Medium: Film

Genre: Horror
http://thehorror2010.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/how-horror-films-have-changedand.html
http://www.horrorfilmhistory.com/index.php?pageID=1930s
The horror genre within film has been forced to change overtime, this is so the
audience were kept entertained and still scared. This meant that plots needed to
keep changing to be more exciting or complex, so the genre itself wasnt boring
or predictable.
1930s horror based on literature and films like Dracula and Frankenstein were
made. This was helping people who were dealing with country and world problem
like the Great Depression. Within movies that were made it was made to create
that excitement and fear for an audience. Tod Browning a director who had to
adapt the process of horror films making talking pictures instead of seeing the
silent movies. Audiences more enthusiastic towards the horror genre cinemas
became a national obsession 80 million people attended the cinema on a weekly
basis. 65% - of the US population.
1940s - Horror films were seen as an American product, it was Banned in Britain.
Within this time a lot of the American horror films were based on the roots of
world occurs that keep peering into the US. Due to Europe have an immense
struggle with the war going on, it was considered to the US as frightening,
chaotic, unreasonable and an uncontrolled place. This was also the time in which
men and woman were subject to the emergence of a primal animal identity.
Example of this is The Wolf Man. (1941)
1950s This is when alien/monster movies where beginning to be made. This
was due to wanting to take away some of the nations fear at the time when it
was cold war. A way of getting them to escape and in control as they feel like
they can achieve peace from situations like the nuclear attacks etc. examples of
a film would be Godzilla.
1960s - This was seen as the decade of Bad girls and blood freaks. The time
when it was the sexual revolution, between the film Psycho in the 1960 and the
Manson Family murders in 1969. It was away to be able to explore new ways in
perceiving sex and violence. Open to more nudity, onscreen violence and others
to challenge the social mores. The murder of Leigh's character in the shower is
the film's pivotal scene and one of the best-known in all of cinema. As such, it
spawned numerous myths and legends. It was shot from December 1723, 1959,
and features 77 different camera angles.[62] The scene "runs 3 minutes and
includes 50 cuts."[ Most of the shots are extreme close-ups, except for medium
shots in the shower directly before and directly after the murder. The
combination of the close shots with their short duration makes the sequence feel
more subjective than it would have been if the images were presented alone or
in a wider angle, an example of the technique Hitchcock described as
"transferring the menace from the screen into the mind of the audience". [64]
1970s Realism to the stories of the horror genre became more relatable when
it came to types of horror films. It reflects on the grim mood of the 70s decade.

70s was said to be disappointing as all the partying was over. Horror films
became better than society, they were dealing with contemporary societal issues
and addressing genuine psychological fears. It was the time where within horror
films is was the fear of children, the fear of messy, painful and the fatal process
of childbirth. Example the Exorcist (1973) scariest movie of all time by Total film
magazine October 1999. And Alice, Sweet Alice (1976), Carrie (1976), the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
1980s Horror movies of the 1980s (which probably begin in 1979 with ALIEN)
exist at the glorious watershed when special visual effects finally caught up with
the gory imaginings of horror fans and movie makers
https://donofriofilm.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/special-effects-in-alien/commentpage-1/ The 1980 Academy Award for The Best Visual Effects (imdb, 1) was
presented to the 1979 film Alien directed by Ridley Scott, a science-fiction horror
film that follows a space crew and their encounter with a deadly alien life form.
The prestigious award given to Alien by the Academy is a reflection of the
masterfully executed special effects by Ridley Scott and his crew to enhance the
atmosphere and mood of the science-fiction horror film, which consisted the
practical special effects of miniature models and creature design.
1990s - psychological thrillers are introduced and fear of the

unknown is used widely. Films such as The Blair Witch Project, which
was the first of its kind and changed the horror genre completely,
introducing a completely unique style. Also films such as se7en had
a lot of religious connotations, the victims having to pay for their
sins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blair_Witch_Project#Development
2000s - religious connotations followed into the noughties, with films

such as Saw being made. Also predictions for world chaos and
destruction such as The Day after Tomorrow and 1012, as well as
inescapable and unprovoked deaths such as in the film Final
Destination. More recently films such as Paranormal Activity and The
Orphan have reintroduced psychological horrors.
The Audience
Aims of horror genre would be

Getting good responses from their films

The usual target audience of a horror film is 15-25. This is because of it mainly
being young adults and teenagers that enjoy the thrill of what horror films bring.
The gender that is more attracted to the genre of horror is mainly males than
females. This is because stereotypically males enjoy the topics of violence more
than the female gender.

Horror films generally aimed at middle class. This is because they can acquire a
good thrill movie at a reasonably low cost. Whereas high upper

http://www.slideshare.net/Beccihammond/the-representations-of-gender-inhorror-films-essay
Men are usually the heroes in typical media forms, they tend to take on the
active roles whereas women tend to take on the passive roles, and there is a
definite lack of female role models compared to the amount of male role models.
We seldom know what types of relationships men have with the characters, as
their roles are made out to be a lot more active, we focus on their actions a lot
more.
The presentation of female visibility in horror films is different compared to other
media forms. The main female protagonists can turn into the final girl and are
therefore present until the end of the film. The visibility of women in horrors do
still however remain quite low as more often than not they are alone and not
working as groups which they often do in other media forms.
This change in the roles can be related to horror movies as there is a sufficient
amount of role reversal. We are often presented with a final girl a girl who is
seen as virginal and in a way quite masculine. For example: their names can be

unisex and the way they dress can be quite masculine; compared to the more
glamorous female characters who stereotypically get injured or killed as they are
presented to be weak and their minds are elsewhere. In horror films there
appears to be an imbalance with the presentation of women as they are usually
either extremely weak or strong- varied female protagonists do not tend to occur
within horror films.
In the shining the main female protagonist also turned out to be a final girl she
survived to the end. However the presentation of Wendy varied throughout the
film, she varied from strong and weak showing that the presentation of women in
horror films can be portrayed differently. This is similar to the main female
protagonist in Eden Lake. She appeared to be the Final girl but got assumingly
murdered by two male characters at the very end of the film. The presentation of
women in horror films vary immensely from other media forms due to the
unpredictable nature.
http://lewishyatta2mediastudies.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/media-studies-theories-hypodermic.html
This theory was developed in a time when the mass media (newspapers and magazines) were still fairly
new to the general public - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. The governments of the
world were just beginning to realise the power that advertising could have in order to get across their
message.
The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass awareness
of the audience without the audience really having to think about what the message really is, the theory
suggests that the audience are manipulated by the creator of the media product, the modern day issue
raised by the hypodermic needle theory is that the amount of violence seen in video games, films
(especially horror films and music videos for example will cause the viewer(usually a younger person) to
be affected by the violence impassively or not. This could be part of the reason that horror films are
typically rated as 15 or 18.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?
id=howIB0OrsUYC&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56&dq=representations+of+youths+in+ho
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