Influential.

[icebluenothing]

Over in horror_films, vegandreamboat wrote:

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?

Comments

Great topic!

[lizardmonk.livejournal.com]

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.