Horror

Vintage Cinema presents

Horror film

Horror films are made to frighten or shock the viewer through the means of the macabre, fantastic or supernatural, and thus frequently overlapping with science fiction. Perhaps more than any other genre, what is considered to be a horror film has varied from decade to decade. Suggested menace that was once clearly a provenance of horror now would be categorized as a mystery or a crime thriller (The Silence of the Lambs), with the term horror applied to films which display more explicit gore (Wes Craven's New Nightmare). These films frequently overlap with thriller, science fiction and fantasy.

Horror movies have long served both purposes. They deliver thrills by the hearseload, as well as exploring the dark, forbidden side of life (and death) — cautionary tales for grown ups. They also provide a compelling mirror image of the anxieties of their time Nosferatu (1922) isn't just a tale of vampirism, but offers heart-rending images of a town beleaguered by premature and random deaths, echoes of the Great War and the Great Flu Epidemic fatalities. At the other end of the century Blade (1998) isn't just about vampires either, but reflects a fear of the powerful yet irresponsible elements in society, a lawless elite, echoes down the corridor of the growing invincibility of those at the top.

The Haunted Castle - Le Manoir du Diable (1896)

The Earliest Horror Films: Vampires (Vamps), Monsters, and More:

The history of horror in cinema dates back to Georges Méliès’ The Haunted Castle (en français, Le Manoir du Diable) in 1896. The first horror movie, only about two minutes long, was made by imaginative French filmmaker Georges Melies, titled Le Manoir Du Diable (1896, Fr.) (aka The Devil's Castle/The Haunted Castle) - containing familiar elements of later horror and vampire films: a flying bat, a medieval castle, a cauldron, a demon figure (Mephistopheles), and skeletons, ghosts, and witches - and a crucifix to dispatch with evil.

The vampire character has been one of the most ubiquitous in the history of cinema, extending from the earliest days of cinema to present-day manifestations. Dark, primitive, and revolting characters that simultaneously attract and repel us formed the irresistible heart of big-screen vampire tales. At first, bloodsuckers (leeches) and vampire bats intrigued and frightened people from cultures around the world. Demonic or supernatural possession was often juxtaposed with blood-drinking, sex, and corpses. Many religions, myths, folk-tales and cults espoused the idea of obtaining the life-essence from blood – in its extreme was the practice of cannibalism.

In the early 1900s, German filmmakers advanced the genre considerably. Paul Wegener’s The Golem (1915), Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) are outstanding examples of onscreen innovation, (arguably) inspired by Germany’s ban of foreign films during World War I.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – 1919 One of the more memorable and influential of the early films was Germany's silent expressionistic landmark classic, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (1919/1920, Ger.) (aka The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) from director Robert Wiene, about a ghost-like hypnotist-therapist in a carnival named Dr. Caligari (Werner Kraus) who calls pale-skinned, lanky, black leotard-wearing Cesare (Conrad Veidt, later known for his portrayal as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942)), his performing somnambulist (and haunted murderer), from a state of sleep. The shadowy, disturbing, distorted, and dream-nightmarish quality of the macabre and stylistic 'Caligari,' with twisted alleyways, lopsided doors, cramped rooms, overhanging buildings, and skewed cityscapes, was shot in a studio. It was brought to Hollywood in the 1920s, and later influenced the classic period of horror films in the 1930s - introducing many standard horror film conventions.

Early Vampire Films:

Female vamps made an appearance in Robert Vignola's melodramatic The Vampire (1913), although they were femme fatales who seductively 'sucked' the life-blood from 'foolish' men -- also exemplified by popular vamp actress Theda Bara in A Fool There Was (1915). The earliest significant vampire film was director Arthur Robison's German silent film Nachte des Grauens (1916, Ger.) (aka Night of Horror) with strange, vampire-like people. Until recently, the lost Hungarian film Drakula halala (1921, Hung.) (aka The Death of Dracula), was widely assumed to be the first adaptation of Anglo-Irish writer Bram Stoker's 1897 vampire novel Dracula, and featured cinema's first Drakula.

