What made older horror films classic?

[Cabby]

What are modern horror filmmakers missing? It seems like there has been a big decline in the quality of horror films in the last 20 or so years. As a big fan of horror I'm interested in theories as to why they aren't as classic or memorable anymore.

What made films like Evil Dead, Halloween, TCM, and Nightmare on Elm Street so influential yet filmmakers nowdays seem to ignore them?

In other words, how would you fix the horror genre?

[A Tortured Duckling]

Originally Posted by Cabby

What are modern horror filmmakers missing? It seems like there has been a big decline in the quality of horror films in the last 20 or so years. As a big fan of horror I'm interested in theories as to why they aren't as classic or memorable anymore.

What made films like Evil Dead, Halloween, TCM, and Nightmare on Elm Street so influential yet filmmakers nowdays seem to ignore them?

In other words, how would you fix the horror genre?

First of all, i think the cliches are running rampant these days. I personally despise the fact that people (especially women) on camera are ALWAYS shown as ridiculously stupid without the smallest bit of common sense. It's like they want you to believe all women are dumb bimbos who do nothing but make exceptionally poor decisions and scream their lungs out in "horror film" circumstances. This irks me to no end.

Besides that, film makers rely too much on blood and gore these days. Don't get me wrong, i am a total gore fiend. For me, the more disgusting, depraved, nasty, ****ed up carnage...the more i enjoy it. However - what is left to create any real suspense? Sure it takes skill to create such things in a way that actually makes it look real...but it doesn't add anything to the overall suspenseful atmosphere (i think) a horror film should have. Nothing is left to imagination anymore, and i believe that's a big contributor to this issue.

Next up...CGI. Again, i like CGI when it's done well, in the right movies. However, creating realistic looking blood and gore with CGI is pretty hard to do. Think about the scene in The Devil's Double, where the fat guy's stomach gets cut open, and the neck shot in The Devil's Rejects. Even some "bleed out" shots in Sons of Anarchy suffer from this crap. It looks fake and stupid, like it's not even part of the actual character experiencing this bodily harm. I much, much prefer the low budget / "classic" gore effects over this fancy "but not really" kind of crap.

I might have more as the thread goes on...but this is it, for now.

[stvn1974]

In older "classic" horror films you cared about the characters. Now you root for the killer to kill them in the most horrible way possible because they are so annoying. You cared about Jamie Lee Curtis and the kids in Halloween, can't say that for Whatshishername from that CW show.

[Nick1138]

I wouldn't necessarily say that horror filmmakers today are less inventive or creative than in the 70s-80s. I'd say that the tiredness of the genre, at least in part, stems more from studios wanting to take less risks on new material and properties. It's true for a lot of other genres as well. Pre-established material/franchises already start with a built-in fan base (or at least, that's what the studios want to hear). Even if good projects may have pretty low price tags, most of the time studios won't want to take the gamble that some of them would have taken 20-30 years ago.

To back that up, just look at how many of the good recent horror movies are actually independent productions. Sure, they may end up being distributed by by the bigger studios/distributors, but they're being made independently and then picked up.

Personally, I miss having FUN new horror movies during the Summer box office season.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by stvn1974

In older "classic" horror films you cared about the characters. Now you root for the killer to kill them in the most horrible way possible because they are so annoying. You cared about Jamie Lee Curtis and the kids in Halloween, can't say that for Whatshishername from that CW show.

One other thing is that they used to be shown in theaters--
In those days, whether it was 30's Universal, or 50's Roger Corman, or 70's-80's teen slasher, you didn't grab the "prestige" audience, you had to grab a Friday night impulse audience of folks who saw the movie poster in the lobby and wanted the thrills promised. (Look, the Creature's carrying off the girl! The Robot's destroying the city!)
You probably wouldn't be around the second week--most films weren't, and even in the 70's, a local theater might bump you after one week--so whatever thrills you were promising, you had to make darn sure you delivered them at all cost on that first weekend. That's what made them "cheap" thrills, since you weren't there to worry about Art.
(If you want to think about it, that's what also made them scary: Our own nightmares are low-budget, and a big-budget movie doesn't hit us where we live.)

