One of my favorite film franchises is the Nightmare On Elm Street series. Freddy Krueger is one of modern horror’s most recognized, beloved and feared icons, with his trademark weathered fedora, burned skin, striped red-and-green sweater, and bladed glove. The lovechild of the late, great Wes Craven, Nightmare On Elm Street saved New Line Cinema from financial despair & was instrumental to their recovery, affectionately nicknaming the studio “The House That Freddy Built.” When you glimpse into this staple of horror, it becomes easy to understand how the series scores on every Top List of successful horror franchises. The inspiration for the films, and Freddy himself, was the stuff of nightmares. The film’s premise comes from a series of articles …show more content…
The story starts in A Nightmare On Elm Street with Nancy Thompson. She and her friends are having similar nightmares about a badly burned man with a dirty hat and knives for fingers. When her friends start to die, she must face off with this “Nightmare Man” in order to survive. Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is the rogue installment in the series, being disregarded from canon. This movie follows teen Jesse, who begins to have horrific nightmares after moving into a new house in a new town, to discover that Freddy Krueger is trying to possess his body in order to continue his murder spree in Springwood. The third installment, Dream Warriors, is arguably one of the best films in the series, next to the first. Nancy Thompson returns to Springwood as a psychiatrist who specializes in dream therapy. She is brought in to a hospital to help a group of troubled teens who are being stalked in their dreams by the same madman that haunted her own years before. One girl, Kristen, discovers she has the ability to bring others into her dream. Nancy, Kristen and fellow “Dream Warriors,” with the spirit aid of Freddy’s mother, harness their dream powers to battle Freddy and put him to rest. Part 4: The Dream Master finds Kristen, Kincaid and Joey out of the hospital and back in their home & school lives. But when the kids start to die at the claws of a not-so-dead Freddy, Kristen pulls friend Alice into her dream, who is discovered to be the protector & controller of good dreams. As her friends die, Alice realizes she takes on their dream abilities, which helps her to face off with Freddy in the end. Part 5: The Dream Child, brings back Alice, as she becomes pregnant by her boyfriend Dan (who also survived Part 4). Alice must fight to protect her unborn child, Jacob, from Freddy, who himself is reborn in the dream world. Freddy wants to possess Jacob to be
Throughout Clover’s novel she never mentioned “A Nightmare on Elm Street” even though it is part of the same franchise as “Halloween”. However, I say the film followed Clover’s exact model. A link can be made from the film to Clover’s theory from a couple of standpoints. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” had a very Halloween like feel to it. Freddy Krueger acted as the male tormentor as he harmed Tina Gray and Nancy Thompson. The line here is that the base for the film “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is the same base that was used in “Halloween” as well as the base theory Carol Clover provides in her novel. In “A Nightmare on Elm Street” Tina and Nancy have a goal of becoming the “final girl(s)” because they have the same common goal of surviving Freddy Krueger’s attacks. Tina and Nancy’s stories sound exactly like Laurie’s in Halloween. The base is the same in that a male continued to attack female characters until the female(s) overcame the challenge to become the “final girl.” I really feel that most “slasher” films follow this
In order to scare us, books, movies, and television shows will take the most ordinary things and make it into a monster. For instance, the movie IT takes a clown and turns it into
“Do you like scary movies?” purred a sinister voice over the telephone, and immediately Scream had marked itself out as something new in a tired genre. When it was released in 1996, the classic slasher franchises had all pretty much ran out of steam. Scream was different, it was a breath of fresh air: smart and self-referential, it reminded horror fans what they loved about the genre in the first place, and scared them silly at the same time.
Was Eleanor mentally healthy or unhealthy? In the book The Haunting of Hill House, written by Shirley Jackson, the main character was Eleanor Vance. She was a 32-year-old woman that showed signs that she was mentally unhealthy. After receiving an invitation to stay at Hill House from Dr. Montague, a stranger to Eleanor and the rest of the invited guests, she made the carefree decision to accept the invitation to the comfortable country home (2). She felt as though Hill House was her calling, even though she had never laid eyes on the property and had no knowledge of what to expect. There was no way to know if the doctor could have been a psychopath that wanted Eleanor for some crazed morbid “experiment,” yet she had
Halloween is the time of year that most people loved the idea of being scared beyond belief. But nowadays it’s harder to be genuinely scared because it seems like some people have become accustomed to most horrifying things that relate to Halloween due to the fact that it is the same every year. Nonetheless every year amusement parks use Halloween as a marketing scheme to get people and their friends to come to their horror nights, and spend money on ridiculous overpriced items, which all present the same things; clowns, clowns, chainsaws, and more clowns. Yes we can all agree that clowns are scary, but there has to come a time where the ones coming up with these “horror nights” step back and realize that what they are doing is no longer working anymore. But alas there is someone out there who knows what they’re doing, and it quite possibly could have to do with the fact that they are connected to the movie studio that did invent the horror film genre. But what makes Universal Studios Halloween Horror night so sinister? Universal Studios has a way where they take you out of reality and place you in a horror movie where you encounter many horror mazes, and also by the way they attack your senses in unexpected ways.
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...
“The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” is an episode from the popular tv series The Twilight Zone. Twilight zone was created by Rod Serling, and first aired in 1959. The series is a dramatic fantasy and science-fiction anthology. The episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple street” is based around aliens. At least from the surface the episode seems to be about aliens. The average viewer would not see that the episode also has a deeper meaning, one that relates to history. This episode is a great example of a term coined in the 1950s, McCarthyism.
