Monday, October 31, 2005
Understanding the Horror Genre
Understanding the Horror Genre
Horror Movies
A horror film is a film dominated by elements of horror. This film genre incorporates a number of sub-genres and repeated themes, such as slasher themes, vampire themes, zombie themes, demonic possession, alien mind control, evil children, cannibalism, werewolves, animals attacking humans, haunted houses, etc. The horror film genre is often associated with low budgets and exploitation, but major studios and well-respected directors have made intermittent forays into the genre. Some horror films exhibit a substantial amount of cross-over with other genres, particularly science fiction.
Certain stories and themes have proven popular and have inspired many sequels, remakes, and copycats. See Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, werewolves, and zombies.
History and milestonesThe horror genre is nearly as old as film itself. The first "monster movies" were silent shorts created by film pioneer Georges Melies in the late 1890s. The earliest horror-themed feature films were created by German filmmakers in the early 1900s; the most enduring of these is probably F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu 1922, the first vampire-themed feature. Early Hollywood dramas dabbled in horror themes including versions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Monster (1925) (both starring Lon Chaney, the first American horror-film movie star).
It was in the early 1930s that American movie studios, particularly Universal Studios, created the modern horror film genre, bringing to the screen a series of successful gothic-steeped features including Dracula, Frankenstein (both 1931), and The Mummy (1932) (all of which spawned numerous sequels). These films, while designed to thrill, also incorporated more serious elements, and were influenced by the Freudian concepts that were gaining currency at the time. Actors, notably Boris Karloff, began to build careers around the genre.
In the nuclear-charged atmosphere of the 1950s the tone of horror films shifted away from the gothic and towards the modern. A seemingly endless parade of low-budget productions featured humanity overcoming threats from Outside: alien invasions, and deadly mutations to people, plants, and insects. During this time the horror and sci-fi genres were often interchangable. These films provided ample opportunity for audience exploitation, with gimmicks such as 3-D and "Percepto" (producer William Castle's electric-shock technique used for 1957's The Tingler) drawing audiences in week after week for bigger and better scares. The better horror films of this period, including Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World (1951) and Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers managed to channel the paranoia of the Cold War into atmospheric creepiness without resorting to exploitation. Filmmakers would continue to merge elements of science fiction and horror, notably in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979).
The late 1950s and early 1960s saw the rise of studios centered specifically around horror, notably British production company Hammer Films, which specialized in bloody remakes of classic horror stories, often starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and American International Pictures (AIP), which made a series of Edgar Allan Poe themed films starring Vincent Price. These sometimes-controversial productions paved the way for more explicit violence in both horror and mainstream films.
Later in the 1960s the genre moved towards non-supernatural psychological horror, with thrillers such as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) using all-too-human monsters rather than supernatural ones to scare the audience. Michael Powell's Peeping Tom was a notable example of this genre. Psychological horror films would continue to appear sporadically with 1991's The Silence of the Lambs a later highlight of the subgenre.
In the late 1960s and 1970s a public fascination with the occult fed and was fed by a series of serious, supernatural-themed, often explicitly gory horror movies. Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) was a critical and popular success and laid the groundwork for the seminal horror film The Exorcist (1973) (directed by William Friedkin and written by William Peter Blatty, who also wrote the novel). Far from exploitation, these films incorporated subtext and symbolism, and had production values equal to any serious film of the time. The Exorcist spawned numerous sequels and imitators, notably The Omen (1976).
The genre fractured somewhat in the late 1970s, with mainstream Hollywood focusing on disaster movies such as The Towering Inferno and blockbuster thrillers such as Jaws while independent filmmakers upped the ante with disturbing and explicit gore-fests such as Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). In 1978, the prototypical slasher movie, John Carpenter's Halloween, debuted to great popular success. An effective and atmospheric shocker, Halloween introduced the teens-threatened-by-superhuman-evil theme that would be copied in dozens of lesser, increasingly violent movies throughout the 1980s including the long-running Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street series, as well as several, often far-flung, sequels to Halloween itself.
With nowhere left to go in the realm of explicit violence, horror movies turned to self-mocking irony and outright parody in the 1990s. Wes Craven's Scream movies featured teenagers who were fully aware of and often made reference the history of horror movies, and mixed ironic humor with the shocks. Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films both parodied and advanced the zombie genre. Of popular recent horror films, only 1999's surprise independent hit The Blair Witch Project attempted straight-ahead scares, and then in the ironic context of a mock documentary.
Early horror entries in the 2000s have been a mixed bag of teen exploitation (such as the Final Destination movies) and more serious attempts at mainstream horror, notably the horror-suspense films of M. Night Shyamalan and Gore Verbinski's remake of the Japanese horror film Ringu, The Ring.
