60s/70s Horror vs Modern Horror

I

I want to answer

New member
Anyone out there think that horror films are not what they used to be.

When you think of all the classics made in the 60s and 70s like:
The Omen (1976)
Halloween (1978)
The Exorcist (1973)
Carrie (1976)
The Brood (1979)
Black Christmas (1974)
The Innocents (1961)
Dracula Prince of Darkness (1965)
Psycho (1960)
Village Of The Damned (1960)
The Haunting (1963)

All these films still stand up today but I think that modern horror films are so over done with special effects that a lot of the time they just don't look real.
In the 60s and 70s there was no such thing as CGI or any type of computer effects which is what I think gave those films an advantage so a lot of the time what you see on screen is what they actually filmed which makes it look more real.
Sometimes I think CGI was the worst thing ever to happen to cinema.
There are exceptions. I saw Orphan the other day which I thought was excellent. Also Paranormal Activity looks good.
 
Totally agree have not seen a new decent horror film for years:mad:,you go back to a film like Alien and that was sheer terror(just abloke in a costume:D)brought out the jeebies in all of us.:eek:
 
While I agree with you to a point, I sometimes personally find that they can look a tad dated.

The likes of Halloween/Psycho are great - but most 60's/70's films (from all genres) don't reallly appeal to me, as they just look too much out of date.

However, the cinematography was superb back then. The way they used lighting etc to set the mood and atmosphere rather than just special effects was groundbreaking.
 
Have you seen House of the Devil? Its a 2009 homage to 70s80s horror movies. Very slow but very eerie. Having said that I'd avoid the trailer on the official site because it makes more of the material than there actually is in the movie and you will be disappointed. Check rotten tomatoes for reviews instead.

Some great films on the OPs list though. The original Black Christmas is one of my all time favourites.

I watched Orphan last night. The first two thirRAB were great fun but then it got very silly. But much better than The Uninvited which I gave up on after 20 minutes. Tonight I'm going to watch 'Joshua' and 'Below', both of which rated well on RT.
 
Modern films spend so much time with gruesome images that they forget that more horror can be evoked by showing less .

What you think could happen is often more frightening than actually seeing it happen.

Films filled with CGI won't stand up in 40 years
 
I've seen many horror movies more gory, more sickening, more violent and more unpleasant than "The Haunting" (1963) but I've never seen anything more truly frightening. It's the one movie I will never, ever watch again.:eek:
 
Personally I think we look back through rose tinted specs, i'm not really sure horror has changed that much, it's all very well picking out the odd classic from certain years or decades but guaranteed there was hell of a lot of crap released that same year or decade as well, just as time passes we tend to discard the crap and remember the good.
 
The Classics for me are.

Alien
Aliens
Child's Play
Dawn of the Dead (Original)
Halloween (Original)
Psycho
Nightmare Elm Street (Original)
Night of the Living Dead (Original)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original)
The Thing

A mixture of 70's/80's. I don't think there is a single horror movie from the 90's or 00's that even comes close.
 
I completely disagree when you say horror hasn't changed that much.
Like I said there was no CGI in the 60s and 70s. That's one thing that's changed for starters. The trouble with CGI is that it tenRAB to cover up a bad script.
I remember William Friedkin who directed The Exorcist saying that when Regan went demonic the room was supposed to go very cold. So what they had to do was actually make the set go down to about -15 degrees just so you could see breath coming out of their mouths. No amount of CGI can replace how a human body would react in temperatures like that. That is why it looks more real and also, as one of the other posters said, films that use CGI just won't stand up in 30/40 years time.

Yes there was a lot of crap in the 60s and 70s but I think the great films of that era are much better than the 'great' films of nowadays.
 
The original versions of Halloween & Psycho are still the cream of the horror crop.

Aside from overuse of CGI I think another problem with modern horror is repetition. There are so many remakes, sequels & using ideas that have been done to death without any real attempt to put a fresh new spin on them.
 
I watched that with two frienRAB, in broad daylight with the curtains open, and we still ended up climbing the back of the chairs and chewing our fingernails off!

