history of the horror movie

[vampyd1977]

gonna do it in parts, lifted from wiki with revisions and edits....

1890-1920s


The first depictions of supernatural events appear in several of the silent shorts created by the film pioneer Georges Méliès in the late 1890s, the best known being Le Manoir du Diable, which is sometimes credited as being the first horror film.Another of his horror projects was 1898's La Caverne maudite (aka, The Cave of the Unholy One, literally "the accursed cave"). Japan made early forays into the horror genre with Bake Jizo and Shinin no Sosei, both made in 1898. In 1910, Edison Studios produced the first film version of Frankenstein, which was thought lost for many years.Edison's version of Frankenstein followed the 1908 film adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the first of many film adaptations of Stevenson's 1885 novel, in a slue of other literary adaptations including the works of Poe, Dante, Shakespeare and many other authors. This trend instilled a macabre element intro these early films and made it synonymous with the horror film genre.

The second monster to appear in a horror film: Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, who had appeared in Victor Hugo's novel, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831). Films featuring Quasimodo included Alice Guy's Esmeralda (1905), The Hunchback (1909), The Love of a Hunchback (1910) and Notre-Dame de Paris (1911).

German Expressionist film makers, during the Weimar Republic era and slightly earlier, would significantly influence later films, not only those in the horror genre. Paul Wegener's The Golem (1920) and Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (also 1920) had a particular impact. The first vampire-themed movie was made during this time: F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Man Who Laughs (1928), based on the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, released by Universal Studios shows the influence German Expressionism had on early American horror films.

Hollywood dramas used horror themes, including versions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Monster (1925) both starring Lon Chaney, the first American horror movie star. Other films of the 1920s include Dr. Jekyll And Mr Hyde (1920), The Phantom Carriage (Sweden, 1920), The Lost World (1925), The Phantom Of The Opera (1925), Waxworks (Germany, 1924), and Tod Browning's (lost) London After Midnight (1927) with Chaney. Another great film from this period is, also a Browning/Chaney collaboration, The Unknown (1927). These early films were considered dark "melodramas", the word "horror" to describe the film genre would not be used until the next decade after Universal Pictures released Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931). These films were grouped in with melodramas because of their stock characters and their emotion heavy plots that focused on romance, violence, suspense, and sentimentality.

The trend of inserting an element of macabre into these pre-horror melodramas was continued into the 1920s. Directors known for putting a large amounts of macabre into their films during the 1920s were Maurice Tourneur, Rex Ingram, and Tod Browning; many of his works have already been mention above. The Magician (1926), a Rex Ingram film, provides one of the first examples a "mad doctor" and it is said to have had a large amount of influence on James Whale's version of Frankenstein. [10] The Unholy Three (1925) staring Lon Chaney and directed by Tod Browning is a great example of Browning's use of macabre and shows his own unique style of morbidity. Browning remade the film in 1930 as a talkie which also starred Chaney and it became the actor's only sound film.

The Terror (1928) was the first horror film with sound.

[vampyd1977]

1930s–1940s


During the early period of talking pictures, the American Movie studio Universal Pictures began a successful Gothic horror film series. Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), with Bela Lugosi, was quickly followed by James Whale's Frankenstein (also 1931) and The Old Dark House (1932), both featuring Boris Karloff as monstrous mute antagonists. Some of these films blended science fiction with Gothic horror, such as Whale's The Invisible Man (1933) and, mirroring the earlier German films, featured a mad scientist. These films, while designed to thrill, also incorporated more serious elements. Frankenstein was the first in a series which lasted for many years, although Karloff only returned as the monster in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)-- the last of Whale's four horror films—and Son of Frankenstein (1939). The Mummy (1932) introduced Egyptology as a theme for the genre. Make-up artist Jack Pierce was responsible for the iconic image of the monster, and others in the series. Universal's horror cycle continued into the 1940s as B-pictures including The Wolf Man (1941), not the first werewolf film, but certainly the most influential, as well as a number of films uniting several of their monsters.

Other studios followed Universal's lead. Tod Browning made the once controversial Freaks (1932) for MGM, based on "Spurs", a short story by Tod Robbins, about a band of circus freaks. The studio disowned the completed film after cutting about 30 minutes; it remained unreleased in the United Kingdom for thirty years.Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Paramount, 1931), remembered for its use of color filters to create Jekyll's transformation before the camera,Michael Curtiz's Mystery of the Wax Museum (Warner Brothers, 1933), and Island of Lost Souls (Paramount, 1932) were all important horror films.

With the progression of the genre, actors were beginning to build entire careers in such films, most especially Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Karloff appeared in three of producer Val Lewton's atmospheric B-pictures for RKO in the mid-1940s, including The Body Snatcher (1945), which also featured Lugosi. The titles of these films were often imposed on Lewton by the studio, but Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), an early Zombie film, rise above this limitation.