FromFrankensteinto Freddy, the movie moments that formed the genre (and our nightmares).
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Even when horror films get some respect, they get no respect.
Thus were the slashers and monsters and psycho killers prevented from staining the good name of cinema by association.
The genre has always flourished during times of great social and political unrest.
Think of it as your best at-a-glance guide to more than a centurys worth of terrifying films.
Some films introduced techniques or tropes that would later become common; others perfected them.
And now, without further ado, we present Vultures road map to the evolution of horror cinema.
Buckle up and lock your doors, because there are many terrors along the way.
Murnau and Paul Leni from leaving their mark on American horror.
Murnau was notoriously obsessed with shadows.
Its a perfect example of creeping dread.
Written and directed by Benjamin Christensen, this unsung entry in the witch-horror subgenre is a strange brew.
Now, suddenly, theres a supernatural show on display.
The man could just plain act.
BE
Faust(1926)
Directed by F.W.
Murnau happened to find a visual metaphor for an entire century.
With the massive, budget-busting, and surprisingly disturbing production ofFaust, Murnau was essentially saying farewell to Germany.
(Theyre basically the template for theScooby Dootrope: Is it a monster?
No, its just a shitty guy in a mask.)
As his sole heir, Annabelle is now the eponymous canary surrounded by a family of greedy cats.
Bunuel claimed to have put stones in his pockets to throw at the audience in case of disaster.
In it, a man sharpens a straight razor while casually smoking a cigarette.
Strangely enough, both of the actors in this scene would later commit suicide.
The success of the film cant be removed from the context in which it arrived, either.
But it was the Great Depression, and people were desperate for cheap distractions.
The year 1931 changed everything for horror, and the monsters were here to stay.
?James WhalesFrankensteinhas two of the most immortal scenes in horror history.
The first, of course, is that crazy, over-the-top reanimation scene.
(Its aliiiiivee!!)
Together, they toss some petals into a lake.
It all happens so casually, as if the film has briefly decided to embody the Monsters own carelessness.
But the moment still went down in history.
Subsequent films including Whales follow-upThe Bride of Frankenstein(in which the Monster also kills Marias parents!)
would lean into that blend of pathos and brutality.
Its a classic case of less is more.
Karloffs face, crisscrossed with lines and scars, is truly unsettling.
But what really makes this scene so nerve-racking is howquietit is.
Youd be forgiven for thinking that something has gone wrong with the soundtrack.
As the Mummy leaves, all we see is a trail of bandages slinking out the door.
This is a scene that hurts.
And the deeper you go, the more disturbing it gets.
It is these attributes that powerCat Peoples most iconic scene, which comes past the halfway point.
Oliver falls in love with a woman named Alice Moore (Jane Randolph), leading to Irenas ire.
When Alice and Oliver part on a desolate street, Irena follows her through the inky darkness.
The patter of each womans heels creates a distinct rhythm, growing ever more frantic and heightening the tension.
The scare is intense until it dissipates in the face of the mundane.
The scene proves one of cinemas greatest arguments letting audiences use their imagination to make it heighten horror.
But these filmmakers also knew how to shock us when they needed to.
She runs, and the beast appears to give chase.
She finally arrives home but her angry mom refuses to let her in!
For its time, this was a deeply disturbing depiction of killing.
That its also a supremely artful one somehow adds to its discomfiting quality.
Nice try, but the answer is actuallyfivescary stories.
Chucky and Annabelle owe a debt to Hugo.
It was the perfect combination of madcap miscalculations and horror iconography that the subgenre is built on.
The film was a commercial and critical success that legitimized the studio horror comedy.
Of course, American distributors butchered the film, defanging its message and adding new scenes with Raymond Burr.
Thats just one of the reasons Godzilla became a bit of a joke over the years.
Some tacky sequels and disappointing reboots didnt help.
BE
Them!
He jolts her back to reality by waving formic acid a chemical found in ants under her nose.
Although Clouzot beat Hitchcock to the rights for Boileau-Narcejacs (a.k.a.
Directed by Don Siegel,Invasioncenters on Dr.
Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), an upstanding doctor in a close-knit small town in California.
Bennell is forced to flee his beloved town along with his lover, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter).
Her face is cold and emotionless as she calls on other pod people to hunt him down.
He escapes onto the highway, futilely warning people like a Middle American Cassandra.
he screams into the night.
After co-starring in these roles, Cushing and Lee became lifelong friends.
While not as well-known as the former,The Tinglerbrought Castles vaudevillian flair to the mad doctor trope.
The film follows Prices pathologist Dr. Chapin and his research into how the spine tingles when experiencing fear.
The only antidote is screaming: the louder the better, to neutralize the terrifying effects of the tingler.
He knew that horror was as much if not more a physical experience as an intellectual or emotional one.
In one of the films most famous scenes, an attempted face transplant is shown in grisly detail.
FromRing 0: BirthdaytoGoodnight Mommy, the legacy of Franjus famous film continues to endure internationally.
On the run, she checks into the Bates Motel, a quiet, secluded spot.
Thats when Mrs. Bates makes her presence known.
As Marion lets the water pour over her, suddenly, the curtain is violently yanked back.
Its even the first time a toilet was ever flushed onscreen.
Blood explodes from the eye and forehead space of the mask, killing her.
Its also been replicated by countless horror films since, from the Mexican horror filmThe Brainiacto the family-friendlyHocus Pocus.
They ranged in tone from the horror-comedy slapstick of 1963sThe Ravento the comparatively somberThe Tomb of Ligeiain 1964.
She soon grows paranoid that the children are possessed by supernatural spirits haunting the vast, gothic estate.
One of the films most genuine scares is its simplest.
Miss Giddens sits near the pond with Flora on the grand estate.
It was also a box-office success.
The scene serves as one of the earliest and most disquieting examples of nature run amok.
ButThe Birdsis so much more than a gag about winged creatures attacking beautiful women in Edith Headinspired ensembles.
The true terror in Bodega Bay isnt the birds, but the treatment of outsiders.
When Melanie Daniels arrives in town, she is made well aware that she is unwelcome.
One patron screams in Mels face that she is evil, and the cause of all of this.
Future slasher directors no doubt took note.
But shes still trapped inside and begins to run toward the window to yell for help.
When, suddenly, he plunges out of the darkness and grabs her.
It notoriously prompted audiences at the time to break out in screams.
she screams, What have you done to its eyes?!
Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) casually answers from a chair, He has his fathers eyes.
He came up from Hell and begat a son of mortal woman.
(That would beBlackenstein.)
Rebellion film movement that birthed a whole new generation of black directors.
However, once hes on the island, strange things begin to happen.
Every person he meets claims theyve never heard of Rowan.
Children sing songs in the schoolyard about copulation.
Naked citizens make merriment in the woods under the glow of a full moon.
He doesnt know how right he is.
Laura, meanwhile, moves toward accepting that her daughter is dead and at peace in the afterlife.
The friction between their two versions of grief causes constant stress.
The scene cuts deep because, despite its supernatural scenario, its a very human story.
Or listened to the warning of the local drunk when he said hed seen things people wouldnt believe.
Behold the rugged masterpiece that is Tobe HoopersTexas Chain Saw Massacre.
This is especially true when it comes to Kirks death scene.
Once inside, a squealing, pig-like noise emits from the back room.
Kirk asks, but no one answers.
Walking cautiously through the entryway, Kirk follows the squeals to a doorway behind the stairs.
This all happens within a matter of seconds.
But the PG-ratedHanging Rockentirely resists the urge to startle.
But then he quickly disappears again, leaving the audience to agonize over the beasts return.
Sleeper horror hits in the summer months have become a reliable piece of counterprogramming against more conventional fare.
But before there wasLights OutorHereditary, there wasJaws.
A for sale sign turned cross has been vandalized with Carrie White burns in Hell.
(Spacek was actually buried in the ground to make it make the scene work.)
Bringing director Richard Donner his first blockbuster success, he would soon go on to makeSupermanandThe Goonies.
But nobody has done it as chillingly as Carpenter.
Thats where, in past films, there would be a cutaway.
