The Evolution and Conventions of

HORRORBy Luke Thomas

Introduction to Horror

Since the dawn of thinking, Ghost stories and myths would often be told to strike fear into the heart of the listener. Horror as a genre though originated maturely in literature and the arts in around the 1600’s, with Gothic Horror being one of the most popular genres with the public, despite the critics and scholars of the time demoting the genre as sensationalist nonsense, particularly due to the books and the plays content being very sexual and blasphemous by the times standards. This creates parallels with Horror films in the modern day, being very popular with the public but never really becoming critically acclaimed (except in a few rare circumstances) by any of the critics and the bourgeoisie thinkers behind them. It could be that in 200 years films like Nightmare on Elm Street may have an elitist spot alongside Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Early Horror

Horror in films originated mainly in the 1920s with silent films, notably Nosferatu, based on Bram Stokers horror novel Dracula, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. By the advent of Sound in cinema in the 30s, audiences were particularly interested in the classic Universal Monsters series. This series includes Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy and The Invisible Man. These, whilst tame by todays standards, were contextually terrifying for a 30s audience and are now considered genuinely iconic to the Horror Industry.

Hammer HorrorOver in Britain, Hammer Horrors were capturing the publics imagination. Made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s, these often sensationalized the original Universal Monster series, but with a lower budget and more gore and blood. Typical staples of the Hammer Series were Peter Cushing, who appeared mainly as the hero and who made further appearances outside this series as General Moff Tarkin in the first Star Wars film, and Christopher Lee, who appeared as several villains and is known outside this series for his work as Count Dooku in the Star Wars franchise, Saruman in the Lord of the Rings franchise and various appearances in Tim Burtons films. The Hammer Horror series started in 1957 with the film The Curse of Frankenstein. Critics claimed the film was “Depressing and degrading for anyone who loves the cinema” but despite these negative reviews the film was popular with the public. This film then started a run of sequels and similar films, all of which garnered public acclaim but were never taken seriously by reviewers. This series ended in 1974, when Tobe Hopers seminal American slasher film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which broke conventions by being ultra violent for a horror film at the time. Hammer horrors just couldn’t compete, and despite an increase in sex and gore in their films, they quickly went out of fashion. The final Hammer horror of this era was The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, which met little to no critical or public notice. Hammer has recently made a resurgence in lower budget modern horror films, notable works being Woman in Black and Let Me In.

Slasher Films and their Conventions

Slasher Films came along in the 1970s, in the new wave of violent horror films after the quite campy and cheesy Universal and Hammer Horrors. A Slasher Film is a subgenre of the typical horror film, involving an often psychopathic and mysterious killer who often has a supernatural background. There are other characters in the film, but more often than not, particularly in a franchise, these are just pawns in the series that are built up just to be killed by the antihero villain. The deaths in the series are often very violent, but are that unrealistic and over the top that they become humorous to a modern audience. The cliché characters in slasher’s is a group of teenagers, comprising of the archetypical jock, clown, courtesan, scholar and the virgin. Out of all of these, the virgin is often the one left alive at the end of the film (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday 13th, Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween etc.). These cliché characters and roles are often parodied in various formats, particularly in the cartoon series Scooby Doo, which contains most of these stock characters, and recent Horror film Cabin in the Woods, which plays on all these stock characters as part of a government conspiracy that these characters must be sacrificed through horror film clichés to keep an angry God dormant.

Cliché settings are often a mysterious cabin or house belonging to one of the characters rich uncle/ relative (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scream, Cabin in the Woods, Last House on the Left remake etc.) or a normally safe area, like a normal house or street or town, which the murderer invades (Saw, Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street etc.)

Notable Slasher Horror Films

Psycho (1960)

Peeping Tom (1960)

The Last House on the Left (1972)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Black

Christmas (1974)

Halloween (1978)

Friday the 13th (1980)

Prom Night (1980)

Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Childs Play (1988)

Scream (1996)

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Freddy Vs. Jason (2003)

Psycho

“We all go a little crazy sometimes” Norman Bates

Psycho could be counted as one of the first Slasher films before the exploitive cinema of the 1970s. It was directed by the acclaimed director Alfred Hitchcock, and was widely released in 1960. Famous for the classic murder scene of Janet Leigh (The mother of Jamie Lee Curtis, a horror staple of the 1970s in Halloween) in the shower scene, which has entered popular culture as an iconic standard for Horrors to match up to.

Conventions- Psychopathic killer (Norman Bates), femme fatale (Janet Leigh), a mysterious house setting (Bates Motel) and several poorly received sequels.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

“Get her Grandpa, Get her!” The Hitchhiker

If Psycho originated the “Slasher” genre, this certainly started the long line of exploitive slasher horrors, particularly popular in the 1970s and 80s. This also started the masked murderer cliché, with one of the major antagonists wearing Human skin. It was banned for years and because of this gained infamy for the violence involved.

Conventions- Masked murderer (Leatherface), hillbillies, torture, graphic depictions of violence, backwards location and a house belonging to one of the main characters. Also, this is one of the first that used the tagline “based on a true story”. It also, like most popular horror films, had a long streak of bad sequels

Nightmare on Elm Street

“Welcome to prime time, bitch” Freddy Krueger

This film (and subsequent sequels) were the first to combine very violent slashers with black comedy. This also started the idea of the villain acting as an anti hero with his unique look and quotable humour. The gimmick within this series is that the murders happen within the dream world, allowing some very vibrant and surreal death sequences, such as pulling all the veins out of one of his victims and using him as a marionette puppet and until he throws him off a large building. This is one of the first films by the famous Horror director Wes Craven, who went on to direct The Last House on The Left, The Hills Have Eyes and The Scream series. He also directed Wes Cravens New Nightmare, which had the enigmatic Freddy Krueger coming after the actors from the first Nightmare on Elm Street film, including Robert Englund, who plays Freddy.

