History of Horror Movies

Informative Speech Outline

The History of Horror Movies

Introduction

Attention Catcher: A girl is running through the woods screaming, tripping and calling for help. A tall man is chasing after her with a big shiny knife. She falls and he looms over her as eerie music plays in the background. She lets out a high

pitched scream as he plunges the knife into her. It is a scene something that movie fans are very familiar with, the classic horror clichÐ"©. But is it enough to actually scare audiences today, especially the horror film buffs?

Listener Relevance: While the theme of horror movies has always been to shock and scare the audience with all of our greatest fears; movies have evolved with time, becoming more gory and twisted with each new movie released.

Speaker Credibility: I know that I love a good scare. I love to be on the edge of my seat waiting to see if the monster can kill them all. But I have also noticed that movies today are less about monsters and ghosts, and more likely to be about real people committing horrific crimes. I set out to see what is scarier, the unspoken, unseen horror of movies from the past, or the in-your-face blood and guts movies of today.

Thesis Statement: Today we will look at the evolution of horror movies.

Preview of Speech: I am going to look at three movies that have influence and take place at different times during the ongoing change of the horror flick, and see why such a change has occurred.

Body

First Point: One of the first horror flicks to hit the screens was a silent black and white thriller called Nosferatu that was released in 1922. Based off of Bram Stokers novel, Dracula, this movie was less about gore, and more about an overall eeriness. The movie is set to a creepy music that was quite effective in giving me the chills, and no one ever said anything in it. It is very artistic, and according to the book The Look of Horror, written in 1990, by Jonathon Sternfield to get every frame just right took director F.W. Murnau quite a few re-shoots. But because of its chilling mood and dark story line,

the movie remains an influence for vampire movies today.

Second Point: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a first in the move from unseen and implied horror, to gore in much of the movie. Released in 1974, it dealt with a meatier subject then Nosferatu. It was based on true events and movie watchers had to sit through scene after scene of killing that they could see, something that was very new at the time. However, compared to movies of today, it leaves a lot to the imagination. There is enough blood to freak out the audience, but some things you just hear.

Third Point: The last movie that I studied was Hostel. Set in a Russian Hostel and released in 2005, it gives a startling look at torture and pain. It includes all of the gruesome scenes and leaves little to the imagination. In fact movie critic Sam Osborn said after its release that it was one of the goriest movies he had ever seen, and wondered about the R rating, believing that it should have been given an NC-17 rating. But gore does not necessarily mean that a movie is scary. The first half of the movie offers no scary moments, and the movie itself was not so much frightening as it was sick and twisted. Yet the movie was named the number one scary film of all time

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