With the resent passing of Wes Craven and having noted numerous times the effect his film Scream had on me as horror fan, I felt it would be inappropriate to not set aside this month to cover his films. So I decided to start with what I would argue to be his most influential work. Sure Nightmare on Elm Street spawned more sequels then you can shake a large stick at, but by the time Freddy arrived on the scene the Slasher was already cemented as a sub-genre unto itself. The Last House on the Left on the other hand is, as far as I know one of the founding rape-revenge films with only Straw Dogs (1971) predating it, but as film history is long I may be wrong and if so please leave a comment. It's considered a groundbreaking film and often talked about in film text books, that said. I'm not a fan of this sub-genre of horror films. By the time the revenge aspects …show more content…
The rape-revenge film shares many of the same sentiments I have with the gore-porn, in that revulsion alone does not make for good horror. Last House on the Left opens with us being introduced to Mari Collingwood (Sandra Peabody) on her seventeenth birthday. She plans on going to concert with her friend Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham) in a nearby town. Mari's mother Estelle (Cynthia Carr) disapproves of both band and her friendship with Phyllis, but Mari's father Dr. John Collingwood (Richard Towers) agrees with his daughter and allows her to go. Mari and Phyllis head to the concert and on the way a news report plays over the radio announcing the escape of Krug Stillo (David Hess), his son Junior (Marc Sheffler), Fred "Weasel" Podowski (Fred J. Lincoln) and Sadie (Jeramie Rain) a group of rapists, murders, psychopaths, and child molesters. Phyllis and Mari try to find someone
To begin with, some people would say they enjoy a horror movie that gets them scared out of their wits. They go see these movies once a month on average, for fun, each time choosing a newer sequel like “Final Destination” or “The evil Dead”. King says “When we pay our four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row center in a theater showing a horror movie we are daring the nightmare” (405). As a writer of best-sel...
Alfred Hitchcock is known for his masters of works in the film industry. The film he is most famous for is Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock`s Psycho was critically acclaimed not only in the horror genre but within the entire film scene. It encompasses several key themes, which are portrayed through cinematic devices such as camera movement and sound, sound, lighting and costume and set design. The subject of madness becomes increasingly evident as the film progresses, centering on the peculiar character that is Norman Bates.
Scream 4’s brilliance was that it took old tropes and remixed them, a blending of old and new. Director Wes Craven was already accomplished, he directed films such as The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and A Nightmare on Elm Street- and the previous three Screams before Scream 4 came
Finally, horror became ‘Slasher.’ The 1970’s became obsessed with realistic news stories and characters and films became more stylize and followed similar storyline conventions. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978) and Night Mare On Elm Street (1984) where full of psycho villains, teens in danger and the sole survivor leading to plenty of sequels. The only other horror genre or thriller genre focused on suspense, movie...
His experimental and unique perverse screenwriting has shocked and inspired numerous people. His aesthetics painted horror vividly and presented itself dramatically. His musical and cinematic vision was a healthy extension of his devilishly, clever, and demented mind. His modes of publication with music, film and print, had and still a tremendous fanbase. He has gained our attention in every media related forum and we can’t look away, even if we try. He has left us cheering, screaming and on the edge of our seats. We leave feeling bad about ourselves for watching his visual storytelling unfold. “You know, it’s like, I’m going to sit here for 90 minutes and watch these guys get fucked up with no hope. That’s what I love about these films, you walk out feeling bad about yourself, saying “Why did I enjoy that? What does this say about me as a person?” It is a cathartic experience that horror lovers can have again and again. Not acting on those horrific urges, but instead, becoming one of his characters that were just never really understood and that evil is real. Evil never dies and revenge always wins or at least in horror
This new facilitator of horror, the stalker, has helped to redefine a new subgenre of the horror film industry. What they do is absolutely terrifying, as they basically invade every aspect of their victim’s lives, with no regard for their friends, family, or possessions. After analysis of the three stalker films referenced above, as well as the numerous amounts of stalker movies that continue to be produced, one can understand why there is a demand for this style of movie. The entire idea encompasses that which is suppressed because it threatens our normalcy of life. The idea is captivating, and we as a society would much rather view this from the outsider’s perspective on the “big screen,” than to see them enacted in our everyday lives through ourselves or others.