Assignment: 5-Paragraph Essay
We have all experienced horror at some time in our lives. This lesson helps students understand the feelings and emotions film makers of the horror genre endeavor to elicit through their works. The key concepts of mood, imagery, and internal monologue are first developed and practiced as one writes about their own personal experiences with terror and fright.
Consider the following scenario:
A man and his wife become separated at a local shopping mall. After 30 minutes of frantic searching, the man's imagination begins to run wild. Suddenly, the man spots three young men cruising through the mall. He begins to panic and in his frazzled mind, sees these harmless individuals as frightening mischief-makers.
He is convinced that these young men have abducted his wife. Maybe they have her tied up and stored in the truck of their car. Or perhaps they have ravaged his wife and murdered her. The man begins to stalk the young men like a mountain lion pursuing its prey. Fortunately, the whole event turns out to be a misunderstanding and the man's wife appears in the food court where they orginally agreed to meet if they happened to get seperated.
Task
Develop personal awareness and involvement by making a list of experiences that your imagination
has made frightening. Share your experiences with a partner. As the sharing continues, identify common feelings, internal thought processes, and circumstances that evoke your sense of fright. Make a list of common feelings, imaginings, and samples of internal dialogue.
Based on your prior experiences, identify what literary and cinematic techniques are used in literature and film to create feelings of fear and horror.
Now you are ready to define the characteristics of the“dark side” horror genre. Write a 5-paragraph essay about a personal experience of fright and horror. Develop an informal outline or graphic organizer before you start your first draft. This outline or organizer should include a plot outline and some of the language and literary devices you plan to use to develop suspense and horror. Using the organizer, you should complete a journal entry that will be used as a basis for a 5-paragraph essay.
The Devil's Backbone
1. What three elements/genres does The Devil's Backbone mix?
A. Political drama, B. ________________, C. _______________
2. When and where does the story take place?
3. The director, Guillermo del Toro, creates some good moody effects, contrasting the dark, oppressive interiors of the school with the correspondingly forbidding openness of the desert plain surrounding it.How does the mood of the film create suspense? Why do you think the movie is affective as a horror film?
4. What elements of the mise en scène does the film contain?
(Mise en scène is the arrangement of scenery and properties to
represent the place where a scene from a movie is enacted)
5. What do you think the dead boy symbolizes?
6. What might the setting of the orphanage allude to?
7. What is the point of showing the unexploded bomb at the beginning of the film, what might it symbolize?
8. Describe three scenes in which the following is explored:History of power, religion and family.
Horror Films: Censorship and Genre
The films chosen for the analysis of the topic “censorship and genre” are DRACULA (1931), FRANKENSTEIN (1931), VAMPYR (1932), FREAKS (1932), KING KONG (1933) and THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933).
All these movies can be denoted as prototypical horror films. They are characteristic productions, which shaped the conditions and meaning of the genre itself. Besides their prototypical aspects, like dialogue-parts, narrative and filmic structures or the valuing of gender, all these movies have been produced within a few years and reflect the fears and problems of two troubled decades.
A new kind of verbalizing that universal fear had to be found in these films – not only for artistic aspects, but also to bypass the censorship authorities. A useful and impressive way to shift the shock and the terror into the viewer’s mind and imagination was found by (re)activating well-established theatrical concepts. From this point of view an in-depth research of the horror genre and censorship during the 30ies should lead to a better understanding of the genre - and perhaps of the idea of censorship itself.
A short history of the horror films: From the beginnings to the 1930sPrecursors of horror films, after the relevant experiments by Edison and Méliès (Hardy 1993: 16-23), were silent movies like DER ANDERE (1912) and DER GOLEM (1914). The uncanniness transported in these films was based mostly on the use of alienated elements of everyday-life, working with shadows and distortions (Andriopoulos 2000: 99-128). This kind of films was very popular in the United States.
With the beginnig of the classical horror-era in the late 20s und early 30s the US-American productions of horror films were shaped by the impact of the European filmic experiments with horror. The main idea for the US-American producers was to create an independent sub-genre of horror films, which would also include funny elements. Films like THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927) and THE LAST WARNING (1929) are typical experiments for this approach.
Influenced by the above mentioned European productions and by a second wave of reception of the works of H.P. Lovecraft (De Camp 2002: 613-637) the production of prototypical horror films started. They were all adaptations of literary works. One of the innovations of these productions is the creation of a new kind of monster, a completely non-romantic evil figure.
By the end of the 30s there was a decline of the horror film, which was clearly connected to the censorship restrictions in the U.S.A. and Great Britain. A new rise of the horror film can be noted for the early 40s with the idea of RKO-manager Val Lewton (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) who tried to establish horror films as an experimental-stage for young directors and achieved some huge successes with titles like CAT PEOPLE (1942) or I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943).
