icebluenothing | Influential.

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in your opinion what are the horror films that changed the genre..not necessarily your favorites but the ones that reinvited horror.

To which I responded:

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Oooh, what a good question. I'd go with:

The Haunting (1963) -- the haunted-house movie that all haunted-house movies pay homage to, whether they know it or not. (Stephen King especially has a thing for this story.) Pay no attention to the 90's remake. None.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) -- How many movies manage to invent a monster? Zombies as we know them come from this movie, and have been done to death a million times since. (Pun not intended.) This film has heavily influenced not just horror films, but pop culture.

The Exorcist (1973) -- Something else that filtered into pop culture, and something else that invented a genre -- the supernatural religious thriller.

Friday the 13th (1980) -- Sure, I know Black Christmas may have beaten it to the punch by years, I know Halloween may be a strong contender for the slasher-genre crown, but come on . . . this is the one that's stayed in everyone's mind. If you mention "Michael Myers" to the man on the street, he'll think you mean the comedian, but everyone knows that "Jason" means a hockey mask, a butcher knife, and an unstoppable body count.

An American Werewolf in London (1981) -- This one raised the bar on make-up/special effects technology, blurring the line between the two beautifully and creating a new look for horror. Often imitated, never equalled in terms of sheer impact.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) -- Many horror films since have used dream logic, but never with so much style. Freddy is one of the icons of the genre.

Near Dark (1987) -- This is the movie that saved vampires from being just foofy gothy ponces in velvet capes, and gave us vampires that were thoroughly modern, urban, dirty, and dangerous.

Scream (1996) -- The movie that, for good or ill, revived the horror genre by reinventing it as hip, clever, and self-aware.

This is fun. Any others?

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"everyone knows that "Jason" means a hockey mask, a butcher knife, and an unstoppable body count." *blush* You *do* care...

American Werewolf: Don't forget the humor. This was the first horror movie I recall seeing that was *funny* as well as being disturbing.

Crap, except for maybe Lifeforce, which made an impression only because it had a naked babe running around for 30 minutes and I was 14, I think you hit most of them.

Alien redefined the boogeyman in haunted house genre in many ways. It had elements of the slasher in the corner (the big bug) and the possessed building (Mother) themes all rolled into one.

Nosferatu didn't reinvent horror films... it *INVENTED* them in most ways. And I defy you to call Count Orlok 'foofy'.

The Ring. Not the Japanese original, but the American remake. For once, the remake was better in my opinion. Tight, heady, and so frickin' creepy I spent the night placing my soul in the hands of a plastic Frosty the Snowman ring for safety. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/kickaha/6426.html) I can't recall a horror mystery that reached that level of intelligence or depth of visceral clawing heebeejeebees.

I'd have to name the one-two punch of Dracula (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0021814/) and Frankenstein (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0021884/) in 1931 that effectively created the entire genre of horror cinema in America. Because of the success of those two films, Universal followed in the next few years with The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, the list goes on and on. Of course after a while the movies began to parody themselves, to the point where Abbot and Costello turned them into outright comedies; but the fact remains that to this day Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff continue to be the first images that come to mind when you name Dracula and Frankenstein.

For something more modern, take a look at

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I'd have to name the one-two punch of <a href="http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0021814/">Dracula</a> and <a href="http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0021884/">Frankenstein</a> in 1931 that effectively created the entire genre of horror cinema in America. Because of the success of those two films, Universal followed in the next few years with The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, the list goes on and on. Of course after a while the movies began to parody themselves, to the point where Abbot and Costello turned them into outright comedies; but the fact remains that to this day Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff continue to be the first images that come to mind when you name Dracula and Frankenstein.

For something more modern, take a look at <a href-"http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/">The Thing</a> by John Carpenter. Just as the whole AIDS paranoia was beginning to take off, along comes a film that exploited that fear to the fullest. Landmark stuff, here.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077745/) - Ostensibly an "alien invasion" Sci-Fi film; to my mind it was more of a psychological horror film dealing with themes of alienation, loss of self, and justified paranoia. The 1956 original is much more of a cold-war "invasion" movie, some of which spills over into the remake.

Psycho (1960) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054215/) - The film that effectively launched the "killer psychopath" branch of horror; and was in part responsible for spawning the "slasher" genre.

An American Werewolf in London was also one of the first horror movies that was intentionally humourous; with a quirky, dark sense of humour lacking in the vast majority of the genre, before or since.

I don't know that i'd necessarily class slasher films as horror, i think they're a different genre entirely. And while Friday the 13th is definitely one of the most well-known of the genre, and the one that popularized it; there is plenty of precedent in the underground film world. Could Friday the 13th and Halloween have been made without the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Herschel Gordon Lewis as inspiration?

The Exorcist (1973) -- Something else that filtered into pop culture, and something else that invented a genre -- the supernatural religious thriller.

actually, that genre was reinvented for cinema (from fictional antecedents such as the Black Magic series of books by Dennis Wheatley) by Rosemary's Baby.

i'd add: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. this film made use of a semi-documentary style, contributing greatly to its level of horror, and inspiring countless other films, ranging from the slashers to The Blair Witch Project.

The Wolf Man. for all intents, this movie created the werewolf as it is now known. silver, the transmission of the "disease" by a scratch or wound from a werewolf, wolfsbane, the pentagram - all of these were invented from whole cloth for this movie.

The Mummy (1932). like Night of the Living Dead and The Wolf Man, this one invented a new monster, which the sequels reduced to a shambling, bandage-wrapped zombie. this original, though, is beautiful and atmospheric.

Godzilla. again with the inventing a new type of monster, this movie developed the idea of the horror of something large and elemental, in the face of which humans are as motes of dust to be swept aside. very Lovecraftian, in that way. Mothra proceeded to add a strange Freudian-feeling twist to the formula that was to prove compelling.

King Kong (1933). subverted the idea that horror impinges on the protagonists. in the end, the horror of this movie is in what the protagonists have done, unthinking.

Jaws (1975) -- This movie needs to be on the list. The amazing strength and utter likeability of the characters mixed with a very primal fear of things with lots of sharp teeth just beneath the surface of our perception makes this one a classic thriller. In terms of genre-definition, it's got to be the slow reveal of the shark and the intelligence of the dialogue (even if the shark data was inaccurate.)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) -- I don't know a single person who walked out of the theater after seeing this movie who wasn't stunned. The brilliant twist of this movie was that the real villain was already caught and in a cage. The killer-at-large was in-ci-dental. Hannibal Lecter was supremely charming, brilliant, and detestable at the same time. How many of us were secretly rooting for him to escape in the end? When you talk about bad guys in horror flicks, Lecter is the benchmark.

Influential.

Oooh! Oooh! I'll play!

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I differ on this...

Great topic!