Like the Saw franchise, though, Sinister 2 features an array of unique murder sequences – varying from electrocution and Alligator (or Crocodiles) decapitations to lighting victims ablaze on a cross and forcing vermin to munch on people’s insides. Jigsaw would surely be proud, but keep in mind children are behind these deadly deeds – and such nonsensical occurrences typically forces this film to be more laughable than frightening.
What then do we make of American horror movies? In the canon of horror pictures they almost always come second in respect to foreign horror movies and any American horror film that is considered to be artful is the one with the most aesthetic distance. Upscale slashers like Johnathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991) or David Fincher's Seven (1995) are both gruesome and bloody borrowing many of the same shock techniques as their lower budget counterparts (for example, Russell Mulchahy's Sevenish thriller Resurrection (1999)), both focus on the body and its violation, either through sexual means or violent means, and both feature villains who fit easily into Carol Clover's assessment as "distinctly male; his fury is unmistakably sexual in both roots and expression."
Inspired by the life of the demented, cannibalistic Wisconsin killer Ed Gein (whose heinous acts would also inspire THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, 1974 and DERANGED, 1974), PSYCHO is probably Hitchcock's most gruesome and dark film. Its importance to its genre cannot be overestimated. PSYCHO's enduring influence comes not only from the Norman Bates character (who has since been reincarnated in a staggering variety of forms), but also from the psychological themes Hitchcock develops.
A girl runs frantically through the woods trying to escape an axe-wielding villain. The defenseless victim suddenly trips and collapses to the ground. The villain laughs wickedly as he lifts the axe above his head. The girl releases a final scream as the weapon quickly ends her life, causing the audience to go silent as they watch the villain drag away the lifeless body. Death, blood, guts, suspense, screaming, and terror are just a few things to expect when watching a modern-day horror film.
Each of the teenagers in the group plays an archetypal role that can found in many of the horror films of the last thirty years. Jules plays the role of ‘The Whore’, Curt ‘The Athlete’, Holden ‘The Scholar’, Marty ‘The Fool’, and Dana ‘The Virgin’. The remaining two in the third act of the film, Marty and Dana, discover that the order in which they group dies can be flexible, as long as ‘The Whore’ dies first and ‘The Virgin’ lives or is the last to perish. This revelation for the characters partly acts as a critique of the moralistic view of sex as resulting in death in the traditional slasher movie. For example in films that established the slasher in the horror genre like John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ (1978), all of the characters that engage
The short story “To Set Our House in Order” by Margaret Laurence displays the elements of fiction in a compelling way. The story is set in a town made up by Laurence called Manawaka and is located in Manitoba. This represents the town that she grew up in called Neepawa. The story is based during the Great Depression, which has many effects on how their family functions. This, in turn, makes the whole MacLeod family need to live with Grandmother MacLeod in her large brick house.
Too many horror films provide scares and screams throughout their respective cinemas. Not many viewers follow what kind of model the films follow to appease their viewers. However, after reading film theorist Carol Clover’s novel, watching one of the films she associates in the novel “Halloween”, and also watching the movie “Nightmare on Elm Street” I say almost every “slasher” or horror film follows a model similar to Clover’s. The model is a female is featured as a primary character and that females tend to always overcome a situation at some point throughout the film.
When one watches films such Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm– 1979 it's hard not to think or not see Argento’s affluence in that movie, even though Don Coscarelli did not come out and saw that Argento’s was an influence. At the end It's hard to estimate how much Dario Argento actually contributed to the horror films because everyday more and more films are coming out that show some of his
Horror films are designed to frighten the audience and engage them in their worst fears, while captivating and entertaining at the same time. Horror films often center on the darker side of life, on what is forbidden and strange. These films play with society’s fears, its nightmare’s and vulnerability, the terror of the unknown, the fear of death, the loss of identity, and the fear of sexuality. Horror films are generally set in spooky old mansions, fog-ridden areas, or dark locales with unknown human, supernatural or grotesque creatures lurking about. These creatures can range from vampires, madmen, devils, unfriendly ghosts, monsters, mad scientists, demons, zombies, evil spirits, satanic villains, the possessed, werewolves and freaks to the unseen and even the mere presence of evil.