The horror film integrates fundamental fears, socially and religiously determined interdictions and taboos in its narrative structure, most of the time the protagonists are offered for identification (at least in parts). During the last decades also the place of horror became again more and more important:
„Since Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the geographical and architectural setting is one of the key elements in establishing a mood of suspense, anticipation, and terror. The Gothic is concomitantly bound to the place of evil, the locus horribilis where monsters reside, the victims are tortured and then devoured, and where unforgettable crimes have taken place“ (Grunenberg 1997: 195).
Fear and FrightThe wish for fear and fright is as old as the wish for entertainment. Fear and fright, eleos and phobos, are therefore not by accident, the main points of the Aristotelic concept of poetics: the wish for experiencing the terror in order to be released from it.
The idea of catharsis is of fundamental meaning for the concept of horror and the related aesthetic of effects (Turk 1976: 47-82). Catharsis is integrated into a continuous discourse of interpretation, which is always also referred to as an instrument of analysing human reception of the arts (Mittenzwei 2001: 245). Aristotle implemented the idea of catharsis in the sixth chapter of his “Tragedy”, related to his writings on poetics. His aim was to defend literature, especially the drama, against Plato, who has criticised literature as a concept of lie in his work “The Republic”. Referring to religious aspects, Aristotle stressed the usability of catharsis for releasing ourselves from our affects during the reception of literature and the lust-fulfilled experience of shock and horror.
During the following centuries the reception changed the concept; the peak of it was Lessing’s use of it as a concept of pity and betterment of the audience in a moralistic manner. Basic for this reinvention of catharsis, which was also used for a criticism on classical French drama, was the concept of identification of the audience with one of the protagonists – the so called “common character”. But there were also always alternative theatrical concepts which abode by to the original idea of catharsis, like the poetics of the English renaissance drama or the theatrical concepts of de Sade. But the main-concepts, which are also relevant for the history of the horror-movies, are based in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The concepts that truly reactivated the idea of catharsis in an Aristotelian way were the “Grand-Guinol“ and Antonin Artaud’s “Theatre of cruelty“, which are closely connected with the development of horror films. The most important parallel between these is the “Schaulust”, a spectator-specific visual pleasure: The projections and presentations of monstrosities are the consequences of our iconophagic needs. Almost uninterrupted the side-shows, which were the true cradles of cinema, are connected with the presentation and also representation of horrific creatures and scenes in medieval and early modern times. In this continuity of autoeroticism and self-deception the horror found its way through time and space.
Are you ready to watch/talk?According to Aristotle it is of undeniable importance for the audience to be frightened – for uncountable, often individual reasons. For film-science the genre films and especially the horror films should be realized as a possible seismograph of social problems and fears – and of society (and her constructed reality) itself. That leads us to an interesting point in discussing horror films – or even horror as a concept itself.
The horror films are transporting their message of criticism, which points to the real horror of the inability of verbalizing important topics. Therefore the concept of abject-aesthetics, first formulated by Julia Kristeva (Kristeva 1982), could (and should) be used in the discussion of horror movies. With this kind of poetics of shock and ugliness it is possible to negotiate and mediate topics, usually excluded from the social discourse. The critic Aleks Sierz formulated a good explanation for this poetic principle as it works for the theatre – but his ingenuities are also valid for horror-moves as well:
„Usually, when writers use shock tactics, it is because they have something urgent to say. If they are dealing with disturbing subjects, or want to explore difficult feelings, shock is one way of waking up the audience. Writers who provoke audiences or try to confront them are usually trying to push the boundaries of what is acceptable – often because they want to question current ideas of what is normal, what it means to be human, what is natural or what is real. In other words, the use of shock is part of a search for deeper meaning, part of a rediscovery of theatrical possibility – an attempt by writers to see just how far they can go” (Sierz 2001: 5).
Notable Horror Films
Ridley Scott, Alien James Whale, Bride of Frankenstein Pang Brothers, The Eye David Cronenberg, The Fly Don Siegel, Invasion of the Body Snatchers F. W. Murnau, Nosferatu Rupert Julian, Phantom of the Opera Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho Gore Verbinski, The Ring Hideo Nakata, Ringu, Stanley Kubrick The Shining (1980),
Horror genre boxoffice
Fright flicks are not scaring up many viewers of late.
