Alexa and Jade

So You Think You Know Horror

• The actual meaning of horror means intense The actual meaning of horror means intense and profound fear.and profound fear.

• Horror films:Horror films: unsettling movies that strive to elicit the unsettling movies that strive to elicit the

emotions of fear, disgust and horror from emotions of fear, disgust and horror from viewers. And also sometimes pleasure.viewers. And also sometimes pleasure.

• They usually feature frequent jump scenes They usually feature frequent jump scenes that make the viewers jump and startled that make the viewers jump and startled through the means of macabre and the through the means of macabre and the supernatural, therefore usually overlapping supernatural, therefore usually overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction and with the fantasy and science fiction and thriller genres. thriller genres.

What is horror

Conventions of horror movies

• Blood• Death• Killing• Villain• Victims• Haunted houses • Evil

• Weapons• Darkness• Storms• Chase sequences• Gore• Violence• Screams• Ghosts

Horror subgenres• The Supernatural Horror ghosts, demons, zombies, or alien invaders, the story

becomes a supernatural horror. This sort of tale interweaves into a lot of different sub-genres of horror and includes a vast library of undead villains such as Dracula, George Romero’s zombies in Night of the Living Dead or the demon in The Exorcist make their home here.

• Realistic Horror Films This tends to refer to movies and books focused on

things such as serial killers such as Norman Bates in Psycho. You could also say that the film Saw films fits in this category is well.

• The Horror/Comedy Movie: Usually goes against the horror genre not such a stretch from horror

As it is the shock that causes the audience to scream from the shock that causes an audience to laugh. The most celebrated horror/comedy might be Sam Ramie's fantastic Evil Dead trilogy but other worthwhile mentions are Return of the Living Dead and Scream.

How horror has changed over years

• The 1930s horror films were fairly lavish productions filmed in the studio and inspired by expressionism as this set the tone of the film.

• The horror films of the 1970s, were produced independently , often outside studio’s, such as Night Of The Living Dead which was shot in Pittsburgh with very low budgets. stylistic conventions of realism: hand-held camera work, naturalistic lighting, location shooting, and direct location sound.

• In the 1980’s and on Technical advances in the field of animatronics, meant that the human frame could be distorted to an entirely new dimension, onscreen, in realistic close up, and deliver the full colour close-up, look-no-strings-attached, special effect in a way that previous years. After this more technology developed such as artificial lighting, non direct sounds and artistic make-up which portrayed horror movies in an even better way. E.g. the last exorcism.

The possession of Joel DelanyA woman begins to suspect that her brother is possessed by a voodoo spirit.

The possession of Joel Delany

– Director- Waris Hussein

– Distributing company- Paramount Pictures

– released - May 24, 1972

Plot of film• a wealthy Manhattan socialite, and her younger brother Joel Delaney attend a party being given by

Norah's friend Dr. Erika Lorenz. Joel's girlfriend Sherry appears later on during the party. Norah is extremely protective of her brother, and both here and in other parts of the film it is subtly implied that theirs is not an ordinary siblings' relationship; although there is no open allusion to incest, their demeanour together catches the eye of other people attending the party, many of them mistaking Joel for Norah's younger lover. It is also established, later in the film, that the two siblings have sensibly different, albeit somehow complementary mindsets; in contrast to Norah's upscale, self-compliant snobbishness, Joel is more of an adventurous, bohemian type and frequently goes on trips to exotic locations, the latest of which being Tangiers.

• When Norah gets home, she finds Joel screaming (again, in perfectly fluent Spanish) and barricaded inside. She then takes Peter and Carrie to Erika's apartment and catches her just as she's preparing her husband for a business trip. Erika tells her to go to her home in the coast for now and that she will deal with Joel. Norah rents a car and is off to the beach house. Erika's husband leaves for the trip, unaware that Joel is standing outside of his and Erika's apartment building.

• Their first night at the beach house is uneventful; the next morning, however, Norah comes back from the beach with her children and finds Erika's decapitated head on a cabinet above the refrigerator. Joel is standing nearby with a knife. Now uniformly possessed by his Spanish-speaking persona, he keeps them captive and subjects them to both physical and psychological torment. He taunts them by graphically cutting open a fish the kids caught shortly before. puts on music and orders them all to dance. Noticing that Peter has broken a sweat from the dancing, he orders the boy to strip. In the kitchen he tries to force Carrie to eat dog food before slashing her neck slightly. Mr. Benson and the police arrive and Norah yells at them not to shoot. They can only watch what's happening through the huge glass sliding doors. Finally, Norah jumps on Joel to stop him. They struggle and Joel gives his sister a passionate kiss (again hinting at the film's incestuous subtext). Norah tells the kids to run out of the house. Joel goes after them and is shot by one of the officers. His sister runs to his side but its too late to save him. As she cradles him in her arms, something seems to overcome her. Norah picks up the knife and holds it up towards the cop who shot Joel.

