| |
|
| |
Happy Halloween!We love Halloween - it's our favourite holiday - what better time to watch classic horror films deep into the night?
If you haven't got your cosyume yet then you need to click here for our Halloween fancy dress page...
70s Horror Films - Your GuideA faceless, demented killer; the presence of the
demonic; nubile young things drenched in buckets
of blood — these are the hallmarks of 70s horror
films, the decade when the horror genre really came
into it's own both critically and commercially.
70s horror films marked a gradual departure
from the more traditional gothic horror monsters
such as Dracula and Frankenstein that Universal had
started in the 1930s (and Hammer resurrected in the
1950s). America's post-war nuclear assortments of
radiated insects and threatening aliens had also dwindled.
By the mid seventies, these horror movies had worn too thin.
The public was desensitized to their effect. Box office takings were
suffering at the continuing growth of television. The era of the main
horror film companies of Hammer and Amicus was over.
What replaced the old Gothic style in 70s horror films was a huge increase
in the production of gory, graphic horror films. Besides the reasons stated
above, this was also due to social, political and economic changes of the 1960s;
the sexual revolution, the loosening of censorship laws, and the creation of a
new film ratings system by the Motion Picture Association of America, which
included categories for films restricted to adults and pornographic films (R and
X rated). The boundaries for 70s horror films could be pushed further.
In this new climate, filmmakers created horror films noteworthy for their
shocking expositions of body mutilation, bold use of color and electronic music,
everyday and isolated locations and the sexual exploitation of female victims,
made all the more vivid by the turn to realism in films of that era in general.
Relive the defining decade of 70s horror films... ...by browsing our horror films a-z
section. Read up on the horror directors who
brought about this new era. Our study section gives you the low down on the
horror film genres created at that time.
| |
|
|
home