By Borys Kit
The only thing scary these days about horror movies is the state of their boxoffice grosses.Since May 6, when "House of Wax" was released, five horror films have been unveiled -- and they have consistently under-performed. Warner Bros. Pictures' much-hyped "Wax" grossed a modest $32.1 million, zombiefest "George A. Romero's Land of the Dead" limped away with a meager $20.3 million, Asian horror remake "Dark Water" grossed a murky $23.1 million, and French import "High Tension" yielded a limp $3.6 million.Lions Gate Releasing held high hopes for last weekend's debut of Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects," but the fright-fest debuted No. 8 at the boxoffice, grossing a modest $7 million, and will likely suffer a steep falloff on its second weekend.In the midst of a genre glut, spookmeisters are definitely on edge, wondering if the horror bubble has burst. "It seems like some good things are getting lost," said Brad Fuller, a partner at Platinum Dunes, which produced the successful "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake in 2003 and is now prepping a prequel. The company is also developing a remake of the 1980s horror flick, "The Hitcher." "We're looking at the numbers and questioning how we can do it better and smarter, so that we can get high grosses."In fact, New Line Cinema, whose seeds were sown in the horror field decades ago, is taking a breather from the genre. "This glut is why we don't have (a horror film) until the first quarter of next year," said David Tuckerman, president of domestic theatrical distribution at New Line, referring to "Final Destination 3." As for scary genre projects in the development pipeline, he said, New Line is making sure that they will be satisfying to horror fans.
While some industry watchers have long predicted that the ax would fall on this popular genre, as late as this winter, horror movies were making a killing. January's "White Noise" and "Hide and Seek" both opened to over $19 million and grossed over $50 million, while "Boogeyman" earned $46 million.New Line and Dimension, which was created on the strength of the "Scream" movies and kept Miramax Films in the black for many years, have been joined by more companies seeking to hack their way into the fright market, such as Raw Nerve and Sam Raimi's Ghost House. Universal's Focus Features recently spun off its own genre division, Rogue. Off the strength of "Saw," Lions Gate signed a nine-picture deal with Twisted Pictures, the genre label of Evolution Entertainment. Yes, the last few years have been heady times for horror geeks.The scary-movie business is a good one to be in because the budgets are usually low and profit margins wide. But too much of a good thing can be bad for business, as evidenced by the current horror boxoffice slump. "How many zombie movies have we seen in the last couple of years?" asked one studio production executive. "How many Asian creepy kid movies have we seen? What you're seeing is a burning out of the sub-genres within the horror genre as a whole."The most glaring explanation for horror's fall from grace is the recent product glut. Counting "Rejects," there were five horror movies released in an 11-week period. "Try and picture any other genre with the same output at the same budget level," Fuller said. "It's hard to get people that excited.""There's so much horror now and the audience is getting tired," Tuckerman seconded. "They can smell the bad ones."The flood of titles continues in August with Ian Softley's New Orleans voodoo movie "The Skeleton Key" and the underwater monster flick "The Cave." Also still to come are September's "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," October's remake of John Carpenter's "The Fog" and December's black-rubber vampire sequel "Underworld: Evolution."There is also a seasonal aspect to horror's boxoffice performance. Spring and summer have traditionally not been seasons that work for spooky cinema. Each of the three "Scream" films, which grossed over $100 million, was released in December or February. "Land of the Dead" was released in March of 2004. And then there is the traditional September/October window which spawned such hits as "Texas Chainsaw," the original "Halloween" movies and last year's "The Grudge."Horror flicks often can't compete against traditional summer tentpoles, either on a "wow" or marketing level. "The audiences who are driving the summer boxoffice want to go to the big spectacle film," Fuller said, "and by the nature of the genre, these movies are not spectacles, because you can't spend $130 million on a horror movie. Most are made for under $35 million. The tricks in those movies don't compare with the 'War of the Worlds' or 'The Island.'"According to one studio production executive involved with one of the recent horror disappointments, his team believed that horror was invincible. "They got carried away with horror films and thought that they could release them whenever," he said. "But these summer releases are being promoted by massive marketing campaigns, and if you don't do the same, you're going to get lost. The money spent on the horror films was more like a fall campaign.""Dark Water," for example, had to contend with the marketing might of "The Fantastic Four." 20th Century Fox's comic-book movie, which even had a skywriting campaign, opened at $56 million while "Water" opened at $9.9 million.One problem with the current crop of horror movies is their scope and budget, which have been steadily increasing. "Water," for example, is an arty horror film targeted at adult women -- not the typical horror crowd.The $35 million "Wax" may eventually break even, but Warner insiders say that while casting tabloid fave Paris Hilton was great for publicity, she couldn't lure her younger fans to an R-rated film. Casting Hilton, who was bigger than the movie, may also have taken audiences out of the story, rather than building suspense.In the end, "Rejects," which boasted a modest $9 million-$11 million budget, will make a profit for Lions Gate. After all, one of the attractions of making a horror movie is the fast and easy buck.There are some who feel the horror downturn is actually a good thing. Let the cycle run its course, said Tuckerman: "Hopefully the film companies are going to burn out on it and then there'll be room for good ones again."
