History of Horror

The first traces of horror films can be found in the 19th century with the famous film pioneer Georges Méliès who in 1896 released The Haunted Castle which brought with it some of the most used special effects in the early 20th century including the superimposition of images and the stop trick which made people and objects appear and reappear.

The silent era in film had brought some of the great but forgotten horror films through German Expressionist cinema, a contorted and antirealist movement that began in Germany in the 20s and produced terrifying masterpieces such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu.

The 1920’sand 1930’s saw the beginning of films that were intended to scare the audience and could be considered as horror movies. The movies that were being release were film adaptation of Bram Stokers’ Dracula. Other films that were released were Bride of Frankenstein and The Mummy. These were influenced by the strong interest in gothic horror, which continued through the decades until the 70’s and the film Psycho with its famous shower murder scene, which introduced horror with a very realistic touch.

The 1960’s also say films, which innovated what was to come next with the Night of the Living Dead, which introduced zombies, which is still popular today. Blood Feast began the vogue for extremely violent and bloody gore movies also Rosemary’s Baby Scared People with religion, which was used again years later with the exorcist.

Today following the 1999 success of The Blair Witch Project (one of the most profitable films in history, given its paltry production budget) it became fashionable to make movies using the hand-held camera style of shooting. Torture films such as the Saw saga and Japanese ghost films (often-called “girl with the dirty hair” movies) as in Ring or Dark Water followed.