Nowadays, we get young "breakout" filmmakers who'd rather be doing shows for CW, or worse, who just came from CW. They're the ones who want the look to be "slick" and packaged for the "energy of the young audience". They're caught between paying tribute to, and being embarrassed by, the Friday-night conventions of the original vintage horror movies--So, as Scream 4 joked, everything now has to be bigger, and more stylized, and farther removed from the hometown scares of stalked babysitters, summer-camp teens, or just walking down a dark street wondering if there's a black panther following you.

[RandyK]

Originally Posted by Nick1138

Personally, I miss having FUN new horror movies during the Summer box office season.

I miss fun new horror movies around Halloween. That Paranormal Activity crap done killed that.

[legendarymatt92]

It's just because we're watching them now.

Whether you're talking about the Universal horrors of the '30s, the Hammer series in the '50s or the Video Nasties boom in the '80s, horror was always been as the bottom genre -- it's the cast-off bastard-child of cinema, and the people who watched it were seen as lacking a refined taste. It courts controversy and appeals to people's base desires, which is why it's seen as degrading and not real art ("who on earth would want to see people getting murdered for fun?!").

Today's horror is more socially accepted and, for the most part, over-used, but it still depends solely on utilising and representing your deepest fears; that's why horror contains killers who don't die, evil that isn't contained and can't be stopped, and features endless sequels.

It doesn't help that, because horror has been around for 70+ years now, certain conventions have become clichéd and the whole genre has become rather stale for us: we feel like we've seen it all before. But that's probably how audiences felt in the late '60s, after the recent Hammer horrors had simply updated the old Universal ones and added extra, better, effects. In essence, that's all horror is doing now: using the same stories, the same characters and locations, and just updating the effects for a more desensitized audience.

Basically, horror today is how it's always been, it's just that, because we're living through it, the great ones haven't become classics yet.

[nathanp]

too many horror movies these days rely too much on trying to make you cringe instead of keeping you in suspense. Sure watching someone's mouth sewn to another guy's anus is gross, but it's not scary.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by legendarymatt92

Today's horror is more socially accepted and, for the most part, over-used, but it still depends solely on utilising and representing your deepest fears; that's why horror contains killers who don't die, evil that isn't contained and can't be stopped, and features endless sequels.

It's TOO socially accepted, to the point that it's not about teens anymore.
The only audiences old enough to appreciate Things Scaring You are the teens who used to go to horror movies in the 80's, and now have kids, jobs and mortgages. Which is why most horror movies today are about older folks with adorable 7-12 yo. kids, creative high-paying jobs, and beautiful big fixer-upper houses in New England.
As perfectly symbolized in "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" by Nancy of the first Elm Street now being a thirty-something mom worried about supernatural killers coming after her six-yo. kid! (Which created the "Mommy-horror" craze that caught on after the Ring remake, and resurfaced years later as the "Daddy-horror" spinoff of the last few possessed-daughter movies we've gotten over the past year.)
It's only us old-fogeys, who grew up and turned into our parents, who remember worrying about whether killers would stalk our high-school Friday-night babysitting jobs or sleepover parties; it's the kids who get handed empty, phony, slick editing-room tripe they can stay emotionally on the outside of and feel superior to.

The other problem is that the 80's created Horror Franchises, so the first thing every producer catches on after the first movie becomes a hit is that the audience clearly knows the killers name now, and comes back to root for him as the main draw of the movie.
When we had the preview for "Last Exorcism Part II" telling us not only that the demon from the first movie was back, but that he had a name and a backstory as well, you could tell the producer's mainstream-dream marketing had kicked in.
Think of any horror franchise in the last few years that didn't immediately want us to be on intimate first-name basis with either the main character or the villain. Go ahead, any one.

[Cabby]

I think the reason The Cabin in the Woods will prove to be so influential is that future horror films may have to have a self-referential tone and meta influenced humor because we're so used to the cliches that the only way to truly fix the horror genre is to turn the cliches on their sides or make in front of them. I'm hoping we see more films like Scream and The Cabin in the Woods in the future.

[Pondosinatra]

They didn't have 'Friday the 13th' anywhere in the title....

[gilapimp]

Nice thread! It's been interesting reading some your thoughts on this!

