History of Psychological Horrors

1920s• During this period horrors were very dark and eerie. They were made

to reflect audiences fear of creatures and darkness.• The film ‘The Lodger’ is about serial killer in London who is on the

loose murdering blonde women. A mysterious man arrives at a family’s house looking for a room to rent. The daughter in the family is a blonde model and is dating a detective who is working on the case of the serial killer. He notices this lodger’s weird behaviour around his girlfriend and suspects he is the serial killer.

1930s• A lot of psychological horrors still had elements of gothic themed

narratives. They were mainly based on a male antagonist and protagonists and a woman just for men to view. This relates to the Laura Mulvey Male Gaze. • A theatre actress is married to a pianist and she is planning to depart

from touring with him for a bit. However her biggest fan who is a doctor isn’t allowing her to leave that easily. Following this the actresses husbands has an accident with his hands and the doctor that is obsessed with his wife changes the hands with a knife-wielding murderer who was sentenced to death. Then they found out that the hands have a mind of their own.

1940s• This year was when ww2 took place so horror films were banned in

Britain in order to screen propaganda films. This is when Americans decided to develop on horror films. They also had some women playing some main antagonist roles.

1950s• The results of the war made horrors not as scary as they were before.

This is because people had been exposed to real life horrors as several of people died during the war. Therefore some horrors used elements of the war such as radiations that killed a lot of people. • There weren’t much psychological horrors during this period, most

horrors made were under the sub genre of monsters.

1960s• This period was completely different from the 50s, as the whole fear

and scare of the war had disappeared and ‘drugs, violence and sex’ was very popular in the 60s. Antagonists weren’t really monsters as much they were mainly male characters.• The victims were mainly beautiful young women, who had scenes of

them partly naked.

1970s• During this year most horrors had the antagonist as a member of the

family. This is due to the rates of divorce increasing and the number of women working increasing. This is used in a lot of films in the 21st century as well as the situation in the 70s is repeating now.

1980s• This year horror movies moved to another level this is because the

new SFX and technology that was invented and developed. Many psychological horrors took place in homes and with the use of SFX, houses were made to seem scary making the audiences scared as they can relate to an ordinary family house.

1990s• As audiences were tired of the gore and the normal bloody elements

of psychological horrors. Directors and producers made horrors rather disturbing so consisting with cannibal and many more.

2000sIn this period, many psychological horrors are based on true stories. They always have to do with some sort of possession, either in a house or on a person.