Advances in Horror Movies

History of special effects in horror movies

It's that time of year again when the nights draw in and the leaves start falling. Fizzy soda is replaced by pumpkin spiced lattes, salads make way for comforting soups and stews. Many people are digging out the fancy dress costumes from the attic, brushing up on their pumpkin carving skills and hoarding candy in preparation for the annual bombardment of trick-or-treating.

It is of course Halloween. Whilst Halloween has its origins in an accent Celtic celebration as a festival to end the year and celebrate the dead, in recent decades it has taken on a new life as a way for people to indulge their passion for the spooky, scary and supernatural.

Whilst children are gearing up for a candy fueled sugar rush and students put together the killer horror-themed costumes to wow at the many clubs and house parties. Many adults will be planning a close-knit horror movie marathon to watch classics and the latest Hollywood blockbuster horror movies. Have you ever thought about how the technology of special effects has changed? Do the latest developments help the audience become more immersed?

The 1950s

According to moviehistory.com horror movies of the ‘50s saw a transformation away from the themes of gothic horror sprinkled with camp humour set in quaint far-flung European villages into something based more on modern life. The returning soldiers of the second world war had witnessed horrors far beyond what Hollywood had been portraying in the earlier periods.

With the growing American economy and the bold advance into post-war modernity coupled with the rapid scientific achievements of the second world war from advancements such as atomic energy to advances in computer technology, The focus of this era of horror movies shifted to that of a pessimistic future of technology gone amok. Furthermore, this period is sprinkled with political pressure as the Western allies entered into a Cold war with the USSR.

Ray Harryhausen was a pioneer of the Hollywood B-movie stop-frame animation (where motion is captured from models with one photo at a time) with movies such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955).

This period also saw the early adoption of the 3D movie, which would see renaissances thought the decades, with movies such as The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and It Came from Outer Space (1953). Whilst pioneering the technology failed to take off long term.

These early “Blockbusters” also saw great advancement in prosthetics and costume design with movies like The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) utilising a rubber suit costing more than $15,000 at the time.

Films such as Godzilla (1952) played on the idea of the sleeping giant being awoken following the onset of nuclear war, playing into the increasing paranoia of the movie-going public over the looming threat of the cold war.

The 1970’s

Horror films of the ‘70s saw a shift away from the pessimism of technology in the ‘50s and the slow-burning thriller of Hitchcock’s 60's masterpieces onto the navel-gazing of the post-war cultural phenomenon. The looming oil crisis and war in Vietnam took the shine of the post-war off the American Dream. Movies such as the Exorcist (1973) movies away from the science function inspired horrors of earlier cinema and placed the ‘danger’ much closer to home.

This period is maybe best remembered from a technology viewpoint in the refinement of animatronics in Jaws (1975) and Alien (1979) wowing audiences with their impressive effects.

The 1990’s

In the ‘90s horror movies shied away from the grotesque and bloody portrayals of the 70's and ‘80s and the sequel fell out of fashion as audiences began to tire of the never-ending villain surviving just enough to come back for one more sequel Freddie Kruger, Chuckey et al. Instead, horror movies of this generation went back to more psychological thrillers and as the decade progressed themes based on the end of the millennium came to prominence.

During this period ‘stranger danger’ had reached a crescendo as the news filed of kidnappings and serial killers fulling public fears. This created hits such as Silence of the Lambs (1992) which relied more on scripts and excellent casting than visual effects.

Whilst CGI (Computer Generated Images) had been experimented with for some time to mixed success, Terminator 2 (1991) saw a great leap forward in fidelity and realism. Following this movies such as Mars Attacks! (1996) and The Mummy (1999) used CGI to enhance the visual effects of their movies. Although CGI is now a commonly used technique it is often criticised by some for the Uncanny Vally effect where the CGI looks good but doesn’t look right. Furthermore, CGI has a tendency of looking good for the time and era but begins to date quickly.

Maybe the defining horror movie of the decade The Blair Witch Project (1999) would be a precursor of the future of movies and program production as the 2000s would see a rise in user-generated content and low budget productions often investigating quirky ideas. The Blair Witch was filmed on consumer camcorders and was presented and marketed as found footage using tried and tested horror movie techniques of not revealing anything and keeping the suspense in the unknown.