Horror History-- Western

In Western, horror film is a huge part of the film industry, film was born in 1895, in the second year, the first horror style film had become to face to audience.

If you had read the history of Western horror, you could easily find out an interesting thing, that the horror style changes in almost every 10 years from 1930 to 1980.

Before 1930s, horror film is not the main part of film styles, filmmakers would like to recompose some living theatres more. But there are two famous films shows in 1931, which name is Dracula and Frankenstein. These two films opens the golden time of horror.

In 1940s, the famous horror film includes Man Made Monster(George Waggner) and  I Walked with a Zombie(Jacques Tourneur). In these 10 years, the filmmakers puts their notice on recomposing some cartoons or tales. 

In 1950s, nuclear threat and Communist infiltration appears in Western, horror film style broke away from ghost and monsters which shows earlier, but to combined with some science fiction and the extra-terrestrial.

In 1960s, horror filmmakers starts to describe some horror effects which shows on human beings such as Psycho (1960).

In the year 1973, the film The Exorcist starts to tell audience that the monsters are coming back. Some films which describe monsters such as The Omen (1976) and Carrie (1976) appears to screen. 

In 1980s, the horror filmmakers starts to combine sex and violence, and put these elements on women and juveniles, such as the film Dressed to kill (1980) and Trick or Treats. In the end, they successfully made out a kind of society phobia. On another hand, some unknown things on outer space and technology productions appears, such as Star Beast and The fly.


What I want to say is, every era has its own characteristic, so does horror. Sometimes the social effect could change the horror style, because this is the audience`s demand, also, a different horror style could change audience`s viewpoint.

To conclusion, though the Eastern horror history are not to long, but I believe that the theory which I have told is same. Every era have their own production, so in the future, compare with globalization, the style of horror maybe could be similar and even same in Eastern and Western.