Horror Genre Research.

Todorov's Narrative Theory.

Russian theorist, Tzvetan Todorov, suggests that all narratives follow a three part structure. They begin with equilibrium, where everything is balanced, progress as something comes along to disrupt that equilibrium, and finally reach a resolution, when equilibrium is restored.

This simple formula can be applied to virtually all narratives - it is a more formal way of thinking about the beginning, middle and end, and it takes into account Aristotle's theory that all drama is conflict ie there is a disequilibrium at the heart of every narrative.

                                                                                                            


Horror films are move that strive to gain the emotion of fear, horror and terror from the viewers. Their plots frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental illness. Many horror movies also include a central villain.

oes are largely based on classic literature of the genre of horror. Examples such as Dracula, Frankenstein and The phantom of the Opera.Horror genre has changed in violence throughout the years, early horror m

In contrast recent horrors often draw insecurities of life after World War II, which give three distinct but related, sub-genres; the horror-of-personality psycho film, the horror of armageddon (Invasion of the Body Snatchers film) and the horror of the demonic (The Exorcist film) 

Furthermore horror films have been dismissed as violent, low budgets B movies and exploitation films. On the other hand all the major studios and many respected directors including Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski and Stanley Kubrick have made their forays into the genre.

Serious critics have analyzed horror films through the prisms of genre theory and theauteur theory. Some horror films incorprate element of other genres (hybrid genre) such as sci fi, fantasy, mockumentary, black comedy and thrillers.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film 

 'Horror Films are unsettling films designed to frighten and panic, cause dread and alarm, and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. Horror films effectively center on the dark side of life, the forbidden, and strange and alarming events. They deal with our most primal nature and its fears: our nightmares, our vulnerability, our alienation, our revulsions, our terror of the unknown, our fear of death and dismemberment, loss of identity, or fear of sexuality.'  
http://www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms.html  





Legacy of Blood - Book
The Killer
The killer nearly always has a trademark Freddy Kruger in Nightmare on Elm Street has finger knives, striped jumper and crumpled hat. The trademark is what is important not the person wearing it.
The gender of the killer is nearly always male. But there are some films with female killer e.g. scream 2 and Urban Legends. Most killers appear to act alone without accomplishes.
There are two types of killers. One is not a 'complete' human being, and is seen as outside of society. The second group appears as a regular human being, which helps them go undetected. The second type is the most common.
The most common motive is revenge and this is usually obvious in the film. They don't always kill the person who caused the anger they may kill others who get in their way to the main person.



Location
Most horrors are set in one of three places - campus, wilderness and urban, and most of the action takes place here. Not all films use just one location, they could use more than one category. The most common way to leave the final girl alone is to kill off everyone else. Normally it will see her close friends killed in the last half hour of the film, to leave her alone at the end.



Narritive.
Horror Genre is a story in which the focus is on creating a feeling of fear. Such tales are of ancient origin and form a substantial part of the body of folk literature. They can feature supernatural elements such as ghosts, witches, or vampires, or they can address more realistic psychological fears. In Western literature the literary cultivation of fear and curiosity for its own sake began to emerge in the 18th-century pre-Romantic era with the Gothic novel. The genre was invented by Horace Walpole, whose Castle of Otranto (1765) may be said to have founded the horror story as a legitimate literary form. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley introduced pseudoscience into the genre in her famous novel Frankenstein (1818), about the creation of a monster that ultimately destroys its creator.

Horror/Slasher Films

Ten Things to Avoid

A paranoid guide to surviving a slasher scenario

1) Asking stupid questions. Top on any survivors list. If you find yourself having to ask the question ''whos there?'' in a darkened environment, the chances are that you really don't want to hang around for the answer.

2) Snapping twigs. Usually a preamble to certain death.

3) Windows. Anyone near a window will either end up dragged through it or have something dead thrown through it at them.

4) Cats. Movie cats can lock themselves inside closets in order to leap out at you just when things are at their most tense. They can also calm the most jittery- natured character to a point where they no longer remember that they've just received a menacting phone call, been followed by strange figures, have a dark secret in their past etc. and thus make them easy prey for the bulky figure about to launch themselves from out of the shadows.

5) Cars. Cars never work. If they are working they will break down as far away from civilization as it is possible to be. Starting a car when being chased is pointless as the engine will constantly fail to turn over. And if it does, check the back seat, there will probably be a maniac in it. If not, he will be on the roof.

6) Telephones. You'll be cut off mid sentence. Or someone will strangle you with the cord.

 7) Bathrooms, showers, toilets. Humans are generally at their most vulnerable when naked. Likewise, outside toilets with thin walls, allowing pointed objects to be thrust through them. Inside toilets usually have a nasty habit of concealing severed heads. When told that Psycho had deterred one viewers wife from ever showering again - Hitchcock suggested he sent her to be dry cleaned.

8) Playing practical jokes. No one ever finds them funny and they usually backfire resulting in bloody revenge four, six, ten years later.

9) Drugs, rock music and premarital sex.

10) Finally...Always give a wide berth to any kind of anniversary or significant date on the calender, hospitals with no patients, boiler rooms, basements and heavily wooded areas.