Language and Cinema
After the First World War,
especially in Germany, soldiers would often be demented by the occurrences they
faced in the war. This was the birth of the Horror Genre. The first Horror
films were "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari" (1919) and the classic (and
sought to be the best vampire movie of all time) "Nosforatu". These
films were known as German Expression because in the films a lot of the scares
used the shadows as one of the biggest mechanisms in the film, to create
tension and fear in the film.
Experimental
One of the best examples of
German Expressionism is the (1922) film "Nosforatu" where the film
makers use the shadows create the
illusion of the dark undead character, the film is a classic hit and is one of
the creators of Horror, this film was part of 'Experimental' film making this
goes along with the original Horror film "The Cabinet of Dr Cligari"
(1919)
Experimental film making is
an occurrence for every Genre of film but in the cases of horror, experimental
film making would be these films as the audience would never have seen a film
like these and normally they wouldn't be expected to enjoy these films, so
making the Horror Genre into a film type was a huge risk on the film studios
back when they were released.
Classic
Of
course the horror Genre became a huge hit, creating classic and iconic films in
Hollywood history as, more and more people would watch the horror films
Hollywood decided that it would be a good idea to invest in them also, rather
than just small foreign film companies, when they started to invest in the
horror genre Hollywood came out with some of the most iconic depiction of
characters in film history with films such as “Dracula” in (1931) and
“Frankenstein” in the same year we all get the same depiction of the character
in our heads E.g. “Frankenstein” would be thought to be green with a big flat
head with two bolts either ide of his neck, we only get this depiction of him
as that is how he was made to look in the classic film. With the success of these
films an English company ‘Hammersmith Studios’ would re-make these films and
they too would become a huge hit in America, for example, the re-make of the
film “Dracula” would end up having a saga of spinoffs in the 1950’s and the
1960’s all with Peter Cushing as ‘Van Helsing (also known for playing “Grand
Moff Tarkin in ‘Star Wars’ and even in a WWII Parody movie starring Val Kilmer
in the 1980’s called ‘Top Secret’ where he would have a Minor role as the
Swedish Book Owner) and along side him in all of these films were Christopher
Lee who would always play “Dracula”, (also Known widely for his presentation of
Sauroman in Lord of the Rings and Count Dooku is ‘Star Wars’).
Parody
Parody
films unexpectedly starting in the 1940’s with films such as “Albert and
Costello meet Frankenstein” (1948) and the classic “Carry on Screaming”(1969)
Parody films are made for every single genre. For example you have the classic
western parody “Blazing Saddles”(1974) and the Science Fiction Parody
“SpaceBalls” (1987) the parody genre are still very popular today with the
sadly very popular “Scary Movie” set of films.
Deconstruction
The
Deconstruction of horror films started in 1995 with David Fincher’s
Horror/Thriller “Se7en” where he questioned the whole idea of gore and noire
thriller with a dark very underlining horror aspect, along with “Se7en” films
in this experimental Deconstructed style spat out such films as “The Blaire
Witch Project” (1998) which combined documentary and horror into one film, and
“The Sixth Sense” (1999) which combines the idea of thriller and ghostly, and
contains one of the biggest twist in movie history. Another Deconstruction
would be the film “scream” which brings together slasher horror and teen movie,
a deconstructed film is basically the combination of two types of film form the
same genre into one movie.
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