I would watch it again, but the remake, for me, shows the big difference in the eras/styles. In the original, you're panicking about a possible face in the pattern on the wallpaper, in the remake, Owen Wilson gets his head knocked off, and nothing!
 
It certainly seems as if horror has lost it's edge,probably going back to the early 90's.This was when horror dropped off the radar due the influx of early 80's slashers,with their obvious cliches,making the genre seem very very laughable.

However,the horror movies of the 60's and 70's had a half written book to work from.Times were changing,so hard hitting themes that few film makers would have risked trying,were now ready to be seen.SFX had obviously improved from the 40's and 50's,so realistic looking horror could be created more easily.Then there was the influence from Europe.

It is difficult to be original when the world has seen everything thing from dream stalking child molestors to demonic possession of a 12 year old.We've seen killer dolls,cannibal tribes,graphic gore,aliens,ghost stories with the obligatory twist ending,100's of slashers.Hell,we've even had a subgenre taking the p*ss out of the industry.


In saying all this,movies such as Saw,Martyrs and The Mist are just as strong or interesting as most horror's of the 60's and 70's,IMO.
 
I had no trouble watching the remake . . . . apart from it being crap.:)

The original is on TCM almost every week and I've never once been tempted.
The book is pretty creepy too but not as traumatising.
 
You only look back through rose tinted specs if you are going by memory alone.

Most of the films in question ( good and bad)are available on dvd and have been for many years for us to watch in a modern context so its easy to make comparisons with todays junk.

Of course horror has changed - the amount of gore on show today is unprecedented and while glimpses of gore were effective in the old days the constant splash of blood and guts onscreen today is not as effective .

Compare the original Halloween with Halloween 2 and its gory slasher ripoRAB like Friday the 13th etc and Halloween is still more effective.
 
nothing can beat the horror movies of the 60's and 70's and remakes tend to not be a patch on the orignals but saying that there are films today that are styled on the old horror which have turned out really good

a lot of flims today are just a CGI fest which totally takes everything away that a horror film should be
 
When I said horror hasn't changed I wasn't talking about the technical aspects etc, obviously film making techniques have moved on and whatnot and while CGI can be an effective tool at times i'm with everybody when it comes to it's use, it does get seriously overused these days, give me a prop and some pigs blood any day of the week.

My point was that we still get decent horror, 90% of it is dross but we still get the odd classic and good movies, same as in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and this decade.

There's been plenty of great horror coming out over the last ten years, if anything it's a great time to be a horror fan, at no time in history has it been easier to look beyond your own shores and pick up some great foreign horror.
 
Most of the modern horror films may be entertaining in their own right, but they mostly appear to be just gratuitous violence porn.
There just appears to be a bleak sadism that comes from the imagination of the film makers themselves. Many of them tend to just make me feel empty and that just by watching some of them they make me feel as though I'm slightly less of a person than I was before I watched them.
The Devils Rejects is one such example. I don't think I took anything good away from the viewing experience of it other than a horrible nasty feeling and a feeling of empty bleakness.

Some of them are well made good films though such as Final Destination and the original Saw film. But you still go away with a feeling of bleakness such as 'what's the point of living if we're all going to die anyway?', or 'What a horrible place the world is when you see the worst of what humanity can offer'.

But anyway, enjoy the rest of your Christmas and have a happy new year.:D
 
I do agree to an extent. The examples listed by the OP are classics. They were great back then and they're still great today. However, for every classic back then, there must have been countless dirge released as well.

But that's the point I think the OP was making. While we forget the bad and remember the good, how many modern horror films will be truthfully regarded as classics 20/30 years from now?

Where's this generation's Omen or Halloween or Psycho?
 
There's plenty of blood in Carrie. Have you even seen it? Likewise the various "video nasties" could be pretty explicit. Or the early work of David Chronenberg. If anything, modern films are less gore-filled today because of censorship. Gore is easy. You don't need CGI to make something that won't pass the censor.

There is, arguably, a dumbing down of modern cinema, but it goes across the board. It's not just horror.
 
Back
Top