendly. The War of the Worlds (1953), based on the novel by H.G. Wells and one of the first color sci-fi films, had a similar theme. Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956) was also a very popular sci-fi/horror movie of the time with the horrifying notion that one day your family and friends can turn into complete strange aliens.
In the late fifties, as the technical realms of filmmaking became easier and less expensive, horror films became more extravagant and gorier. As a result, the British Hammer Studios began mass production of bloody fright that became their trademark, and with scenes pervaded with sexuality, the typical Hammer horror appeared in glorious Technicolor and often displayed sexually intoxicating scenes. However, there were more to these films than just sex. Avid brilliance steered The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. The Hound of the Baskervilles, filmed the same year as Dracula (1958) and featuring its two stars, is an impressive version of Conan Doyle's crime thriller.
Hammer films continued to prosper in the 1960's, emulating the success of Universal pictures during the 1930's and '40s. At the same time, Roger Corman created his own production company and began making a series of classic low-budget horror pictures mostly based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe, such as The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) and The Tomb of Ligeia, a remarkable eight-film series (1964). A Bucket of Blood starring Dick Miller as a sculptor who moulds dead bodies is extremely clever, poking fun at the so-called intelligentsia of the time.
However the most influential genre film of the decade was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). As apposed to the fairytale and gothic elements of earlier films, this film closed the gap between the subject matter and the viewer and engaged the viewer in the terrifying acts shown on screen. The identities of the characters aren’t really that important to the film; the main objective is to suck the viewer into this world and suggest that the occupants of the room can be just about anyone. Psycho also introduced the serial killer to modern cinema, and the vivid shower murder scene led to the abundant creation of “splatter” horror films and changed the horror genre forever. However, no film has matched the power of Hitchcock’s brilliant movie. To compensate for the lack of superior shock techniques in recent horror flicks, just a bunch of blood and gore is often used to scare the audience with failure to effectively engulf the viewer with intense fright.
The same year, the controversial film "Peeping Tom", one of the best British horror films ever made, about a serial killer who likes filming his victims’ expressions while he murders them, was released. A bunch of creepy kids taking over the small English village of Midwich in The Village of the Damned, based on the book The Midwich Cuckoo's, also took over cinema.
In the Unites States, directors followed the new emphasis on realism. Robert Aldrich directed Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte, while Herschell Gordon Lewis produced a film called Blood Feast (1963) for $70,000 in nine days with scenes portraying a tongue being ripped out and a leg amputation, becoming the very first splatter film. If it weren’t for the bad effects, this film would be too hard to watch. However, Lewis later came out with an even gorier film, 2,000 Maniacs, with better effects to provide the bloody décor. In 1968 George Romero's classic zombie picture, Night of the Living Dead, was released in America. This influential horror film was extremely low budget and made with old black and white footage; however, it proved to be extremely popular at the box office and successfully introduced a whole new sub-genre to the horror film world.
Polish artist Roman Polanski made three great horror films in the Sixties. Repulsion, about the deterioration into madness of a young French girl living in London, the Dance of the Vampires (1967), and the highly acclaimed paranoia classic Rosemary's Baby (1968) graced the theaters. Rosemary's Baby made huge success at the box-office and depicted devil-worshipers in a very chilling, realistic way.
Throughout the Fifties and Sixties, the Horror Film had lost the prominence and respect it once had. Big stars would not in the least bit be associated with the horror genre and were very rarely offered roles in horror films. However, when Rosemary's Baby appeared in the late Sixties, this changed. The budget for horror films increased dramatically, and many top celebrities leaped at the chance to show their acting abilities in a horror flick. Ava Gardner starred in The Devil's Widow (1971), and Laurence Olivier appeared in Dracula eight years later. The Exorcist (1973), igniting controversy among religious people, triumphed at the box office and became the most successful commercial horror movie of all time. This led to the commercial success of The Omen. Steven Spielberg became noticed when he made a nature-in-revolt film similar to Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) in 1975. Instead, this film had a shark lashing out against an unworthy human race; Jaws became the biggest grossing film ever, and may even be Spielberg’s best directorial work of art yet. Running simultaneously with the swarm of big-budget/big-name productions, there was a different, much more dissident breed of mostly American horror films, which were the films horror fans most wanted to see. Tobe Hooper directed his hit, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), a notorious horror slasher which stirred up much controversy along with its great success. Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972), with unsettling scenes of traumatic violence depicted in a realist style, generated enormous scares along with the more conventional, but just as brilliant thrills of Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976) and John Carpenter's hauntingly entertaining Halloween. Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) was one of the most authentically terrifying horror films made in the horror history. This film is about a family who is attacked by another family made up of degenerate cannibal mutants when their camper breaks down. Another of Craven’s films, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1985), created the pop-culture icon of Freddy Kreuger, who victimizes teenagers by way of their dreams. Wes Craven later went on to direct with writer Kevin Williamson the teenage horror flick, Scream.
