horror assiment

The horror genre was designed to elicit fright, fear, terror, disgust, or horror from the audience. The plots use evil forces, events, or characters to come into the every day world. “Horror” characters include: vampires, zombies, monsters, serial killers, goasts, and many other fright-full things. The horror genre is nearly as old as film itself, with the 1st film in 1890. Most of the early horror films came from characters and stories from classic literature such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, The Phantom of the Opera, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The two most influencal films, that set the tradition of horror movie setups, were Nosferatu and Frankenstein.

Nosferatu has been said to be the most enduring horror film of 1910’s and 1920’s era. The film was a German Expressionist film shot in 1921 and released in 1992 by F. W. Murnau. Murnau got the idea for his film from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This was the first and last movie from this company because they had to file bankrupency for being sued for copyright infringement. Nosferatu was meant to be destroyed but there were too many copies; and thank goodness for that because it ended up being one of the greatest movies of the vampire legend. The director ended up establishing one of the two main techniques of horror movies. It is called the “Nosferatu-type”, which is a living corpse with rodent features (such as long fingernails and incisors), associated with rats and plague, and neither charming nor erotic but instead very repugnant. The victims usually die too. This technique is still very much alive in new age movies, TV. shows, music, and video games. In 2000 several episodes of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command featured a recurring villain NOS-4-A2, which was a robot that feeds off of any thing mechanical. Nosferatu even made a cameo appearance on Sponge Bob Square Pants, became inspiration to music groups, and even a dark magic spell in video games.

In the 1930’s Universal Pictures Co. became known for horror films, bringing a series of successful gothic features. One of the best known was James Whale’s Frankenstein(1931). This film was very loosely based on the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and was heavily influenced by the 1920’s German expressionist films. Frankenstein was known for the “Dracula-type” techniques. The Dracula –type is basically a charming aristocrat adept at seduction and whose bite turns his victims into new vampires. It was such a success that Universal Pictures Co. made a series out of the film; Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein, and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. The film even influenced The Blair Witch Project (2000) and The Silence of the Lambs (1988).

Charlotte Warder