History of horror

In class we discussed what genre for the movie trailers that we are going to produce.
the options where action, horror and comedy.
comedy was decided to be dropped because it was recommended that it was very difficult to create humour that would humour the audience.
action was dropped because it was to expensive. In the trailers of action films that we viewed they all had special effects and as students we cant afford them.
we decided to do horror because it was the most doable out of the three and it didn't need a large budget. 


The codes and conventions which make up horror are:
-Blood
-Death
-Killing
-Villain
-Victims
-Haunted houses and isolated settings
-Monsters
-Evil
-Weapons
-Darkness
-Storms
-Chase sequences
-Gore
-Violence
-Screams
-Ghosts

Building upon the success of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, Universal Studios entered a Golden Age of monster movies in the '30s, releasing a string of hit horror movies beginning with Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931.


Despite the success of The Wolf Man early in the decade, by the 1940s, Universal's monster movie formula was growing stale, as evidenced by sequels like The Ghost of Frankenstein and desperate ensemble films with multiple monsters, beginning with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Eventually the studio even resorted to comedy-horror pairings, like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which met with some success. Other studios stepped in to fill the horror void with more serious-minded fare, including RKO's brooding Val Lewton productions, most notably Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. MGM, meanwhile, contributed The Picture of Dorian Gray, which won an Academy Award for cinematography, and a remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, while Paramount released the highly regarded haunted house picture The Uninvited. Notable international entry Mahal marked India's first foray into horror.

Various cultural forces helped shape horror movies in the '50s. The Cold War fed fears of invasion (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing from Another World, The Blob), nuclear proliferation fed visions of rampaging mutants (Them!, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,Godzilla) and scientific breakthroughs led to mad scientist plots (The Fly). Competition for increasingly jaded audiences led filmmakers to resort to either gimmicks like 3-D (House of Wax, The Creature from the Black Lagoon) and the various stunts of William Castle productions (House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler) or, in the case of Great Britain's Hammer Films, explicit, vividly colored violence. International efforts include the first full-length Japanese horror Movie(Ugetsu), the first Italian horror movie in the sound era (I Vampiri) and the acclaimed French thriller Diabolique.