Probably one of the best horrors of all time, Pet Semetary (1989) based on a novel by Stephen King, and directed by Mary Louise Lambert, tells the story of the Creed family who relocates to a quiet New England town where their cat and their son get killed. They decide to bury each other in the pet cemetery, on an Indian burial ground with hopes that the departed will return from the dead. The deceased do leave their graves and come back but not as anticipated. Both return as bloodthirsty zombies who kill the living. This movie is horrifying and filled with creepy surprises, which can be seen over and over again without becoming desensitized.
Following the impression that the horror masterpiece, Halloween, had left on audiences a swarm of inferior imitation slasher flicks were made, each one more bloody than the previous to induce more shock to generate sales at the box office; however, without a creative script, this is not the formula for a scary movie. If elements in a film are predictable, the audience will not be excited. A good horror film is probably one of the hardest types of film to make because the fright needs to grip the audience in a very subtle and chilling way. It can’t be overdone. The blood and gore need to be exposed in good taste, otherwise, the audience will not be frightened.
Another good film (subject to opinion), Friday the 13th directed by Sean Cunngham, made headlines and produced the longest run of sequels in horror history with a total of 10 movies. The infamous plot is about a group of unruly camp counselors at Camp Crystal Lake who are murdered in gruesome ways by the notorious hockey masked psycho, Jason Vorhees. However, the sequels don’t live up to the original and to compensate for their lack of originality, they are smothered with an excess of gory scenes.
Prom Night was another film, like so many other slasher flicks of the 80s, that lacked the buildup of Halloween. This film is credited by some with aspiring Scream, which make references to Prom Night, when Randy says “this is Prom night revisited” and that they must follow the “slasher movie rules” to catch the killer. Of the rules, there is an unwritten law that the killer must be slow, which definitely seemed to be the trend of the 1980’s slasher flicks. However despite their slowness, the killers always managed to catch up with their potential victim.
In 1984 Wes Craven directed a film of which people took notice. A Nightmare On Elm Street depicted a pure evil horror villain, Freddie Kreugar, who was a child molester and killer. The residents of Elm Street catch and kill Kreugar; however, he comes back with vengeance by haunting the dreams of the kids on Elm Street and killing them while asleep. An interesting twist on the conventional restraints of horror films appears here as the victim is murdered while asleep because the rules of the slasher films no longer apply. However the sequels and TV show, “Freddy’s Nightmares”, weren’t as good as the original and devalued its worth.
In 1987 the enormous potential of the horror genre was seen in Clive Barker's Hellraiser a great imaginative film which portrays the Cenobites, a group of Demons who torture those who solve a mystical puzzle box known as the Lament Configuration. Hellraiser is a breakthrough film in the history of horror and unlike other horror films, it’s sequel film, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 is even better than the first with a higher budget and revealing a remarkable vision of hell.
Candyman, another of Clive Barker’s slasher films and a true horror classic, combines several interesting issues into it, because rather than Candyman being depicted as a symbol of evil in the way that Myers and Freddie had, Candyman is a tragic figure. He was a black artist horribly killed after falling in love with a white woman, and after death, he is a tormented soul frightening people and killing those who dare say his name five times.
After several unsuccessful horror sequels, Scream replenished the horror genre with numerous references to legendary horror films and a foundation of slasher film ideals imbedded throughout. It changed the horror genre as Halloween had done nearly 20 years before. However it also led to a number of poorer imitations such as I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel, Urban Legend, Cherry Falls, and Halloween H20. Scream 3 kept horror flying high by breaking box office records for Miramax. The Blair Witch Project also won extraordinary press when it became the most profitable independent picture ever, surpassing Halloween, which had made over 200 times its budget.
Today, I think the horror genre has recovered with brilliant pieces such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and Wrong Turn (2003), which not only have great visual shockers but also well-written scripts grasping the audience’s attention with the least expected. Yes, they are gory, but that only adds to the terror in watching them. Whether they live up to the Hitchcock or Craven’s thrillers is highly unlikely; however, they are some of the best horror films I have seen in a while. Hopefully, in the future, we can only expect to see even more improved horror flicks, while still retaining the classic horror film qualities.
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