How Horror/ Thriller has evolved over time.

Horror movies began in the 1940’s with films such as Frankenstein and Dracula, these films dragged audience’s into the theatres by the promise to scare people. However, these films were very short lived and therefore the novelty wore off very quickly. After World War II the idea of mummies and zombies began to wear off with the public so directors began to play around with the idea’s of aliens and colossal insects with was believed to have originated from World War II itself. With the director’s inspired a new range of movies were delivered onto the market.
In the 1950’s a new audience was introduced into Hollywood’s sights, these were the teenagers of the time. Hollywood quickly realised that they had a chance to broaden there market and set to making movies to be shown on television. This core audience became the start of a new set of movies known as ‘exploitation teenpics.’
In 1957 the movie The Curse of Frankenstein was delivered to the market and this shocked audiences all over the world. This production showed blood and gore but in colour which teenagers loved. Hollywood responded by making a series of ‘Horror teenpics’.
In 1963 a man named Herschell Gordon Lewis invented a new twist to the common horror film. Instead of a young man being the main objective of the ‘creature’ instead a young attractive woman was the main victim. He added the idea of stalking and mutilation happening to the young woman instead of the ‘hero’ character. This produced very harsh movies and the public instantly showed their fondness.
After this special affects began to advance within horror movies, this allowed the audience to see more violence and unrealistic scenes which is exactly what the younger audiences were asking for. Since special effects have appeared within horror movies they become more successfully commercial and some have even broken records within the box office. In 1978 a movie called Halloween was produced and this broke not only the record for the most tickets sold within the horror genre but the most box office tickets sold for any movie ever.
Hollywood noticed this rating and instantly created movies along the same plot, hoping to repeat the previous success of Halloween. Movies such as Prom night and Friday the 13th were brought onto the market by Hollywood directors. These were some of the first Slasher movies invented which were very successful. However, along with the success also came the critics saying that Slasher films only portrayed violent attacks upon young women and mixing sex scenes within vicious and brutal attacks.