Conventions in the Horror and Thriller Genres

Horror

Horror is designed to frighten or panic, to cause dread and alarm, and to invoke our worst nightmares. Horror films are usually combined with science-fiction, where the menace or monster is related to the corruption of technology or earth is threatened.

Vampires,  bats and zombies are generally used to invoke terror into the audience, this is down to many folk tales, religions, cults and myths using the idea of obtaining blood (the life-source) and at its most extreme cannibalism. 


Thriller


Thrillers are created to cause suspense to the audience watching. This is achieved by the music used, violent scenes, low key lighting and mystery surrounding characters.

  "Psyco" is a good example of this as it has low key lighting, the famous music used and the typical detective whos solves the case. 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDtJUSYoLDE

Early Horror Films 1890's-1920's

Georges Melies was the first creator of Horror, in 1896 he created Le Manoir du diable. Another of his creations where The cave of the unholy one, which was created 1n 1898. Japan also created horror films such as Blake Jizo and Shinin no Sosei which were both created in 1898. 

The 20th century changed the horror genre for ever, with the first "monster" to feature in a full length horror film "Quasimodo" the hunch back of Notre-Dame, the idea was taken from the novel Notre-Dame De Paris  


The first thought we had about our film was researching about the genres that related to what we hoped to create, these were horror and thriller. we watched many films such as “Nosferatu” from the early 1920s. We liked the idea of creating a silent movie or black comedy/spoof.


After this we decided to research iconic and popular early horror films such as Frankenstein and Phantom Of The Opera.
   The first horror film was created by Gorges Melies, his first creation was the "Devils Mansion" he later made numerous iconic films.

Lon Chaney...



Lon Chaney
as The Phantom of
the Opera





Lon Chaney was a famous actor during the silent movie period. He was the post powerful actor during the 1920's with his tortured horror characters, from  1912 through til 1930 Lon Chaney was cast in over 100 silent films,

which include:

• Oliver Twist
• The Mark of Cain
• and his most famous Phantom Of The Opera.

Béla Lugosi 

Béla Lugosi as Count Dracula (1931)

Béla Lugosi was another major actor in the early horror film industry, his career spanned over four decades. He is best known for his role as Count Dracula in 1931. through out his career he was typecast as a "horror villain" due to his performance of Dracula.



  He later went on to star in The Black cat, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein and Black Friday, all produced by Universal pictures.

Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff was one of the biggest and successful actors of the early 20th century, his most famous roles was of Frankenstein,as this role he was cast in 3 Frankenstein films. He was also cast as Imhotep in The Mummy. Boris also starred alongside Béla Lugosi in The Body Snatcher.

1930's-1940's

In the 1930's Universal Pictures popularised horror films and produced many Gothic horror films such as Dracula, Frankenstein and The Invisible man.  Warner Brothers also produced a film "Mystery of the Wax Museum" and Paramount made "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"