Nosferatu – 1922 The first genuine vampire picture was also produced by a European filmmaker - director F. W. Murnau's feature-length Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922, Ger.) (aka Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens). Shot on location, it was an unauthorized film adaptation of Stoker's Dracula with Max Schreck in the title role as the screen's first vampire - a mysterious aristocrat named Count Graf Orlok living in the late 1830s in the German town of Bremen. Because of copyright problems, the vampire was named Nosferatu rather than Dracula, and the action was moved from Transylvania to Bremen. The emaciated, balding, undead vampire's image was unforgettable with a devil-rat face, pointy ears, elongated fingers, sunken cheeks, and long fangs, with plague rats following him wherever he went.

Meanwhile, over in America, gothic novels were getting the big screen treatment. Edison Studios released its first adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus in 1910 as a short film (a feature version would come in 1931 from Universal Pictures, considered by some to be the most iconic horror film in history). Across the pond, Hammer Film Productions helmed adaptations of classics including Dracula and The Mummy.

Early Monster (Frankenstein) Films:

Der Golem – 1920 In Danish director Stellan Rye's and Paul Wegener's early German silent horror film Der Student von Prag (1913, Ger.) (aka The Student of Prague/A Bargain With Satan), based loosely upon the Faust legend, a poor student made a pact with the devil in return for wealth and a beautiful woman. It was the first artistically important German production - and was later remade in 1926 and directed by Henrik Galeen. Wegener directed the first of his influential adaptations of the Golem legend by Gustav Meyrinck - Der Golem (1914, Ger.) (aka The Monster of Fate), and then remade it a few years later as Der Golem Und Die Tanzerin (1917, Ger.) (aka The Golem and the Dancer) - notably the first horror film sequel. He remade the film a third time, with Karl Freund as cinematographer, again titling it Der Golem (1920, Ger.) (aka The Golem: or How He Came Into the World). The expressionistic film was based upon Central European myths and influenced later 'Frankenstein' monster films in the early 1930s with themes of a creator losing control of his creation. The Golem, played by Wegener, was an ancient clay figure from Hebrew mythology that was brought to life by Rabbi Loew's magic amulet to defend and save the Jews from a pogrom in the 16th century threatened by Rudolf II of Habsburg. The man-made, clay creature roamed through the Jewish ghetto of medieval Prague to protect it from persecution.

The first Frankenstein monster film in the US was Frankenstein (1910) by director J. Searle Dawley, a 16-minute (one-reel) version made by the Edison Studios and starring Charles Ogle as the monster. In this early version, the Monster was created in a cauldron of chemicals rather than by a bolt of lightning. Two other silent precursors to later Frankenstein films were Joseph W. Smiley's Life Without Soul (1915) and the expressionistic German film Homunculus (1916), a six-hour epic serial about an artificially-created man. The Miser's Conversion (1914) (aka The Miser's Reversion) was the first film to depict a screen transformation by using a series of dissolves with footage of the character's different stages of makeup, rather than a single jump-cut. This was later used to great effect in many films including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Wolf Man (1941).

Once the silent era had given way to technological process, we had a glut of incredible movies that paved the way for generations to come, particularly in the field of monster movies – think the second iteration of Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932) and the first color adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). The 30s also marked the first time in the industry that the word horror” was used to describe the genre—previously, it was really just romance melodrama with a dark element—and it also saw the first horror stars” being born. Bella Lugosi (of Dracula fame) was arguably the first to specialize solely in the genre.

Of particular note from this period is Tod Browning’s Freaks from 1932. Following a test screening, a woman threatened to sue the studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), claiming that the film had caused her to suffer a miscarriage! It was flat-out banned in the UK for 30 years.

Horror Films after World War II:

As Europe recovered from World War II, the spectre of invasion and atomic war cast a long shadow over the horror genre. For example, Godzilla was a product of radioactivity, and aliens invaded in 1953’s The War of the Worlds and 1958’s The Blob and I Married a Monster from Outerspace.

