Horror Film Timeline

1895 Louis Lumiere premieres the world’s first cinema movie The Arrival of a train at La Ciotat Station.

1896 Parisien illusionist Georges Melies makes the world’s first ‘true’ horror movieThe Devil’s Castle. It features a large cauldron out of which ghosts, cavaliers, a skeleton and witches appear at the call of the Devil. Eventually the Devil vanishes when a cavalier produces a crucifix. The whole film lasts three minutes.

1906 French female director Alice Guy releases Esmerelda a ten minute version of Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris spawning copies around the world, in the USA The Hunchback (1909) and Hugo The Hunchback (1910) and in Britain The Love of a Hunchback (1910).

1908 The first version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is made. It is actually the filming of a stage play of the same name.

1910: Charles Ogle appears in the first filmed version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Two more versions of Robert Louis Stephenson’s story are released, Wrench releases The Duality of Man and Nordisk puts out Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

1911: The first full length movie with a monster is released. Not surprisingly it is Notre Dame de Paris and is filmed by Pathe.

1920: Broadway star John Barrymore plays the central character in Paramount’s version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde becoming the first major acting star to take on a horror movie role. In Germany Paul Wegener releases his third and most successful Golem movie Wie Er in die Welt Kam (How He came into the World).

1921: The Cabinet of Dr Caligari arrives in the US, the first German film to be seen in the States since the war. The New York Times wrongly calls it a ‘cubist shocker’

1930: Chaney finally becomes one of the last great silent stars (along with Charlie Chaplin) to make the transition to talkies in a remake of The Unholy Three. It is a resounding success and unlike many silent stars he makes the transition brilliantly and to much acclaim. The same year however he loses his battle with cancer, in great pain, unable to speak and forced to mime gar during his last performance Chaney dies and in a cruel twist of irony remains a truly silent star.

1940: Universal revives it’s Egyptian horror movies with The Mummy’s Hand.

1951: A new cycle of horror movies begins. The Thing ‘from another world’ terrorises an arctic research base. The BBFC introduces it’s new ‘X’ certificate, now over eighteens only can watch films in this new category which replaces the old ‘H’. The dawning atomic age will now spawn a new type of horror preoccupied with space, aliens, atomic mutation and Cold War anti-communist paranoia.

1960: Finally with a larger budget to work with and freed from the constraints of his back to back movies Roger Corman begins a cycle of horror films based upon the works of Edgar Allen Poe, many starring Vincent Price and all borrowing liberally from Hammer’s style of filmmaking. The first in the cycle is House of Usher. Hammer itself releases Brides of Dracula a sequel to their first Dracula movie, again Fisher directs this visually stunning film and Cushing appears as Van Helsing. Lee however is absent as the character of Dracula is not in this film.

1970: A more permissive society and a tired formula encourages Hammer to make The Vampire Lovers an out and out erotic exploitation film with lesbian vampires and lots more nudity.

1971: Hammer releases an exploitation movie not linked to vampirism Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

1980: In an attempt to cash in on the success of Halloween, Paramount releases Friday the 13th. Sean S. Cunnigham (Last House on the Left) produces. Jason Vorhees becomes the latest screen slasher. The film will spawn ten formulaic sequels, a tv series, novels and comics. Master filmmaker Stanley Kubrick releases his answer to the slasher movies, the terrifying The Shining starring Jack Nicholson. Italian film Cannibal Holocaust is banned in many countries around the world due to it’s scenes of sexual violence and real animal torture.

1992: In a decade in which the horror genre is characterised by a never ending series of tired and hackneyed slasher sequels and during a largely barren period as far as new ideas for horror movies are concerned the genre films become increasingly more knowing and ironic. Peter Jackson takes gore to a new level for comic effect and releases Brain Dead. Elswhere looking back rather than forward for inspiration Francis Ford Coppola releases his own version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is a box office if not always a critical success and draws heavily on Hammer’s visual style.

2000: The Exorcist (1973) is given a cinema rerelease.

2002: US studios begin to look to Japan for ideas. The first product of this trend is The Ring, a remake of Ringu. Zombie videogame Resident Evil is made into a film and sparks a new interest in zombie movies. 28 Days Later is the British update of the zombie apocolypse theme. A virus turns it’s victims into fast moving flesh eaters.