Friday, 8 July 2011

A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss


Actor and writer Mark Gatiss celebrates the greatest achievements of horror cinema.


This documentary helped us understand the processes of how a horror film is constructed. I found this helpful as it showed horror techniques used and why they were effective. 


Q&A with Mark Gattis on making the 3 part series:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vcwm7




"Why did you stop in the late 70s?"
"We had to stop somewhere and the release of Halloween in 1978 seemed the perfect place. It's a superb film. Almost perfect in its power to shock and scare. But it ushered the age of the slasher movie, effectively killing off 'supernatural' horror for a generation. Of course, there were exceptions but Halloween seemed the natural place to end."
I think Mark makes a good point, that few new changes to horror have been made since the golden age of the 70s horror genre. There are some exceptions such as; Blairwitch with the handy cam style, or Saw introducing extreme scenes of gore, violence and torture. I think that directors are possibly becoming complacent in the genre rarely offering new twists on horror? Leaving audiences bored wanting something new?
  

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