Gothic horror is the first form of horror that we can date back to and this is due to it being a genre that told a story through books, this form of genre came before movies or even image recording was possible and so the whole concept of horror was based inside the mind of the reader and relied solely on their imagination. Gothic horror is actually a sub-genre of gothic fiction and is based around the classic literature that made some of the most famous monsters even for todays generation, one such monster was Frankenstein's Monster, a common misconception is that the monster is named Frankenstein but the truth is the doctor is named Frankenstein while the monster doesn't actually have a name. Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley in 1818 and contained writing that was shocking to the readers of its time whilst now we would read it and laugh at some of the more ridiculous ideas that appear in it. Another famous monster to appear is Nosferatu, this monster was the first version of Dracula and was one of the first to be created into a film, Films at the time were silent and had live bands playing along with the movie. Another great monster to appear from the genre was the tale of DR Jekyll and MR Hyde, this story was written in 1886 and can be linked to cases of schizophrenia based on the concept of the story. The idea behind Gothic Horror was to get the monsters that have been created and add a romantic aspect as to create a from of empathy towards the monster whilst still having an input of horror to create the atmosphere of fear.
Monsters and Mad Scientists
As books were being turned into movies we brought in an age of horror the based a lot of the stories around monsters being created by mad scientists and being released to wreak havoc into the unknowing public, it is said that the success of this brand of horror came due to the world war 2 where Hitler was viewed as a mad scientist and its this reason that most movies see that the scientist gets killed in the end. There was also a disagreement in religion at the time as a lot of people believed that only god can create life and movies like Frankenstein were promoting the idea that people were as powerful as god, its for this reason that the movie was banned from certain viewings although it wasn't the only reason, a scene in the movie which showed Frankenstein’s monster throwing a little girl into the water was very controversial as people believed the violence towards children was to much to place in movies. At the time that these movies were coming out was also the time that sound was being recorded in movies so you could hear the actors screaming or the music rising before a climax, also it meant that dialogue was being made so that the characters could have their own voice and lines. The famous movies that came out during this period were Frankenstein and the invisible man, Frankenstein was an iconic character that was remade to allow dialogue so that the atmosphere of the whole movie was scarier and the characters were given more personality to make it more realistic. The invisible man was one of the movies that used special effects and even now some of the special effects that they user are pretty good, this movie was unique as it didn't follow the usual idea of the monster being created by the scientist but instead followed its own idea of the scientist becoming the monster and even so the monster still gets taken out by the end of the movie.
Animal Within
This sub-genre came in at around the 1940’s and was based heavily around the monsters and demons that you find within yourself, it was another group of movies that was said to be based around Hitler to try and portray the message that the worst monster of all the one you find inside the human soul. It wasn’t just Hitler that was portrayed through this time, there was also a time of equality between men and women, a lot of the women that were being given the mens jobs during WW2 were losing their freedom when the men returned. The movies that based their story around cat women and werewolves were trying to show different messages by different genders, cat people is a popular movie that came out at the time and was based around females gaining power over the males and using this power to seduce and kill them. Due to the controversy of giving women power over men the movies like these were not released outside America until later when women managed to gain their own power and equality. The idea to the plot of these movies is to show how humans really are the worst monsters of them all as we have so much power over each other and how we spend so much of out time killing each other which is as relevant back then as it is now, we can choose to ignore the war and all he bombs being released into the world whilst they all had to face it and hope to survive.
Mutant Creature and Aliens
These types of movies were usually low budget and B listed movies, they focused on the idea that we are not alone in the world and the whole concept of man made creatures. The difference between a mutant and a monster is that a monster is completely fictional, however, if you ignore the X-Men idea of a mutant you will find that you can get real life mutations and therefore the idea of a mutant was meant to be a more real life scare. In real life though a mutation could just be odd colour eyes or an extra finger but in the movie back then a mutant would be a type of alien or something that an alien would turn you into, invasion of the body snatchers is a famous movie that used the concept of aliens kidnapping people and brainwashing them into kidnapping other people until they took over the world. Another famous movie from this era was Rocket ship X-M, this was one of the first sci-fi films as well as a horror due to lack of knowledge towards the unknown and there is still a lot we don't know about space, the movie dealt with theories and thoughts about what would happen when we went to space and brought in the ideas of aliens. One of the main fears at the time that brought in the whole idea of aliens and mutants was the creation and speed that technology was improving at, the war had created all these different and very violent bombs that had all these different effect and each one was more dangerous than the next and each one was causing more stress between the countries as to who would use them and when, Hiroshima is a good example of what technology had brought during this time.
