Horror films are made to frighten or shock the viewer through the means of the gruesome, fantastic or supernatural. The horror genre has impacted on the film industry in terms of expressing the social beliefs and values of society at the time, having a significant role in the development of film technology as well as successfully engaging its audience. In particular, there has been an accelerated development of the horror genre over the past fifty years. ... Even though the majority of films categorised by the horror genre are fictional based, they still manage to record and reflect the dominant values, beliefs and fears of the society in which it is created. The horror genre has recently been revived, due to fear becoming a dominant element of the social psyche. An exploration of a selection of horror films ranging from the 1950’s through to the present will illustrate the social and technological impact of the horror genre.
The horror genre has always been popular with the masses; the horror genre may be traced back to a time when theatre was the dominant medium of entertainment. Horror themes, tales of ghouls, vampires, ghosts and monsters were very popular due to the high audience impact. The origins of horror in the film industry may be documented as becoming important during the early 1950’s, examples include films such as The Cat People, The Blob and The Thing. ... In addition, the economy was in no state to support large budget films and the unrealistic nature of horror was conducive to low budget productions. ... It was a low budget film filmed in Pennsylvania, starring Steve McQueen, with a soundtrack by Burt Bacharach, that was ridiculous in nature, allowing its audiences to enjoy a fictional horror rather than dwelling on the horror of the real world recovering after the two world wars. ... An impressive combination of science fiction, horror, naturalistic dialogue and flesh-and-blood characterisations, The Thing is a model of its kind, successfully entertaining audiences, reflecting social beliefs and behaviours, and furthering the development of filming techniques. ... shattered the rules of the horror genre but retained many of the iconic elements of the traditional horror movie but without the emotional buffering of most films that proceeded it” (Deming, M. ... This landmark cheapie horror film about flesh eating zombies set the standard for finding horror in everyday life. ... At a time when most horror movies took the tack that fear could be fun, Night of the Living Dead offered terror without a spoonful of sugar, and the genre would never be the same again. ...
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Omen, Halloween and The Exorcist are horror films that emerged from ambitious directors of the 1970’s who extrapolated the notion of psychological paranoia, a residual of the free living of the 1960’s.
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