History of Horror genre

History of the Horror genre

Horror is a film genre looking to create negative emotions for the viewers by playing on stereotypical primal fears. Horror films often try to startle the viewer using themes like macabre (signs and symbols of death) and supernatural. Horror frequently overlaps with other genres like ‘supernatural’ and ‘thrillers’.

1890-1930/the beginning

The horror genre was very popular from around 1890-1930.  The first depictions of supernatural events were created by a man called Georges Méliés, who created several short silent films, one of which is actually credited for being the first ever horror film. After Méliés’ magnificent breakthrough films like Frankenstein were inspired to be made and eventually remade over time and changed the history of horror from silent films to what we now know it as today .

1930-1940

This is the era where the horror make-up artists began to show their skills and change the faces of the horrorful characters to what we see them as today. In 1931 universal studios began to make 'Gothic horror’ which lead to inspire ‘Tod Browning’s’ Dracula, which aimed to thrill its audience, which is a example with the horror genre crossing with the thriller genre. Universal dominated the horror genre for a whole decade with films such as ‘the invisible man’, ‘Bride of Frankenstein’, ‘Son of Frankenstein’…

1950-1960

In the 50’s to 60’s the horror genre saw a massive advance in technology, which aloud produces to create scenes like alien invasions and zombie apocalypse’s, which they wouldn’t have been able to do in the past a they wouldn’t have the technology to create this. A good example of technology advancing horror was is 1955 a director called Hans Zeichmen created the film Sorcerer, Hans would never have been able to make this film before 1955 because he simply wouldn’t of had the technology to do so. Sorcerer involved creating the illusion of flying sorcerers to the audience.