Watching movies like Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy back in the '30s, before blood, gore and CGI, before horror movies had scenes that made you jump. I guess audiences today would find these old movies dull. Today, people jump in their seats and scream out loud. Watching these old movies, I wonder how audiences back then reacted to scenes that were supposed to be scary at the time.
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I like these old movies: they have good atmosphere and care about the characters (even if at times, they are obnoxious; see: Frankenstein). Too bad it was a lost art starting in the early 70s (with The Exorcist, and the Italian gore masters Dario Argento and Mario Bava), but the era did produce a couple good low-key, suspense-over-gore horror flicks, like Halloween and The Omen.
shareMy grandfather told me when I was a little boy that he remembered seeing the silent "Phantom of the Opera," and how terrified everyone in the theater was when the Phantom was unmasked. I remember thinking, as I held my Aurora monster model kit of the Phantom, "THIS is what scared you? Oh, brother." Times change.
For my money, no movie before of since has come near "The Exorcist" for scares. That movie remains in a league of its own.
My dad said the same thing about "The Phantom". We like to think of ourselves as more sophisticated viewers now, but the early horrors relied more on psychological thrills than they do today. I can't for the life of me see why exploding heads are more sophisticated than Karloff backing into a room and slowly turning to reveal the Monster. I watched about 2 minutes of something called "Meat Train" yesterday, and I'm convinced we've traded vulgarity for chills. I wasn't scared; I was disgusted.
shareMy mother, who is to the north of 80, says she saw BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN when she was about 8 or 9 and couldn't sleep that night. She still gets the creeps when seeing the biplane circle the globe on a 30's Universal flick!
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Magic, Rosemary's Baby, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut
shareI agree with you about The Exorcist. I highly recommend you check out the recent Spanish film [REC], though. It's very well done and truly terrifying.
shareLMAO! What are you babbling about? A few good horror flicks? The late 60s through the 70s was the golden age for horror films.
shareYeah, my mother in law said she couldn't sleep after watching these movies. Different time. These were the first horror movies! Just like 10/11 years old now; their first horror movies were Saw, The Ring. 40 years from now they will be considered mild.
What was that movie with the train coming towards the audience back in the 30's was it??? People fled the building. It was all new to them.
Come on, Franklin! It'll be a fun trip!
My grandmother, to this day, still remembers going to the movie theaters and seeing "Dracula's Daughter" when she was 7 and "The Wolf Man" when she was in her early teens. To this day, she can't watch "The Wolf Man" without having nightmares. It must have been something to see horror movies in the theaters back then.
shareMy mother still refuses to watch Hitchcock's "THE BIRDS" again after she saw it in the theatre. And she was in her early twenties back then. Flocks of birds still give her the creeps. People were much more sensitive back then. Surely today, our senses are dulled.
"What was that movie with the train coming towards the audience back in the 30's was it??? People fled the building. It was all new to them. "
I realize this is years later, but...
This story is of the late 1880's/1890's - and I believe it is a myth. People were familiar with the concept of moving pictures even before the invention of cinema. Set this story in the 30's and it becomes completely ridiculous.
HOWEVER, in the 1930's, the Lumiere brothers did remake their early documentary short of a train pulling into a station with an early 3D camera. The stories of audiences being so frightened as to move to the back of the theater would make more sense if it were in 3D.
Here's the film: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Arriv%C3%A9e_d'un_train_en_gare_de_La_C iotat
My short films: http://www.youtube.com/user/jthix2554/videos?flow=grid&view=0
Cool, thanks.
Come on, Franklin! It'll be a fun trip!
I was a kid in the 60's, and all the monster movies really scared me, but Dracula the most. It scared me, but yet I watched it anyway!
shareI heard on the radio today that there is still someone alive from that movie; the young lady who speaks the first line of dialogue turns 102 today. That would be a great project for a film student, to interview her about the making of the film and public reaction to it, even the cast's reaction to it.
shareI read some articles on this and back then even the stage Play of Dracula scared the audience...(women mostly). Bela creeped them out in his live version of Drac.
When the film version was announced some worried of heart attacks in theaters.
This stuff was totally NEW to them. It really did scare people at that time.
In the 50s it was The Creature (Black Lagoon) and Godzilla then Aliens that scared those folks.
In the 70s it was Satan personified and killer sharks then undying slashers.
Every generation ups the ante.
I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer.
I remember my Dad told me when he was 12, which would have been around 1938, he saw a double feature of Dracula and Frankenstein, and then had to walk home alone from the theatre late at night. He told me he never forgot that!
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The conception about what "scary" is in a film changes through the time. Actual horror movies make people jump and the people say that's scary, but I don't know really why. I could say that's unexpected, but neither it is, because you know that after a long silence it will come the loud noise/scream and all the people will jump up from their seats. But that's scary for many people...
I think "scary" has more to do with the tension, suspense, the atmosphere and the real care about the characters (this last point never happens in the modern horror movies I've seen). And I'm thinking in the 80's horror directors like Carpenter, Craven,Cronenberg, Romero, Argento, etc.
And this old movies have a lot of atmosphere, though maybe not too much tension but I think the enough for the sensibility of those times without blood, gore and CGI.
As others have posted, I have a story my grandmother told me. She, her sister, and her brother all went to see the original "Frankenstein", when it first came out, of course.
They had to walk home, in the dark, afterward. The shortest way was through a rather large, hilly, graveyard. To make it worse, her brother ran ahead and jumped out at both her and her sister. After that, they ran all the way home.
She said she never went to see horror, except in the day time, again.