Hammer Production Films
Hammer production was an iconic company that built towards making some of the best horror movies to date, their fame came from remaking and releasing very popular and old monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula. They went through rough patches due to releasing some films that contained too much detail, however, the thing that made them so famous was their use of colour in movies. Since movies of this era were no longer black and white we managed to see colours which were used to make films even scarier than before with iconic items like blood and gore. Hammer used to make quota quickie films that were low budget and finished quickly to meet the requirements of a good horror film, this was before they went on to make full horror films like let me in. let me in is a good example of another technique that hammer used where they focused more on the victim of the monster as opposed to the story of the monster, this idea was to hold to the idea of the unknown, where is the monster? What will he do? Will the main character die? Questions like these would go through the viewers head and help boost the fear atmosphere. They also changed the story around for some of the movies they remade such as Frankenstein, the movie that was originally based around a monster going around and terrorizing people turned into a movie where the monster goes searching for knowledge and ends up scaring people because he was different. They also created sequels to their most successful movies like Frankenstein and Dracula as to keep the trend going and make as much money as possible, however, due to lack of funding's the company has been through highs and lows eventually leading to it selling itself to a Dutch media company in 2007.
Ghosts, Zombies and Satanism
This sub-genre of horror was brought up during the re-birth of horror when the films were given bigger budgets and longer movie times, the fear that was brought in at this time was that of life after death and cults. A close resemblance to religion based on the idea of demons bring people back from the dead and ghosts that haunt the wicked for wrongdoing, a lot of the movies that contained these fears ended with either the good guy winning or the bad guy winning. A very famous director named George Romero completely changed the way we view zombies from these slow moving brain eating ghoulish beings to fast paced flesh munching monsters, even in todays films a lot of the zombies you see are still based on how he changed the way they move and eat. The fear of Satan was brought in through the very famous movie The Exorcist, a movie to which a young girl gets possessed by a demon and the family of the girl brings in a priest to deal with it, the movie was banned form the UK until 1999 due to how scary the movie was (it can still be called the scariest movie of all time). The era of rebirth was popular between the 60-70s where families were scared of enemies being closer to them than they thought, fear of children became real as parents were worried that if they treated their children badly then the children would do worse back to them. The whole story and relation between these monsters was just the fear of not just your children but those close to you in general, it almost scared the majority of the public into being nice to each other just in case something bad happened to them.
Slasher Movies
These movies were heavily based around blood and gore but the real unique aspect to them was the full view of torture you could get by going to watch one of these movies, you would go and watch how many ways someone could go and slice their victim to shreds with knives or sharp objects. However, the movies like these died down due to low funding and ended up inspiring later movies to make sub-parodies and comedies of such. One very famous Slasher movie is nightmare on elm street which takes on the character of a monster being able to kill teenagers from inside their dreams, he uses a glove with knives replacing the fingers to stab them or slice them into multiple pieces leaving only their body in the real world dead. A lot of these movies ended in a cliff hanger and tried to get the audience to leave feeling like the creature they just watched will try to chase after them in the real world. A lot of these movies created very iconic items that from then on could only be linked with the monster they came from, for example the mask from scream is so famous it made an appearance in the parody film Scary Movie and was shown throughout the film to portray the bad guy. The evolution of special effects made the whole era possible, thanks to new methods of CGI we could make people look like they really lost an arm or a leg and with this technology we would make films scarier then they ever were, this being because the whole idea of murder and torture was not a fiction but a real thing, people in the world were being tortured and there were maniacs who would go around killing innocent people due to insanity.
Video Nasties
These films never made it to British cinema due to the taboo subjects that they would go over, instead since the market for VHS was so new and laws were so vague instead the companies that made the horror film would put it straight onto a VHS and send it to UK to sell in shops. These videos were then available to even the young and it scared the people as it meant that kids were growing up with violence and it is thought that it is for this reason that they became more violent and would then go out and replicate whatever they saw on the video. The movies would contain a lot of blood and gore to a state where there were court cases filed against the company that made them to try and get it removed but the movies were created and so people were unable to completely get rid of the movies they created. These films were the starting point and inspired the next era of horror films that lead to this date.
Torture Porn and Gorenography
Torture porn is the more recent sub-genre of horror and contains some of the most gruesome forms of killing and death ever made, some say CGI has gone to far while others want to push it farther. These movies will create a very loose plot so that they can focus heavily on any creative way you can kill a person without pushing the boundaries of humanity, the whole SAW series has a storyline but when you watch the films you wouldn't notice it due to 90% of the film being stranger playing ‘’games’’ to save their life. The reason its called Gorenography is the link to how people would watch porn not for the plot but to instead see how many times you can take power over someone, the human centipede is a film based around a group of people being connected (literally connected) to create a line of humans that look like a centipede and it became so popular that there has been links and Easter eggs connected to it in so many other popular shows like south park and family guy. However once you get passed all the fictional stuff you come across the more disturbing movies that shows tortures based on a real life story, some of the movies released will be based on a true story and show every detail of what happened from cutting out eyes to breaking different bones at a times and these movies are the ones that people have difficulty watching as the realistic side to it causes a sense of fear that doesn't leave you when you leave the cinema.
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