Perhaps no decade had more seminal, acclaimed horror films than the '60s. Reflecting the social revolution of the era, the movies were edgier, featuring controversial levels of violence (Blood Feast, Witchfinder General) and sexuality ( Repulsion). Films like Peeping Tom and Psycho were precursors to the slasher movies of the coming decades, while George Romero's Night of the Living Dead changed the face of zombie movies forever. Horror luminaries of the time included Alfred Hitchcock ( Psycho, The Birds), Vincent Price ( 13 Ghosts,  The Fall of the House of Usher, Witchfinder General), Herschell Gordon Lewis ( Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs), Roman Polanski (Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby) and Mario Bava ( Black Sunday, Black Sabbath).

The '70s pushed the envelope even further than the '60s, reflecting a nihilism born of the Vietnam era. Social issues of the day were tackled, from sexism (The Stepford Wives) to consumerism ( Dawn of the Dead) to religion ( The Wicker Man) and war ( Deathdream). Exploitation movies hit their stride in the decade, boldly flouting moral conventions with graphic sex ( I Spit on Your Grave, Vampyros Lesbos) and violence ( The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes), the latter reflected particularly in a spate of zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead) and cannibal films ( The Man From Deep River). The shock factor even pushed films like The Exorcist and  Jaws to blockbuster success. Amid the chaos, the modern slasher film was born in Canada's Black Christmas and America's Halloween.

Horror in the the first half of the '80s was defined by slashers like Friday the 13th, Prom Night and A Nightmare on Elm Street, while the latter half tended to take a more lighthearted look at the genre, mixing in comic elements in films like The Return of the Living Dead, Evil Dead 2, Re-Animator and House. Throughout the '80s, Stephen King's fingerprints were apparent, as adaptations of his books littered the decade, from The Shining to Pet Sematary.Fatal Attraction, meanwhile, spawned a series of stalker thrillers, but despite the efforts of newcomers like Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead), Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator), Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins) and Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child's Play), horror's box office might had subsided by the end of the '80s.

The early '90s brought unrivaled critical acclaim for the horror genre, with The Silence of the Lambs sweeping the major Academy Awards in 1992, a year after Kathy Bates won the Oscar for Best Lead Actress for Misery and Whoopi Goldberg won for Best Supporting Actress for Ghost. Such success seemed to spur studios into funding large-scale horror-themed projects, such as Interview With the Vampire, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Wolf. In 1996, Scream's runaway success reignited the slasher flame, spawning similar films, such as I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend. At the end of the decade, Blade foreshadowed the coming flood of comic book adaptations, and Asian horror movies like Ringu and Audition signaled a new influence on American fright flicks. Meanwhile, 1999 witnessed two of the biggest surprise hits of the decade, regardless of genre, in The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project.

Twenty-first century horror films:

In the first decade of the twenty first century, the ghosts and zombies were back in vogue as Eastern and Western superstitions converged, and people yearned for an evil beyond human. In the era of the War on Terror and waterboarding, supernatural terror was more palatable than the fear inherent in news headlines.There also seems to have been a certain arrogance at play in the zeitgeist - see: those who relished the short-lived reign of Torture Porn, movies focused on the intense suffering of victims.

Twenty-first century horror in the Hollywood  has been identified with remakes of both American (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Dawn of the Dead) and foreign films (The Ring, The Grudge), but there have been innovations within American horror — most notably the torture porn of Saw and Hostel fame. Outside of the U.S., there is as great a variety of edgy and innovative material as there has ever been in the genre, from Canada (Ginger Snaps) to France (High Tension) to Spain (The Orphanage) to the U.K. (28 Days Later) and, of course, Asia, from Hong Kong (The Eye) to Japan (Ichi the Killer) to Korea (A Tale of Two Sisters) and Thailand (Shutter). The 2010s are relatively short on horror other than franchises; standouts include Black Swan, The Cabin in the Woods, 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Gift.