Horror Movies
A horror film is a film dominated by elements of horror. This film genre incorporates a number of sub-genres and repeated themes, such as slasher themes, vampire themes, zombie themes, demonic possession, alien mind control, evil children, cannibalism, werewolves, animals attacking humans, haunted houses, etc. The horror film genre is often associated with low budgets and exploitation, but major studios and well-respected directors have made intermittent forays into the genre. Some horror films exhibit a substantial amount of cross-over with other genres, particularly science fiction.
Certain stories and themes have proven popular and have inspired many sequels, remakes, and copycats. See Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, werewolves, and zombies.
History and milestonesThe horror genre is nearly as old as film itself. The first "monster movies" were silent shorts created by film pioneer Georges Melies in the late 1890s. The earliest horror-themed feature films were created by German filmmakers in the early 1900s; the most enduring of these is probably F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu 1922, the first vampire-themed feature. Early Hollywood dramas dabbled in horror themes including versions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Monster (1925) (both starring Lon Chaney, the first American horror-film movie star).
It was in the early 1930s that American movie studios, particularly Universal Studios, created the modern horror film genre, bringing to the screen a series of successful gothic-steeped features including Dracula, Frankenstein (both 1931), and The Mummy (1932) (all of which spawned numerous sequels). These films, while designed to thrill, also incorporated more serious elements, and were influenced by the Freudian concepts that were gaining currency at the time. Actors, notably Boris Karloff, began to build careers around the genre.
In the nuclear-charged atmosphere of the 1950s the tone of horror films shifted away from the gothic and towards the modern. A seemingly endless parade of low-budget productions featured humanity overcoming threats from Outside: alien invasions, and deadly mutations to people, plants, and insects. During this time the horror and sci-fi genres were often interchangable. These films provided ample opportunity for audience exploitation, with gimmicks such as 3-D and "Percepto" (producer William Castle's electric-shock technique used for 1957's The Tingler) drawing audiences in week after week for bigger and better scares. The better horror films of this period, including Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World (1951) and Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers managed to channel the paranoia of the Cold War into atmospheric creepiness without resorting to exploitation. Filmmakers would continue to merge elements of science fiction and horror, notably in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979).
The late 1950s and early 1960s saw the rise of studios centered specifically around horror, notably British production company Hammer Films, which specialized in bloody remakes of classic horror stories, often starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and American International Pictures (AIP), which made a series of Edgar Allan Poe themed films starring Vincent Price. These sometimes-controversial productions paved the way for more explicit violence in both horror and mainstream films.
Later in the 1960s the genre moved towards non-supernatural psychological horror, with thrillers such as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) using all-too-human monsters rather than supernatural ones to scare the audience. Michael Powell's Peeping Tom was a notable example of this genre. Psychological horror films would continue to appear sporadically with 1991's The Silence of the Lambs a later highlight of the subgenre.
In the late 1960s and 1970s a public fascination with the occult fed and was fed by a series of serious, supernatural-themed, often explicitly gory horror movies. Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) was a critical and popular success and laid the groundwork for the seminal horror film The Exorcist (1973) (directed by William Friedkin and written by William Peter Blatty, who also wrote the novel). Far from exploitation, these films incorporated subtext and symbolism, and had production values equal to any serious film of the time. The Exorcist spawned numerous sequels and imitators, notably The Omen (1976).
The genre fractured somewhat in the late 1970s, with mainstream Hollywood focusing on disaster movies such as The Towering Inferno and blockbuster thrillers such as Jaws while independent filmmakers upped the ante with disturbing and explicit gore-fests such as Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). In 1978, the prototypical slasher movie, John Carpenter's Halloween, debuted to great popular success. An effective and atmospheric shocker, Halloween introduced the teens-threatened-by-superhuman-evil theme that would be copied in dozens of lesser, increasingly violent movies throughout the 1980s including the long-running Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street series, as well as several, often far-flung, sequels to Halloween itself.
With nowhere left to go in the realm of explicit violence, horror movies turned to self-mocking irony and outright parody in the 1990s. Wes Craven's Scream movies featured teenagers who were fully aware of and often made reference the history of horror movies, and mixed ironic humor with the shocks. Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films both parodied and advanced the zombie genre. Of popular recent horror films, only 1999's surprise independent hit The Blair Witch Project attempted straight-ahead scares, and then in the ironic context of a mock documentary.
Early horror entries in the 2000s have been a mixed bag of teen exploitation (such as the Final Destination movies) and more serious attempts at mainstream horror, notably the horror-suspense films of M. Night Shyamalan and Gore Verbinski's remake of the Japanese horror film Ringu, The Ring.
