Horror fans are a select bunch. From gore fest fanatics to monster buffs, they can appreciate wildly different things, but what they share is a deep sense of passion for an often dismissed and misunderstood genre. Since the dawn of moving pictures, audiences across the world have been thrilled, frightened, and yes, sometimes even
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Nosferatu – The Nightmare Begins
Even though The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari precedes F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, nothing quite captures the true essence of horror like this movie, considere the original vampire film. Released in 1922 and almost lost instantly due to copyright infringement, Nosferatu represents German Expressionism at its best. A master of the field, Murnau desired to bring
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Halloween – Shifting Perspectives
Tobe Hooper’s raw 1974 production of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Bob Clark’s hugely underrated Black Christmas, amongst others, laid the foundations for the slasher movie subgenre. This groundwork was set in stone by one of horror’s most successful independent films, John Carpenter’s 1978 sensation Halloween. The Perfect Recipe The director, who has recently
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Scream – Reinvention Reigns
The slasher cycle had run its course by the 1990s, giving way to psychological shockers such as The Silence of the Lambs and Jacob’s Ladder. That soon changed with the arrival of Wes Craven’s Scream, which gave the genre a much needed revamp, reviving the industry and giving fans a fresh new focus. Metahorror
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The Exorcist – A New Brand of Terror
After the British Hammer heyday of the 1950s and Alfred Hitchcock’s suspenseful successes, a new and even more terrifying subgenre came to screens to petrify the masses: the occult. Such demon infested productions as Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen and The Amityville Horror influenced the market massively, boasting big budgets and turning impressive profits. The
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Ringu – Bringing Japanese Horror to the Masses
Hideo Nakata’s 1998 Ringu set the horror world alight, providing the turning point for East Asian cinema to capture audiences on a global scale. The film’s premise was simple yet the figure of a long haired woman in a white dress has become almost iconic even in the West, owing to Ringu’s defining impact
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