It’s that time of the year again. The double-whammy holiday combo of Hallow’s Eve and Dia de los Muertos left to us by our colonial past is here. There’s no better time to round up your friends, pop in a scary movie, turn down the lights and scare the crap out of everyone. Here’s your Y Style horror anthology to help pick out the best of the best, so go ahead and scream your head off throughout the weekend.
Not too long after the Lumiere brothers figured out how to project movies with their newfangled
cinematographe, scary movies began frightening audiences everywhere. But while the French invented cinema, it was the Germans who were the major pioneers of the horror film. The grand tradition goes back to the Expressionist filmmakers of the 1920s such as F.W. Murnau and his groundbreaking vampire film
Nosferatu (1922), still arguably the best movie made about the infamous Count Dracula. His Berliner contemporary Robert Wiene created the phantasmagoric
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari a few years earlier in 1920. These old masters could not rely on the incredible technology that today’s creature animators and special effects experts routinely use. They had to work harder to create atmosphere, tension and mystery, all of which made for far more interesting films than those put out by today’s Hollywood machine. Over the decades, the importance of the horror film has waned. In the old days, many directors devoted their entire career to perfect and develop their craft. Today, the scary movie languishes as a minor genre that people only pay attention to around Halloween season. But things weren’t always that way.
The golden era for horror film flourished in the 1930s when German actors and directors fled Hitler’s totalitarian regime and migrated to Hollywood. It is in this period when the great talkies
Dracula (1931) and
Frankenstein (1931) established the blueprint for the modern horror movie. In the 1940s to the 1950s a new type of film, referred to as film noir, began to dominate the industry and changed the focus of the genre from fantastic monsters to a more visceral urban terror in the form of crime. One filmmaker, whose work is so iconic that it belongs in a genre of its own, was the legendary director Alfred Hitchcock. Some of the best films in his oeuvre include
Vertigo (1958),
North by Northwest (1959), the cult classic
Psycho (1960) and the technical tour de force,
The Birds (1963). All of these films embodied stylish, sophisticated suspense, and oftentimes were laced with humor and romance.
The 1960s and 1970s produced a new type of horror film, one that was highly stylized, deeply atmospheric, and chillingly dark. At the forefront of this movement were Dario Argento and Mario Bava from Italy, and George Romero of the United States. These three directors created stunning films that built up tension and suspense through the remarkable use of dramatic lighting, eerie set design and menacing camera angles. Rather than relying on shock tactics like many of today’s movies, they would slowly generate a deeper feeling of terror that stayed with the viewer throughout the entire film. With some of them having their start as cinematographers, the photography was stunning, although sometimes to the detriment of the plot development. Some of their most memorable films include
Black Sunday (1960),
Suspiria (1977), and the cult classic
Dawn of the Living Dead (1978). The latter is the quintessential zombie flick, and has been relentlessly mimicked and paid tribute to by other directors. Most recently, the Danny Boyle film
28 Days Later and the Playstation games
Resident Evil and
Silent Hill have numerous direct references to Romero’s cult classic.
The 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of the horror sub-genre known as slasher flicks. Tobe Hooper’s
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), John Carpenter’s
Halloween (1978), Sean Cunningham’s
Friday the 13th (1980) and Wes Craven’s
Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) were wildly successful movies that led to many sequels. Audiences were terrified by serial killers such as Leatherface, Michael, Jason and Freddy who would prey on unsuspecting, oversexed teens. A remake of
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, cast with Hollywood’s young turks is due out this Halloween, and is likely to be the holiday must see. On the local scene, Pinoy Horror made its mark in the 1980s, with Peque Gallaga’s highly memorable films
Shake, Rattle and Roll (1984) and
Tiyanak (1988). More camp thrills followed in
Pinoy Thriller and
Regal Shocker. But Pinoy horror films as a genre pretty much ended there.
Horror films in the 1990s were far less interesting than its previous incarnations. Forgettable franchises such as the
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997),
Scream (1996) and the
Urban Legend (1994) series just didn’t have the same bone-chilling staying power that terrified audiences in the past. Their pretty-faced cast and cheap shock value tricks lacked the atmospheric tension that the old school classics provided. But there is some hope for horror fans.
The last few years have shown some promise both in the guise of independent cinema and major studio production. The
Blair Witch Project was a runaway success that renewed Hollywood’s interest in the horror movie. This led to a few notable big budget studio films such as M. Night Shmalayan’s
Sixth Sense with Bruce Willis, as well as Alejandro Amenabar’s
The Others (2001), starring Nicole Kidman. Both films deal with the metaphysical world of the dead and do so with a style reminiscent of the classic era, while being thoroughly contemporary. Amenabar is a promising talent, with an excellent filmography under his belt including the Spanish production of
Tesis (1998) and
Abre Los Ojos (1999), the film that the lackluster American film
Vanilla Sky was based on.
Most recently a spate of Asian horror flicks has made waves on the international circuit. Some of these include Japan’s
Ringu (1998) series,
Audition (1999),
Dark Water (2001), Taiwan’s
The Eye (2002), and Hong Kong’s
Inner Senses(2002). The Asian horror movie is a welcome addition to the global lexicon, as it draws from Asia’s rich history of supernatural folklore and highly original stylistic influences ranging from manga to oral history to theater.
Whether it’s classic monster terror, or gory slasher flicks, moody vintage shockers or contemporary cerebral thrillers you prefer, there’s a full range of choice to make your Halloween weekend a sure fire hit. Sit back, curl up and enjoy the horror.
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