I was 10 years old in the summer of 1979, and there was no shortage of horror movies. The local theaters in my neighborhood were showing PHANTASM, DAWN OF THE DEAD, and ALIEN, three of my all-time favorite movies that I never had the opportunity to see in a theater because I was, of course, so young. These were truly shocking films, the likes of which audiences had never seen before. The infamous chestburster sequence in ALIEN is as memorable and as powerful as Janet Leigh's abrupt demise in PSYCHO.
David Ansen wrote about this phenomenon in “Hollywood’s Scary Summer”, an article published in the June 18, 1979 issue of NEWSWEEK. Ansen wrote, “In its first two weeks, Ridley Scott’s outer-space horror movie ALIEN has taken in $8.5 million, breaking the opening records of the all-time box office champ, STAR WARS.” ALIEN was made for $10 million. Can you believe that? Did you hear me? ALIEN was made for $10 million!! That amount wouldn't cover the catering expenses on a James Cameron set today.
Quite correctly, Ansen pointed out that horror movies have been around since the inception of cinema. However, it was a genre that was generally looked upon with disdain and contempt, and most of the movies during the Fifties and Sixties were relegated to double features as throwaway drive-in fare. All of that changed in 1973 when William Friedkin brought William Peter Blatty’s novel THE EXORCIST to the screen with a major cast. The impact of that film is unimaginable to us today, because most audiences now are very jaded and need even more over-the-top horrific murders to keep them interested, as evidenced by the successful SAW franchise today. SAW III opened on October 27, and promises to be ten times as brutal as SAW II. Eeeeeeeeeeeek!
Horror is a very cyclical genre in terms of box office success. As soon as I got my license to drive in 1985, I hurried off the local multiplexes to see a variety of films that followed in the years to come, such as THE UNHOLY, THE STEPFATHER II, TWICE DEAD, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, THE CURSE, CHOPPING MALL, DEMONS, etc. Most of these movies were truly awful, and nothing like the horror classics I grew up watching on home video in 1983 and 1984. I became disenchanted with the buffoonery of Freddy Krueger and stuck with the films of Dario Argento (when I could find them, that is!).
Although I had been a fan of Wes Craven's THE HILLS HAVE EYES, DEADLY BLESSING, SUMMER OF FEAR, and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, his 1996 film SCREAM annoyed me when I saw it. The impact of this film cannot be underestimated, however, because I believe that it really provided a much-needed jolt into the horror genre at the time and for that that I am very grateful to Wes Craven. A whole new generation of fans came out in droves to see horror movies, and advances in technology and the explosion of the Internet made it possible for almost anyone to make a film.
Horror is an escape from the mundane and the terror of the times one lives in. The Fifties saw the atomic age, the Sixties saw the effects of the Cold War, the Seventies saw the horrors of Vietnam, the Eighties were…well…the Eighties, and the Nineties brought horror back in full force. The 2000’s brought terrorism to U.S. soil and the whole world started making less sense than it did.
The major difference between the horror films of the late Seventies and the new over-the-top films of today is not only the level of violence that occurs, but it is in the reporting of the box office receipts. Never before has there been so much emphasis placed on how much money a movie makes as there is now. An opening weekend can either make or break a film, and a film today is not considered successful when analysts predict it should gross this and on opening weekend it makes that. The movie is immediately written off as a failure, which makes little sense considering that so much more revenue is to be made through ancillary markets such as DVD, cable showings, and broadcast television, to say nothing of overseas distribution. Although critics usually revile these films such as HOSTEL, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, SAW, etc., audiences keep coming back for more.
The Internet has opened the door to smaller filmmakers and made it possible for anyone to make a short film and post it for the entire world to see. Fangoria Magazine, getting close to approaching its 30th year, now has Fangoria TV, which provides original and premium content for viewing over the Internet for a monthly fee. More and more horror sites like this are being created daily, and MySpace has put the creators of these works in touch with their fans and made them “friends”. There are more outlets for horror now than ever before, and for the first time more women are reported to be seeing horror films than men, a sure sign that the heroines like Shawnee Smith in SAW are empowering and refreshing to watch.
Best of all, horror film directors such as Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Sergio Martino, Ruggero Deodato, Aristide Massaccesi, Lucio Fulci, Amando de Ossorio, and Narciso Ibáñez Serrador are being discovered by fans the world over through new DVD releases. With the Internet, there’s no excuse for young horror film fans to be ignorant of these giants in the horror genre today.