Assignment: 5-Paragraph Essay
We have all experienced horror at some time in our lives. This lesson helps students understand the feelings and emotions film makers of the horror genre endeavor to elicit through their works. The key concepts of mood, imagery, and internal monologue are first developed and practiced as one writes about their own personal experiences with terror and fright.
Consider the following scenario:
A man and his wife become separated at a local shopping mall. After 30 minutes of frantic searching, the man's imagination begins to run wild. Suddenly, the man spots three young men cruising through the mall. He begins to panic and in his frazzled mind, sees these harmless individuals as frightening mischief-makers.
He is convinced that these young men have abducted his wife. Maybe they have her tied up and stored in the truck of their car. Or perhaps they have ravaged his wife and murdered her. The man begins to stalk the young men like a mountain lion pursuing its prey. Fortunately, the whole event turns out to be a misunderstanding and the man's wife appears in the food court where they orginally agreed to meet if they happened to get seperated.
Task
Develop personal awareness and involvement by making a list of experiences that your imagination
has made frightening. Share your experiences with a partner. As the sharing continues, identify common feelings, internal thought processes, and circumstances that evoke your sense of fright. Make a list of common feelings, imaginings, and samples of internal dialogue.
Based on your prior experiences, identify what literary and cinematic techniques are used in literature and film to create feelings of fear and horror.
Now you are ready to define the characteristics of the“dark side” horror genre. Write a 5-paragraph essay about a personal experience of fright and horror. Develop an informal outline or graphic organizer before you start your first draft. This outline or organizer should include a plot outline and some of the language and literary devices you plan to use to develop suspense and horror. Using the organizer, you should complete a journal entry that will be used as a basis for a 5-paragraph essay.
The Devil's Backbone
1. What three elements/genres does The Devil's Backbone mix?
A. Political drama, B. ________________, C. _______________
2. When and where does the story take place?
3. The director, Guillermo del Toro, creates some good moody effects, contrasting the dark, oppressive interiors of the school with the correspondingly forbidding openness of the desert plain surrounding it.How does the mood of the film create suspense? Why do you think the movie is affective as a horror film?
4. What elements of the mise en scène does the film contain?
(Mise en scène is the arrangement of scenery and properties to
represent the place where a scene from a movie is enacted)
5. What do you think the dead boy symbolizes?
6. What might the setting of the orphanage allude to?
7. What is the point of showing the unexploded bomb at the beginning of the film, what might it symbolize?
8. Describe three scenes in which the following is explored:History of power, religion and family.
Horror Films: Censorship and Genre
The films chosen for the analysis of the topic “censorship and genre” are DRACULA (1931), FRANKENSTEIN (1931), VAMPYR (1932), FREAKS (1932), KING KONG (1933) and THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933).
All these movies can be denoted as prototypical horror films. They are characteristic productions, which shaped the conditions and meaning of the genre itself. Besides their prototypical aspects, like dialogue-parts, narrative and filmic structures or the valuing of gender, all these movies have been produced within a few years and reflect the fears and problems of two troubled decades.
A new kind of verbalizing that universal fear had to be found in these films – not only for artistic aspects, but also to bypass the censorship authorities. A useful and impressive way to shift the shock and the terror into the viewer’s mind and imagination was found by (re)activating well-established theatrical concepts. From this point of view an in-depth research of the horror genre and censorship during the 30ies should lead to a better understanding of the genre - and perhaps of the idea of censorship itself.
A short history of the horror films: From the beginnings to the 1930sPrecursors of horror films, after the relevant experiments by Edison and Méliès (Hardy 1993: 16-23), were silent movies like DER ANDERE (1912) and DER GOLEM (1914). The uncanniness transported in these films was based mostly on the use of alienated elements of everyday-life, working with shadows and distortions (Andriopoulos 2000: 99-128). This kind of films was very popular in the United States.
With the beginnig of the classical horror-era in the late 20s und early 30s the US-American productions of horror films were shaped by the impact of the European filmic experiments with horror. The main idea for the US-American producers was to create an independent sub-genre of horror films, which would also include funny elements. Films like THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927) and THE LAST WARNING (1929) are typical experiments for this approach.
Influenced by the above mentioned European productions and by a second wave of reception of the works of H.P. Lovecraft (De Camp 2002: 613-637) the production of prototypical horror films started. They were all adaptations of literary works. One of the innovations of these productions is the creation of a new kind of monster, a completely non-romantic evil figure.
By the end of the 30s there was a decline of the horror film, which was clearly connected to the censorship restrictions in the U.S.A. and Great Britain. A new rise of the horror film can be noted for the early 40s with the idea of RKO-manager Val Lewton (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) who tried to establish horror films as an experimental-stage for young directors and achieved some huge successes with titles like CAT PEOPLE (1942) or I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943).