The genre of horror films is one that is vast and continually growing. So many different elements have been known to appear in horror films that it is often times difficult to define what is explicitly a horror film and what is not. Due to this ambiguous definition of horror the genre is often times divided into subgenres. Each subgenre of horror has a more readily identifiable list of classifications that make it easier to cast a film to a subgenre, rather than the entire horror genre. One such subgenre that is particularly interesting is that of the stalker film. The stalker film can be categorized as a member of the horror genre in two ways. First, the stalker film can be identified within the horror genre due to its connection with the easily recognizable subgenre of horror, the slasher film. Though many elements of the stalker film differ from those of the slasher film, the use of non-mechanical weapons and obvious sexual plot points can be used to categorize the stalker film as a subgenre of the slasher film. Secondly, the stalker film can be considered a member of the horror genre using Robin Wood’s discussion regarding horror as that which society represses. The films Fatal Attraction, The Fan, and The Crush will be discussed in support of this argument. (Need some connector sentence here to finish out the intro)
Reflecting back on the most iconic figures in the history of horror cinema, characters like Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Voorhees still shine brighter than all the rest – even despite their current lack of utilization. In the meantime, an array of other “big bads,” ranging from Ghostface, Jigsaw, and Annabelle, has attempted to climb the proverbial ladder into the (imaginary) horror hall of fame.
PSYCHO is a unique film because it is a black and white film in the
Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, amongst many other well-known animation companies, have all banned together and helped make the progression between fearful and friendly supernatural creatures a smooth transition so that children may adapt to the idea of them more easily. They helped facilitate children to the idea of friendly and relatable creatures through such films as ‘The Nightmare before Christmas (1993)’, by Disney Animation Pictures, ‘Dark Shadows (2012)’ by Warner Brothers and ‘Hotel Transylvania (2012)’ by Sony Pictures Animation. These films present supernatural creatures in a more forgiving light as opposed to the ‘Blade trilogy (1998, 2002, 2004)’ by Marvel Enterprises and ’30 Days of Night (2007) by Columbia Pictures. Disney and Pixar Animation Studios are known as a child’s production company making films that, although adults will watch and enjoy, will be primarily films for a younger audience to take joy in. ‘The Nightmare before Christmas’, was such a great hit that the generation born during the 1990’s realise it to be a classic. Disney is still managing to sell all sorts of merchandise with Jack and Sally’s faces on it. Pixar’s ‘Monsters Inc. (2001)’ was such a success that they followed it with the prequel ‘Monsters University (2013)’ several years later. The premise of monsters scaring children and hiding in their closet was debunked and spun on its head during this film, with instead making children laugh at their funny, unusual features. The crossover between the representation of fearful and friendly creatures has become more popularised to suit a wider audience; allowing it to be easier to reach more target audiences, makin...
What is horror? Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives the primary definition of horror as "a painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay." It stands to reason then that "horror fiction" is fiction that elicits those emotions in the reader. An example of a horror film is "The Shining", directed by Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick was a well-known director, producer, writer and cinematographer. His films comprised of unique, qualitative scenes that are still memorable but one iconic film in his collection of work is The Shining. Many would disagree and say that The Shining was not his best work and he could have done better yet, there are still those who would say otherwise. This film was not meant to be a “scary pop-up” terror film but instead, it turned into a spectacular psychological, horor film in which Kubrick deeply thought about each scene and every line.
At a time when the stalker movie had been exploited to all ends and the image of mute, staggering, vicious killers had been etched into society’s consciousness to the point of exhaustion, a new kid entered the block. The year was 1984 and it was time for a new villain to enter into the horror genre. A villain that was agile, intelligent, almost inviolable yet viscous, and by all means deadly. A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced the distinctive presence of Fred Krueger to the horror industry and to the audience. Freddy Krueger took the center stage and with him a new era of horror films began. This horribly scarred man who wore a ragged slouch hat, dirty red-and-green striped sweater, and a glove outfitted with knives at the fingers reinvented the stalker genre like no other film had. Fred Krueger breathed new life into the dying horror genre of the early 1980’s.
People are addicted to the synthetic feeling of being terrified. Modern day horror films are very different from the first horror films which date back to the late nineteenth century, but the goal of shocking the audience is still the same. Over the course of its existence, the horror industry has had to innovate new ways to keep its viewers on the edge of their seats. Horror films are frightening films created solely to ignite anxiety and panic within the viewers. Dread and alarm summon deep fears by captivating the audience with a shocking, terrifying, and unpredictable finale that leaves the viewer stunned.
1.0- When I was younger I was terrified of scary movies and basically anything that made weird noises during the night . I would always cry to mom in the middle of the night saying “ A clown was chasing me in my dream with big sharp teeth “ or “ A man with a white mask was trying to stab me “ I was adorable now I’m meh . Now that I’m older and serious ( in some things ) I’ve started to like watching Horror movies and I’ve enjoyed getting scared. This genre interests me so much because it all comes from imagination and mind of the director or the person who created this story. The two movies I’ve chosen that changed this genre was the remastered 2017 IT based on the hugely popular Stephen King novel of the same name and the 1984 classic slasher film Nightmare on Elm street.