[cinemaphile]

Nostalgia, and that's it.

People look back with rose-colored glasses. For starters, a lot of those movies weren't very good. But we remember liking them in our youth and so nostalgia skews our assessment.
There were just as many crappy horror movies back then as there are now. People just only remember the good ones and forget the bad, while current movies - good and bad - are fresh in their minds. It's just like people who think Saturday Night Live was SO much better back in the old days. No, there were just as many crappy skits, more actually. But all you see of the old days is "best of", so we look at those and think, "wow, all the skits were funny!" Nope.

[Midnight Rambler]

Originally Posted by nathanp

too many horror movies these days rely too much on trying to make you cringe instead of keeping you in suspense

Precisely !

[Tybo28]

The fact that they tend to make money doesn't help. Horror seems to be the one genre where people will go to see just about anything. Why put any effort into something new or exciting when you can remake a famous movie or throw together some lame ghost story with a couple jump scares. Torture porn did some serious damage as well. Gore took over, when before it was just a sub genre. There's no suspense, no excitement. Every once in awhile something comes along that's decent, but never at the level of quality of 70s' horror, which I think was the real deal. Horror movies took themselves seriously then, now they're all half comedies with too much cgi violence.

[Kaiju]

It's mainly because it feels like everything has been done already... Originality is hard to come by in horror films.

Most of them follow the same structure, not all, but most. Which is why most mainstream horror films suck these days. Really hoping that Evil Dead isn't one of them though.

[Abdrewes]

I think there are just fewer competent visual film makers these days working in the horror genre. Effective horror is dependent on an assured eye behind the camera that knows frankly how to operate a camera: where to place it, when to move it and what objects to accentuate. Polanski, Freidkin, Hitchcock, Argento & even Lynch were all more than capable in this regard. It didn't hurt that they worked with the best.

From what I've seen of Ti West (House of the Devil), he's more than capable of mastering atmosphere.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by Cabby

I think the reason The Cabin in the Woods will prove to be so influential is that future horror films may have to have a self-referential tone and meta influenced humor because we're so used to the cliches that the only way to truly fix the horror genre is to turn the cliches on their sides or make in front of them. I'm hoping we see more films like Scream and The Cabin in the Woods in the future.

It's an excellent film, but its the farthest thing from scary or effective horror.

[Punishment1o1]

I would say that mostly because older horror movies introduced iconic characters that are still around and still relevant these day. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface and Pinhead, among others have all been around since the 70s/80s, yet people today still know who they are. The same can't be said about a lot of horror movies these days. To me, there are no real iconic characters.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by cinemaphile

Nostalgia, and that's it.

People look back with rose-colored glasses. For starters, a lot of those movies weren't very good. But we remember liking them in our youth and so nostalgia skews our assessment.
There were just as many crappy horror movies back then as there are now. People just only remember the good ones and forget the bad, while current movies - good and bad - are fresh in their minds. It's just like people who think Saturday Night Live was SO much better back in the old days. No, there were just as many crappy skits, more actually. But all you see of the old days is "best of", so we look at those and think, "wow, all the skits were funny!" Nope.

Actually, SNL was funnier, and horror movies were scarier, for pretty much the same reason:
In the late 70's, they were all we HAD, so they both had to be well-trained at what they did. Necessity is not only the mother of invention, it makes you more talented at it.

SNL performers had to be improv artists, and were recruited from Second City Toronto/Chicago, where they'd worked for years on stage crafting coherent sketches in front of tough live audiences, not standups recruited to be writers, upgraded to performers when their contracts came due, and then going out to form production companies if they weren't.
Horror films before VHS and Cable had play theaters and drive-ins on Friday night or DIE--None of this "Made for Syfy and make your money back on Redbox" crap; if you didn't make those dating teens jump for their five bucks, you lost what little budget of your shirt you started with.

We've lost a lot by depending on cheap "alternative" sources for our horror and our comedy, making both seem easier than they actually are.
If you want to know what makes someone laugh, tell someone a joke; if you want to know what scares you, turn up the electric blanket, eat a couple burritos before bed, and take notes from your next nightmare. The basics are always free to learn, and if you get them from anywhere else, it's something entirely else that you're learning.