Conventions- Iconic Anti-hero Murderer (Freddy Krueger), Usually calm setting holding something evil, teenage heroes, virgin survives, graphic depictions of violence and the poorly received sequels and remake

Scream

“What’s your favourite Scary Movie?” Ghostface

Scream was one of the first significant slasher films for around 10 years. One of the reasons for its vast popularity is its self deprecating humour, mocking itself and the slasher genre as a whole, and how the cast and setting plays out to stereotypes, like an episode of Scooby Doo. We have the stock characters, the virgin, the clown, the creep, the nerd, the whore and then the useless cop and the teens backstory. One thing that differentiates this from other slashers is the fact that the audience is always guessing as to who the murderer is, as Randy says in the film “Everyone’s a Suspect”. The gimmick of this murderer is that he murders his victims using a game based on Horror film trivia. The murderer also murders his victims following “The rules” of horror films, e.g. the virgin surviving

Conventions- Masked murderer (Ghostface), teenage heroes, Mysterious house in the middle of nowhere belonging to one of the characters, The horror film rules, graphic depictions of violence

Psychological Horrors and its Conventions

Psychological horror is one of the most popular Horror sub-genres. Unlike slashers and Hammer Horrors, it is harder to classify a Psychological as to when it originated and when its popularity rose or fell. Psychological Horror has actually remained nearly consistently popular with audiences and critics alike. Often Psychological horrors are listed as thrillers as well.

Conventions of a Psychological horror are a lot broader and harder to categorize than a Hammer or Slasher, which have typical conventions to work to. But there is often an unstable or psychotic main character, who may give us as the audience a warped sense of what is really happening or make us question our own morality. A good Psychological horror should get inside your head and make you question every angle that the film is making. Locations often include a hospital/ mental hospital or a prison. These settings make to have interesting character studies of insane characters.

Silence of the Lambs

“A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.” Hannibal Lecter

By the 90’s the over the top Slasher films of the 80’s were going out of fashion, the public didn’t want exploitation but instead wanted a riveting story. The Hannibal books, by the writer Thomas Harris, had previously attempted to be translated to film with the film Manhunter, but this gathered very little profit at the box office and failed to capture the audiences imagination. So in 1992 Silence of the Lambs was released with Anthony Hopkins as the enigmatic anti-hero Hannibal Lecter. This hit audiences hard, a masked murderer like a typical slasher villain, but with humanity and genuine method in his madness. Somehow the audience can connect with him despite him being truly evil. This is possibly the true horror in this film, that he can get inside your head as he gets inside Clarice’s. This is also interesting as it has 2 villains; Lecter and the cross dressing psychopath Buffalo Bill.

Conventions- Masked Murderer, clever storyline, virginal woman lead, sequels, setting- mental hospital, Buffalo Bills torture house, Polices involvement

Saw

“Hello Michael, I want to play a game…” Jigsaw

After watching the penultimate scene in Mad Max, where Max chains a murderer to a car that is leaking petrol, and says “To cut through your chains will take 20 minutes, to cut through your arm will take 10 minutes, the car will explode in 15 minutes. Your choice” James Wan and Leigh Whannell decided that this idea could be expanded into a whole film. And so one of the most popular franchises of the 21st Century was born. It plays out a lot like a play, with only one major setting, a dilapidated bathroom. Two strangers are chained to either side of the bathroom, and are asked to do the impossible; to cut through their own feet or kill each other to escape the room. This film was and still is brutal for it’s pessimistic portrayal of violence and themes of voyeurism, and the idea that you may have to do the impossible and destroy yourself to live.

Conventions- Murderer with a stylistic puppet and iconic character as the face of the murders, psychological torture, graphic depictions of violence and self mutilation, themes of self destruction and voyeurism and a string of poorly received sequels

Shutter Island

“Which would be worse - to live as a monster? Or to die as a good man?” Teddy Daniels

Shutter Island is a good example of a Psychological Horror that is hard to classify as to whether it is a Horror or Thriller, as it contains conventions from both. It details a detectives investigation of the shady Shutter Island, an island for the insane, as his realization due to his investigation of the Islands files that there is a patient missing.

Conventions- Insane central character, hospital setting, Clever storyline, twist ending, police involvement

The Modern Horrors Conventions

As with all films, horror has evolved from early Hammer Monster horror and slashers. Particularly popular horror films now are “Real footage” films. These are usually cheaper to make and contain a more realistic shock value, and play on the idea of safe environments becoming dangerous (Such as Paranormal Activity, a nice house becoming haunted). There seems to be an air of voyeurism in modern films, so instead of being explicitly violent we as the audience get the chance to view the murders in real time, as if we are watching real murders happening on screen. Because of this we have a Stanislavskian feel towards the product; it creates such a feeling of verisimilitude that we are absorbed into the action and convince ourselves that it is real.

The most popular horror films currently are psychological horrors and ghost films. Notable popular horror films made recently include the Paranormal Activity franchise, Insidious, Sinister and The Pact. The reasoning for these types of films becoming popular could be due to a rise in technology since the 80’s, exploitive and over the top cinema has gone out of fashion and more sinister and suspenseful films have taken over the public imagination. Unfortunately now there is a lot less humour in Horror Films, and survivors are now very rare.