The horror film integrates fundamental fears, socially and religiously determined interdictions and taboos in its narrative structure, most of the time the protagonists are offered for identification (at least in parts). During the last decades also the place of horror became again more and more important:
„Since Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the geographical and architectural setting is one of the key elements in establishing a mood of suspense, anticipation, and terror. The Gothic is concomitantly bound to the place of evil, the locus horribilis where monsters reside, the victims are tortured and then devoured, and where unforgettable crimes have taken place“ (Grunenberg 1997: 195).
Fear and FrightThe wish for fear and fright is as old as the wish for entertainment. Fear and fright, eleos and phobos, are therefore not by accident, the main points of the Aristotelic concept of poetics: the wish for experiencing the terror in order to be released from it.
The idea of catharsis is of fundamental meaning for the concept of horror and the related aesthetic of effects (Turk 1976: 47-82). Catharsis is integrated into a continuous discourse of interpretation, which is always also referred to as an instrument of analysing human reception of the arts (Mittenzwei 2001: 245). Aristotle implemented the idea of catharsis in the sixth chapter of his “Tragedy”, related to his writings on poetics. His aim was to defend literature, especially the drama, against Plato, who has criticised literature as a concept of lie in his work “The Republic”. Referring to religious aspects, Aristotle stressed the usability of catharsis for releasing ourselves from our affects during the reception of literature and the lust-fulfilled experience of shock and horror.
During the following centuries the reception changed the concept; the peak of it was Lessing’s use of it as a concept of pity and betterment of the audience in a moralistic manner. Basic for this reinvention of catharsis, which was also used for a criticism on classical French drama, was the concept of identification of the audience with one of the protagonists – the so called “common character”. But there were also always alternative theatrical concepts which abode by to the original idea of catharsis, like the poetics of the English renaissance drama or the theatrical concepts of de Sade. But the main-concepts, which are also relevant for the history of the horror-movies, are based in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The concepts that truly reactivated the idea of catharsis in an Aristotelian way were the “Grand-Guinol“ and Antonin Artaud’s “Theatre of cruelty“, which are closely connected with the development of horror films. The most important parallel between these is the “Schaulust”, a spectator-specific visual pleasure: The projections and presentations of monstrosities are the consequences of our iconophagic needs. Almost uninterrupted the side-shows, which were the true cradles of cinema, are connected with the presentation and also representation of horrific creatures and scenes in medieval and early modern times. In this continuity of autoeroticism and self-deception the horror found its way through time and space.
Are you ready to watch/talk?According to Aristotle it is of undeniable importance for the audience to be frightened – for uncountable, often individual reasons. For film-science the genre films and especially the horror films should be realized as a possible seismograph of social problems and fears – and of society (and her constructed reality) itself. That leads us to an interesting point in discussing horror films – or even horror as a concept itself.
The horror films are transporting their message of criticism, which points to the real horror of the inability of verbalizing important topics. Therefore the concept of abject-aesthetics, first formulated by Julia Kristeva (Kristeva 1982), could (and should) be used in the discussion of horror movies. With this kind of poetics of shock and ugliness it is possible to negotiate and mediate topics, usually excluded from the social discourse. The critic Aleks Sierz formulated a good explanation for this poetic principle as it works for the theatre – but his ingenuities are also valid for horror-moves as well:
„Usually, when writers use shock tactics, it is because they have something urgent to say. If they are dealing with disturbing subjects, or want to explore difficult feelings, shock is one way of waking up the audience. Writers who provoke audiences or try to confront them are usually trying to push the boundaries of what is acceptable – often because they want to question current ideas of what is normal, what it means to be human, what is natural or what is real. In other words, the use of shock is part of a search for deeper meaning, part of a rediscovery of theatrical possibility – an attempt by writers to see just how far they can go” (Sierz 2001: 5).
Notable Horror Films
Ridley Scott, Alien James Whale, Bride of Frankenstein Pang Brothers, The Eye David Cronenberg, The Fly Don Siegel, Invasion of the Body Snatchers F. W. Murnau, Nosferatu Rupert Julian, Phantom of the Opera Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho Gore Verbinski, The Ring Hideo Nakata, Ringu, Stanley Kubrick The Shining (1980),
Horror genre boxoffice
Fright flicks are not scaring up many viewers of late.
