1. Deconstructing horror.
Horror, as a the concept of a genre, didn't really exist until the late 30's when it became the term to describe a group of films. It's also a misleading term as it's highly inaccurate when applied to the films it purports to describe as, while they might be strange or bizarre, they are hardly horrific.
Of course genres appear all the time. Science Fiction didn't exist as a concept until the 1920's when Hugo Gernsback published Amazing Stories featuring tales of scienti-fiction. But the difference between SF and Horror is that science fiction had been emerging as a genre for some time, beginning with Marie Shelley's Frankenstein in the early 19th century, born out of the Industrial Revolution, Darwinism, and rapidly improving technology and its effects on society. It was a name given to an already existing genre of stories. By and large you can point to something, call it science fiction and generally be correct -always allowing for exceptions (see my entry on The Time Traveller's Wife). Similarly, fantasy.
Horror was a commercial label applied to a group of movies. Once horror existed as a concept for a genre it became natural to look for anything already existing which seemed to fit and stamp the label on it. Ask anyone these days to name a horror writer and they'll say Stephen King, or if they happen to be a little bit knowledgable, H.P. Lovecraft.
Except Lovecraft didn't write horror -he wrote supernatural thrillers or 'romances'. That isn't romance in today's sense but fiction that is elevated somehow out of the norm. Wells' early novels were scientific romances. H Rider Haggard's adventure novels with their elements of SF and magic were also 'romances'. And, although Stephen King is considered a horror novelist, much of his work is Science Fiction. Like my own novel, King uses an SF trope as a metaphor for teenage alienation in Carrie, which is not a horror novel. Neither is The Stand -apocalyptic fantasy with SF elements. It, when the secrets are revealed, is itself revealed as SF.
Let's look at movies which have been claimed for horror but aren't. Alien is pure SF and is inspired by an A.E. van Vogt story from the 50's and the movie It (no relation to S.King). The Silence of the Lambs is essentially crime being about a serial killer. There are countless other examples out there.
Horror is an awful term which is slapped on novels and movies as a commercial label but to their critical detriment. Because of this a popular new subgenre has taken on the term 'paranormal romances' in order to disassociate itself from being tarred with Horror brush. We're talking Laurell Hamilton and her ilk. Unfortunately this new name is awful and also misleading. Paranormal, to me at least, has connotations of SF, Romance (used in the traditional sense is, ironically, accurate but in fact) evokes Mills & Boon, and indicates that the book is aimed at women. While this point may be primarily true, many men, including me, enjoy this type of novel. Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series is a male equivalent of Anita Blake. But what they are are supernatural thrillers (or 'romances' in the traditional sense,) as are Dracula, Dennis Wheatley's classic The Devil Rides Out, and many more.
But what these stories really are, in fact, are part of a sub-genre of contemporary fantasy. Fantasy itself has become tarnished with the brush of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, when in fact the genre is infinitely wider than that. Most of the novels and movies labelled as horror are, if not a crime variant or SF, are fantasy or part of a sub-genre of fantasy. Stephen King's The Shining is a ghost story, a sub-genre with its own long history.
Fantasy itself evolved out of, among others, creation myths (see Genesis for one example) and folk tales (the brothers Grimm for another) and, therefore, has a history as old as the human race. Interestingly, SF did not evolve out of fantasy but, as I pointed out earlier, from the impact of science (which may have predated the Industrial Revolution but, as a concept, not by much) and technology on culture.
I could go on adding examples to emphasise my point but I think it's already proven.
Horror, as a genre, does not exist.
So why do I love horror movies so much?
2. Reconstructing Horror.
By and large and when it comes to books, I stand by what I've just written. When it comes to movies, however, well, that's a different matter. It would be ludicrous to assert that Horror Movies don't exist. Of course they do, there just aren't as many as people believe.
They have become a genre. Of course now I have to define exactly what I mean by a horror movie. What does a movie have to possess to be defined as horror (though it can still be defined as something else as well)?
Essentially, it's the frisson. Or, to put it more crudely, the money shot -I hate that phrase because for some reason I associate it with porn (and, no, I'm not remotely a porn hound). A horror movie is created to provide the frisson and/or the money shot. Note that I'm using the singular but the plural is implied as horror movies usually have several of them.
The frisson is the thrill. The moment in the movie, and it may or may not contain overt horror, when the film maker gets the audience to jump out of their seats (hopefully) -the head in the boat in Jaws. The money shot is horror when the audience places their hands over their collective mouths in mock shock and disgust -just about any scene in Tokyo Gore Police which, even though it's undeniably SF, is inarguably horror and horrific in the extreme (see my review on Amazon) as its sole raison d'etre is to shock.
The whole point of the horror movie is scenes like this. They may well have a subtext like Night of the Living Dead but they are undeniably created to be Horror. They want to shock their audiences and if they don't they have failed.
Equally there are horror novels; here the sole point is to get from one gruesome scene to the next. James Herbert started out as a horror writer (The Rats) but as he gained in skill and experience he moved iaway from gore for the sake of it and into contemporary fantasy such as ghost stories.
And that, pretty much, is that. Horror is, with a few exceptions, a misleading label for many movies that are considered as such and completely misleading for most so-called horror novels. I'd like to apply the concept of contemporary fantasy more rigorously as well as the use of more accurate sub-genre terminology such as the 'supernatural thriller', and for sanity's sake, get rid of the paranormal romance.
Post Script.
Now, as for horror comics....
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