Research into Chosen Genre

Box Office History for Horror Movies
US Gross: Total: $9,550,597,924 Average: $22,210,693
Worldwide Gross: Total: $15,109,922,618 Average: $35,139,355
Budget: Total: $3,752,706,000 Average: $18,041,856

UK Film Council

UK film releases in the UK and the Rebulic of Ireland by genre in 2007 ranked by box office gross. Horror had 6 releases and was 5.6% of releases. Gross at the box office (£ million) was 9.8 and the % of gross box office was 3.7 the top performing title was 28 weeks later.

Proportion of releases by genre for UK films and all films, 2007

% of all releases: 4.7

% of UK releases: 5.6

Films on release in the UK and Rebulic of Ireland by genre, 2007, ranked by average box office gross per site.

Average box office per site: 7,266

Gross box office (£ million) 28.8

Total sites: 3,970

Films on release in the UK and Rebulic of Ireland by genre, 2007, ranked by average widest point of release.

Average number of sites at widest point of release: 165

Number of releases: 24

Gross box office (£ million) 28.8

Following is from a Love Film Article on 'What makes a good horror film' (I have extracted the important points)

• the stars of a horror film should look everyday and mundane
• the baddie has to be believable
• your baddie has to be realistically bad, and not someone that cause’s the audience to scream with laughter every time he appears.
• horror fans say that events based on a true story are often better than those made up.
• The setting is key, with deserted houses, woods and lonely islands the favourite.
• Music is also vitally important, as without some guy strumming on a violin

The following research is from slide share (again I have extracted the important points)

Origins - from Gothic tradition in literature dating from the 18th and 19th Centuries. Described at the time as Romantic literature, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula are the most enduring, but the Werewolf and the Mummy can also be traced back to novels from this period. Film versions of these stories have been remade many times from Universal in 1930s, to Hammer in 1950s and 60s to recent versions by Coppola and Kenneth Branagh and Stephen Sommers’ ‘Van Helsing'. The American Gothic tradition derives from the work of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Roger Corman made several films in the 1960s based on Poe’s novels.

Two European Artistic Movements combined to create the classic horror film od the 1930s -

Expressionism: German theatre in particular featured low key shafts of light, sets that were off-kilter, often without right angles or with exaggerated perspectives, black and white make up. The idea of expressionism was to express emotions rather than external reality

Surrealism: Representing the unconscious and dreams. Drew from psychologist Sigmund Freud’s ideas on sexuality and The Uncanny. Represented in the horror film by the flow of disturbing imagery and the presence of a ‘monster’.

Narrative Conventions (themes)

• Hauntings and Demonic Possessions - These films play on our fear of the unknown, superstition and the idea that evil forces exist in the world. These forces can remain spiritual presences or can take the guise of witches, ghosts or demons. Fall prey to an evil force that is trying to victimise them in some way. Sometimes the evil force wants to corrupt its victims or the evil force wants to take control of its victim - take over his body or his mind or soul. Vampires and werewolves turn you into one of their own kind. The fight between good and evil in the Christian sense- temptation and sin.
• Apocalypse - Mankind is threatened with extinction by inhuman creatures, threat comes from outer space or the threat is a plague or virus, the threat comes form everyday traditonally harmless creatures. A set structure: there’s a sudden proliferation of these creatures as if from nowhere and they descend upon a group of survivors who have barricaded themselves in a house. Usually the story ends with the people dying and the creatures winning out.
• The Human Monster - With horror of the personality: psychopathology and murder (the serial killer) or psychosis and insanity. Audience is taken inside the mind of a killer or of a person who appears to be going insane. Often children are the subject, the idea that some people are born bad, with no sense of morality.

Iconography of the Horror Film - Symbolic images which recur throughout the history of the horror film include: The haunted house, Symbols of death, The disfigured face or mask, The screaming victim, The phallic murder weapon: knife, stake, chainsaw, Oppositions of good and evil, Darkened places where the ‘monster’ lurks: woods, cellars, Blood and body parts.

The Horror Film - Phases of Popularity

- Universal Studios Horror Films (1920-48)

- The Cold War Sci- Fi Horror Film (1950s)

- The Modern American Horror Film (1968-79)

- The Slasher Movie (1978-82)

- The Postmodern Horror Film (1983 onwards)

Changes in Audience Expectations

The Classic Horror Film:-

• Production Context
• Stars (Lugosi, Karloff, Chaney,)
• Studio Produced (Universal, RKO)
• Medium budgets
• Genre Narrative Conventions & Formal Signifiers
• ‘ Foreign Monster’
• Monster is a supernatural being
• Equilibrium is restored - ‘good’ triumphs
• Society ie. religion, science, family is ‘good’.
• The horror is suggested off-screen
• Expressionist lighting style, hard shadows
• Classical Mise-en-scene & continuity editing.

Modern American Horror Film

• Production Context
• Independent Productions
• Unknown Actors
• Filmed on location
• Low budgets
• Genre conventions and formal signifiers
• Indigenous monster
• Monster is psychopath/cannibal
• The horror never ends - nihilism pervades
• Society is to blame. The family is seen as an instrument of repression.
• Graphic on-screen horror
• Documentary realism, flat lighting, location sound.
• Post French New Wave camerawork and editing.

Why do audiences enjoy being scared to death by horror films so much?
Carlos Clarens believes that the horror film renders on film ‘the immanent fears of mankind: damnation, demonic possession, old age, death.’ Ernest Larson believes that horror films that incorporate the apocalypse theme ‘advance the notion that modern technology is so overwhelming that it tends to obliterate any possibility of its liberatory use...science has, in the hand-maiden of capitalism, created an uncontrollable monster.’ Charles Derry believes that films inaugurated by Psycho represent ‘ a response to the escalation of violence in American culture. Walter Evans attributes the popularity of horror amongst young audiences to ‘the most universal and horrible of personal trials: the sexual traumas of adolescence.’ Robin Wood argues the monster represents all the things we repress in order to function as ‘monogamous, heterosexual, bourgeois patriarchal capitalists’, namely sexuality (in its fullest sense) and creativity. The tensions caused by such repression and the threatened return of the repressed are siphoned off ‘through the projection onto the Other (the ‘monster’) of what is repressed within the Self, in order that it can be discredited, disowned and if possible annihilated

The Following Research is Key Notes from the book Film Art by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson

• Horror is recogniseable by its intended emotional effect on the audience it aims: to shock, disgust, horrify

What can horrify us?

• Monstor - typically dangerous breach of nature, violation of our normal sense of what is possible, vioulate boundry - dead/alive. Charatcter convention: threatening and innatural monster

Horror Plot

Monsters attack on normal life -> characters need to destroy it -> various ways -> attacks -> authority non-believers -> blocking characters effect

Iconography

Settings: Monsters may lurk in dark house fill of victims, cemeteries and Laboratories.

Heavy Make-up

Horror - emotional impact with make-up and other low technology special effects is favoured by low budget film makers.