CertifiedTHX

I was thinking about this long before the Oscars, but with that tribute to horror films they put together and the ensuing debate over its content in the Oscar thread, I decided now would be a good time for this.

Movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street are all horror. No question. Graphic death scenes, creepy atmosphere throughout.

I grew up believing that Jaws and Alien were horror. But through adult eyes, I realize they were really just action and sci-fi, respectively. The level of violence in Jurassic Park is about equal to that of Jaws, but no one has ever considered it anything more than a sci-fi thriller.

So, what makes a horror film? What places a film into that genre?

--THX

Trout

Alien is horror, the Sci-fi portion is irrelevant.

Cocacoladude78

As far as the Elm Street films...

The first two Elm Street's feel like horror films... I would classify them both as horror films -- and I know how much people hate Part 2, but I felt it wasn't the worst sequel. That was Freddy's Dead.

Elm Streets 3, and especially 4, feel like MTV Hollywood talk shows doused with action and comedy fare. Take a Karate Kid sequel, a Disney Channel prime time movie, Dungeons and Dragons, and a predecessor to the Harry Potter films (maybe the author of Harry Potter ripped off the Wizard Master), and you have these two sequels. Kids favored parts 3 and 4 heavily (they were the most successful sequels), but that's the problem with them. They started gearing them towards little kids at this point. Remember the board game, lunchbox, trading cards, shirts geared to 8 year old boys (the sizes were this small), etc... They were marketing these two sequels heavily towards little boys. However, they were still fun for the cool kid back then.

Part 5 tries to return to horror, but tries mixing it with the two predecessors which doesn't really work. It has some style in some shots, but falters heavily.

Freddy's Dead is the worst one yet: it's one of the dumbest films I have ever seen. It was targeted towards pure morons. Even at the age of 10, I thought it was stupid. It's a mockery to Mario Bros. and Loony Tunes which were both good projects on their own. This film was geared towards mentally challenged retards.

These are the very two first MTV promotional spots! This is what really destroyed Scary Freddy who people were terrified by only two years beforehand. Freddy introducing music groups, etc. This isn't the Freddy who scared people in 1984. It's a mockery! Tragic!

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naitram

Uh no, it's a sci-fi movie that used some horror-esque techniques that are more psychological in nature. But ultimately it's a discourse on humans' inherent belief that we are the most superior of forms, and deconstructing that illusion through Ash, "mother", and the Alien; everything thereafter stems from that, imo.

RichC2

Horror films, imo, are movies that deal with the fear of a situation - successful or not. Alien is horror flick (trapped with a monster). Nightmare of Elm Street is a horror flick (inescapable monster). Friday the 13th is a horror flick (killer).

A real horror film, imo, is one that takes its time to try and unsettle its audience with potential grotesqueries and dread.

Groucho

Alien is not sci-fi with horror elements. It's horror with sci-fi elements.

Aliens is action with sci-fi elements.

All the rest of the films are poop with crap elements.

notkevinbacon

I've always considered Alien a horror film first before a SciFi film. In some respects it's much like a haunted house movie set in space. The sequels contain far less horror elements... For example, Aliens is an action movie with almost no horror element at all.

I don't think the themes presented in Alien negate the fact it's a horror film.



Would Event Horizon be a horror or a scifi film?


Edit: Groucho beat me to it. Except Alien Resurrection is insane and I kinda love it for that. I'm not sure I've met anyone else who likes it.

Groucho

Horror. Much like Alien, it uses the isolation of space as a scary environment.

Outland is a western with sci-fi elements.

notkevinbacon

For the record, I agree completely with you. I figured it's a good example of a horror film with sci-fi elements.

islandclaws

A foreboding sense of dread at all times.

I'm a hardcore horror junkie, and this will earn my praise every time.

Ash Ketchum

As a child and then an impressionable youth watching all the 1930s, '40s and '50s horror/sci-fi films on TV, the label I recall being applied in conversation to so many of these was "monster movies." Anything that focused on a "monster" was a monster movie. FRANKENSTEIN, KING KONG, THE WOLF MAN, THE THING, THEM!, GODZILLA, RODAN, THE CRAWLING EYE, THE BLOB, THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, GORGO, etc.

I remember the term "science fiction" being applied to space movies or time travel stories like WORLD WITHOUT END, QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE, THE TIME MACHINE (1960), ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS, etc.

When did I become conscious of the term, "horror," as applied to certain of these films? Probably with vampire movies like DRACULA, since vampires were more "human" than monster, and ghost movies like 13 GHOSTS (1960), which was considered "scary" and hence, a horror movie. Also, movies with gruesome killings in them, even when there were no supernatural elements, were considered "horror" as long as they were meant to be scary. These included two films I saw in theaters back then, DEMENTIA 13 and PSYCHO.

As an adult, I tended to keep these labels going, even when lines were blurred. I consider ALIEN to be sci-fi because it all takes on a spaceship traveling through outer space, even though it's essentially a monster movie, like THE THING, and even though it has horror elements. I never found it particularly scary, so it's hard for me to think of it as a horror film. One film I did find scary that same year, DAWN OF THE DEAD, would, I believe, be classified as a horror movie, as would its predecessor, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, which changed some of the basic horror film grammar for all time. The DEAD films also have sci-fi elements but the horror elements seem to me to be the dominant ones. Those two DEAD films are among the very few films I've ever found genuinely scary.

Larry C.

Groucho is on fire here. Not only did the make me But he also makes reference to Outland? Kudos sir!

Sean O'Hara

No, no, no. Back in the 1950s, Galaxy magazine ran an ad proclaiming that they would never publish a Bat Durston story. And as an example, they put up the following two excerpts side by side:

Alien is a Bat Durston story, just with horror as its basis instead of a Western. You could easily rewrite it as a group of people staying at a secluded cabin, and one of them finds something strange in the woods. The only challenge, none too great, would be Ash's motivation.

Machen, Bierce and Lovecraft were challenging notions of human superiority fifty years and more before Alien.

Trout

All that Alien is is a remake of the Old Dark House/Cat and the Canary movies. Instead of a haunted house it takes place on a ship.

Uh no, Alien is about mans fear of sex or rape and birth (penentration and expulsion).