How it meets conventions of horror

• In this movie is based on possession of evil spirits and victims who are killed and there is also weapons used which shows that the movie is very violent e.c.t. which makes it meet some of the conventions of the horror genre.

Photos of some scenes which portray the convention of horror.

The shout!

• Directed by: Jerzy Skolimowski

•Release date: June 1978 (UK)

• Distributed by: The Rank Organisation

Plot of film

• The Shout stars Alan Bates as a mysterious travelling man who invades the lives of a young couple, played by Susannah York and John Hurt. Hurt is a composer, who experiments with sound effects and various electronic sources in his secluded Devon studio. The couple provides hospitality to Bates, but his intentions are gradually revealed as more and more sinister. He claims he has learned from an Aboriginal shaman how to produce a "terror shout" that can kill anyone who hears it unprotected.

How it meets conventions of horror

Screams that kill

Mystical powers

The use of sharp knifes (weapons)

The music is also quite intense (give a dark atmosphere) which also portrays the genre

Up close angles which shows mystery

A large, black, four-poster bed, possessed by a demon, is passed from owner to owner

Death bed: the bed that eats

• 1977 one-off horror film written, produced, and directed by: George Barry.

• The film was not officially released until 2003

• Distributed by: Cult Epics

Plot• Decades worth of innocent travellers fall prey to a demonic and

hungry piece of furniture in this long-lost cult film, which was completed in 1977. In a tiny stone castle in the woods, the ghost of a flouncy artist (Dave Marsh/voice of Patrick Spence-Thomas) remains trapped inside the walls and witnesses the strange goings-on that give the film its title. It seems that the magnificent canopy bed that dominates the decor is actually the resting place of a demon who built it to seduce a lovely maiden back in 1897. Their unnatural congress having killed the poor girl, her monstrous Casanova became one with his creation and proceeded to snack on anybody who chanced across his rustic retreat. As the ghost watches, horrified, additional victims fall prey to the pernicious pallet. But the reign of terror may finally be over when the bed receives a visit from a pair of young siblings.

conventions

• This is a really interesting horror movie even though t has the obvious horror bases like, victims which are eaten, a demonic monster and strangely a bed which eats young girls after the demon has had pleasure with them.

How it meets conventions of horror

The fake skeleton hands usually to give a gruesome effect in the genre.

the bed whilst its eating a girl

Blood

(this is the inside of the bed)

Gore

Close up to clearly show the face of the demon

isolation

Invasion of the body snatcher

• Directed by Don Fredericks

• Distributed by Allied Artists Pictures Corporation

• Release date: February 5, 1956

Plot • Set in the fictional town of Santa Mira, California, a local doctor, finds a rash of patients accusing their

loved ones of being impostors. Another patient is a former sweetheart of his; recent divorcée who tells him that her cousin, Wilma, has this same strange fear about Uncle Ira.

• Assured at first by the town psychiatrist, Dr. Dan Kaufman (Larry Gates), that the cases are nothing but "epidemic mass hysteria," Bennell soon discovers, with the help of his friend Jack that the towns people are in fact being replaced by perfect physical duplicates, simulacrums grown from giant plant-like pods. The Pod People are indistinguishable from normal people, except for their utter lack of emotion. The Pod People work together to secretly spread more pods — which grew from "seeds drifting through space for years" — in order to replace the entire human race.

• Driscoll fights an overwhelming urge to sleep, but when she briefly drifts away, she is instantly subverted, becoming one of the Pod People. With the Pod People close behind, a seemingly crazed Bennell runs onto the highway frantically screaming about the alien force which has overrun Santa Mira to the passing motorists and (in a moment that is considered a breaking of the Fourth Wall) looks into the camera and yells, "They're here already! You're next! You're next!"

• Finally, Bennell is picked up by the police and questioned in a clinic. The policemen in charge do not believe his account— until they receive news of an accident in which a truck carrying strange giant bean pods is opened. The police are quick to alert the authorities; the message has been received, but the actual end of the story is left open.

How it meets conventions

Victims, death

The pods (out of planet aliens

Rescuer, doctor Bennell

How Horror has changedAs you can see in the olden time they had to use body shape caskets to make a human look like a “pod” but now that doesn’t need to happened as there are better ways

My evaluation

• What did I learn from these films?

I learnt that it is important to have a lot of imagination as the films that I have studied are not the most obvious story lines and also that I don’t need to have a lot of technical skill to have a good horror opening sequence