It also opened up a new dialogue about screen violence and how it should be rated.
Many subsequent gorefests followed suit.
But his jump scare from the lakes depths did more than elicit the desired huge screams from audiences.
45has somehow managed to become a celebrated cult classic.
The film begins as Thana an exploited fashion-industry worker in early-1980s New York is raped not once but twice.
Spooky, curious incidents quickly spiral into a dangerous haunting.
This leads him to check under the bed, only for the clown to appearbehindRobbie and drag him below.
In Carpenters vision, when the duplicated body is physically threatened, it mutates in gruesomely grandiose fashion.
Because dream logic dictates the entire story, the more outlandish and bizarre a death was, the better.
The fact that it makes no sense, terrifies her and us even more.
Wysss shrieks are desperate and panicked; these are not the manicured and practiced screams of most slashers.
But his influence can be seen today, most evidently in Panos CosmatossMandyand Nicolas PescesThe Eyes of My Mother.
Unfortunately, all that bravado only obscures Alexs catastrophic fragility in relationships, particularly when shes rejected by Dan.
Meanwhile, Buffalo Bill patiently hunts his prey, toying with her, always just a half-step behind.
What makes this moment so horrific is the setup of impending danger.
But no film before or since has so thoroughly established a black-horror icon with such panache and power.
Helen and her peer, Bernadette Walsh (Kasi Lemmons), doubt the myth initially.
But as Helen learns more about the deaths attributed to the Candyman, he is soon hunting her himself.
He became a painter and figure in high society who fell in love with a white woman.
Her father gathered a group of people to torture and kill him.
Okay, but then its one of the most frightening and disturbing psychological thrillers ever made.
Despite the is itreallyreal?
The scene demonstrates the poetry and intoxicating force of horror when its at its most succinct.
The two lie and tell the actresses that they are casting the lead in a film.
The two seemingly fall in love almost immediately.
Its a fascinating blending of genres, because a good chunk of this movie plays like a genuine romance.
Suddenly, the phone rings, and everything in the frame springs to life.
Batemans lustful desires shift into bloodthirst when Christie slips from beneath the covers to leave the apartment.
As Christie tries to escape, she finds the mangled bodies of various women hanging in a closet.
Christie screams and bangs on the doors of his neighbors to no avail.
Those people are wrong.
And whats so great is that it tells you exactly what its going to do before it does it.
Hes the one whos doing it.
He and his companion go out back to investigate.
The soundtrack thrums, the camera floats, and the characters drift.
As the dumpster approaches, the camera assumes the mens point of view.
And then …Boo!
A clinic in building anticipation and timing the absolute perfect moment for the terrifying reveal.
(She would also go on to play the Demon Nun in theConjuringsequels.)
The rape itself, running at around nine minutes in length, comes after.
Controversial and undeniably extreme, there are no quickly edited innuendos or implications of the horror of rape here.
It is presented an unendurable, inescapable nightmare.
The only problem is, hes asking the wrong question.
The true stunner isnt why Oh Dae-su was imprisoned.
The question he should be asking is, why was he released?
Woo-jin laughs and ignores his pleas.
Desperate, Oh Dae-su demonstrates his commitment to keeping his mouth shut by cutting out his own tongue.
Sawchanged the mores of horror for a stretch of years, with franchises likeHostelandThe Collectionarriving in its wake.
But the movies significance is even bigger when you consider Wans broader influence on studio horror films.
Oh, and shrieking, pale-faced, cannibalistic humanoid cave-dwelling ghouls.
But its actually quite some time into the film before were even fully introduced to these creatures.
But what an attack!
First, our heroines discover the giant pile of animal bones.
They used the you-are-there format to plunge the audience into frenzied, gore-soaked chaos.
Oskar becomes completely attached to Eli, willing to do anything to appease her.
Oskar, unable to understand, asks Eli to enter a room without permission just to see what happens.
Oskar panics and screams, you might come in!
It is at this moment that the forever bond between Oskar and Eli is established.
Its also what established horror as a beautiful and credible medium for cinema.
From here, the film tips into surprising territory.