By Borys Kit
The only thing scary these days about horror movies is the state of their boxoffice grosses.Since May 6, when "House of Wax" was released, five horror films have been unveiled -- and they have consistently under-performed. Warner Bros. Pictures' much-hyped "Wax" grossed a modest $32.1 million, zombiefest "George A. Romero's Land of the Dead" limped away with a meager $20.3 million, Asian horror remake "Dark Water" grossed a murky $23.1 million, and French import "High Tension" yielded a limp $3.6 million.Lions Gate Releasing held high hopes for last weekend's debut of Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects," but the fright-fest debuted No. 8 at the boxoffice, grossing a modest $7 million, and will likely suffer a steep falloff on its second weekend.In the midst of a genre glut, spookmeisters are definitely on edge, wondering if the horror bubble has burst. "It seems like some good things are getting lost," said Brad Fuller, a partner at Platinum Dunes, which produced the successful "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake in 2003 and is now prepping a prequel. The company is also developing a remake of the 1980s horror flick, "The Hitcher." "We're looking at the numbers and questioning how we can do it better and smarter, so that we can get high grosses."In fact, New Line Cinema, whose seeds were sown in the horror field decades ago, is taking a breather from the genre. "This glut is why we don't have (a horror film) until the first quarter of next year," said David Tuckerman, president of domestic theatrical distribution at New Line, referring to "Final Destination 3." As for scary genre projects in the development pipeline, he said, New Line is making sure that they will be satisfying to horror fans.
While some industry watchers have long predicted that the ax would fall on this popular genre, as late as this winter, horror movies were making a killing. January's "White Noise" and "Hide and Seek" both opened to over $19 million and grossed over $50 million, while "Boogeyman" earned $46 million.New Line and Dimension, which was created on the strength of the "Scream" movies and kept Miramax Films in the black for many years, have been joined by more companies seeking to hack their way into the fright market, such as Raw Nerve and Sam Raimi's Ghost House. Universal's Focus Features recently spun off its own genre division, Rogue. Off the strength of "Saw," Lions Gate signed a nine-picture deal with Twisted Pictures, the genre label of Evolution Entertainment. Yes, the last few years have been heady times for horror geeks.The scary-movie business is a good one to be in because the budgets are usually low and profit margins wide. But too much of a good thing can be bad for business, as evidenced by the current horror boxoffice slump. "How many zombie movies have we seen in the last couple of years?" asked one studio production executive. "How many Asian creepy kid movies have we seen? What you're seeing is a burning out of the sub-genres within the horror genre as a whole."The most glaring explanation for horror's fall from grace is the recent product glut. Counting "Rejects," there were five horror movies released in an 11-week period. "Try and picture any other genre with the same output at the same budget level," Fuller said. "It's hard to get people that excited.""There's so much horror now and the audience is getting tired," Tuckerman seconded. "They can smell the bad ones."The flood of titles continues in August with Ian Softley's New Orleans voodoo movie "The Skeleton Key" and the underwater monster flick "The Cave." Also still to come are September's "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," October's remake of John Carpenter's "The Fog" and December's black-rubber vampire sequel "Underworld: Evolution."There is also a seasonal aspect to horror's boxoffice performance. Spring and summer have traditionally not been seasons that work for spooky cinema. Each of the three "Scream" films, which grossed over $100 million, was released in December or February. "Land of the Dead" was released in March of 2004. And then there is the traditional September/October window which spawned such hits as "Texas Chainsaw," the original "Halloween" movies and last year's "The Grudge."Horror flicks often can't compete against traditional summer tentpoles, either on a "wow" or marketing level. "The audiences who are driving the summer boxoffice want to go to the big spectacle film," Fuller said, "and by the nature of the genre, these movies are not spectacles, because you can't spend $130 million on a horror movie. Most are made for under $35 million. The tricks in those movies don't compare with the 'War of the Worlds' or 'The Island.'"According to one studio production executive involved with one of the recent horror disappointments, his team believed that horror was invincible. "They got carried away with horror films and thought that they could release them whenever," he said. "But these summer releases are being promoted by massive marketing campaigns, and if you don't do the same, you're going to get lost. The money spent on the horror films was more like a fall campaign.""Dark Water," for example, had to contend with the marketing might of "The Fantastic Four." 20th Century Fox's comic-book movie, which even had a skywriting campaign, opened at $56 million while "Water" opened at $9.9 million.One problem with the current crop of horror movies is their scope and budget, which have been steadily increasing. "Water," for example, is an arty horror film targeted at adult women -- not the typical horror crowd.The $35 million "Wax" may eventually break even, but Warner insiders say that while casting tabloid fave Paris Hilton was great for publicity, she couldn't lure her younger fans to an R-rated film. Casting Hilton, who was bigger than the movie, may also have taken audiences out of the story, rather than building suspense.In the end, "Rejects," which boasted a modest $9 million-$11 million budget, will make a profit for Lions Gate. After all, one of the attractions of making a horror movie is the fast and easy buck.There are some who feel the horror downturn is actually a good thing. Let the cycle run its course, said Tuckerman: "Hopefully the film companies are going to burn out on it and then there'll be room for good ones again."
