History of horror

With the subject of horror, The concept is such a popular genre that it has spawned many different sub genres. From the slash and gore or Saw to the psychological thriller of The Shinning

In The Beginning

The horror genre is one of the original genres to hit the scream since the 1890s were the first depiction of supernatural beings appeared with the most noticeable being the in 1896 Le Manoir du diable (The House Of The Devil) which in popular circle has been credited with being first horror film.

Horror's first monster appears in the early turn of the 20th century in the full length horror Quasimodo. With the earliest horror film making of german decent, Horror as a genre featured heavily even in the early appearance of the Hollywood films which included the Hunchback Of Notre Dame and even more notably Phantom Of The Opera.

Horror Place As A Genre

Horrors in context to the film world has left with the ever increasing popularity of the genre, meaning horror is now a stand alone genre. This is brought to life by key directors like Steven Spielburg's Jaws, John Carpenters Halloween and Ridely Scotts Alien. All of these film critically acclaimed

However film such as The New York Ripper and Tenebre where faced with heavy controversy in the UK with very hostile content and the easy retail of films at the time the worry of a younger generation forming a copycat approach to the new films so coining the phrase "video nasties".

Audience

With a huge range of sub genres horror has a ever changing and varying target audience to the out and out gore fests in hostile and Scream to the mind tingling adventure of Saw and Final Destination.

However Horror generally has a core audience which overall love a good scare. The horror audience is not always the same group of the people as people may prefer the slasher or the survival sub genres. The general audience for the horror genre is male and average age of 24.

This highlights the reasoning for the popularity and box office success of the slash sub genre.

For example all of the Scream franchise all in the top 5.

1	Scream	Dim.	$103,046,663	1,994	$6,354,586	1,413	12/20/96
2	Scream 2	Dim.	$101,363,301	2,688	$32,926,342	2,663	12/12/97
3	Scream 3	Dim.	$89,143,175	3,467	$34,713,342	3,467	2/4/00
4	Freddy Vs. Jason	NL	$82,622,655	3,014	$36,428,066	3,014	8/15/03
5	The Texas Chainsaw Massacre	NL	$80,571,655	3,018	$28,094,014	3,016	10/17/03
6	I Know What You Did Last Summer	Sony	$72,586,134	2,524	$15,818,645	2,524	10/17/97
7	Friday the 13th (2009)	WB (NL)	$65,002,019	3,105	$40,570,365	3,105	2/13/09
8	Halloween (2007)	MGM/W	$58,272,029	3,475	$26,362,367	3,472	8/31/07
9	Halloween: H20	Dim.	$55,041,738	2,669	$16,187,724	2,607	8/7/98
10	My Bloody Valentine 3-D	LGF	$51,545,952	2,534	$21,241,456	2,534	1/16/09

Generally all of the horror films in which we are looking at 15-18 age range and mainly male

audience.

Overall, Horror as a genre is still thriving even from its humble beginnings of just big bad monster and slash and grab movies and moved to more in the mind horrors with the genre challenging blair witch project.