I've picked the two films scream and Halloween for a number of different reasons, firstly because it fits the specification of the genre of movie that I'm studying which is horror movies, they are also very iconic films and highly recognized when films are associated with the horror genre, these two films are first to be mentioned as they are popular and have certainly made a name for themselves in the specific genre, genres are categorized through a number of key features, which are protagonists, plot and stock situations, setting and decor, icons, stock characters and themes, each horror genre will have different styles and features within these key features which are used to categorized movies into which genre they belong, and example of this would be comedy if the stock characters and themes were people doing slapstick with typically dim people falling into generic traps and awkward situations then this would show what type of genre the film was.
Halloween was directed by John carpenter in 1978 and in its prime days it was a well-known horror movie, and to this day a lot of people know of its existence in the horror genre, the typical codes and conventions of scream were low lighting to create more suspense, masked murderer to add mystery to the whole plot and situation, also a lot of close ups of the killer and action shot where the killer is chasing the victim, also the killer in this film was portrayed to be of a superior nature with extreme strength and extremely tall and broad.
The protagonist in Halloween is played by a young girl called Jamie lee Curtis who plays Laurie in the horror movie, she manages to survive the terrible attack from Michael Myers the psychotic super strength killer featured as the main character in the movie, throughout the film Laurie is represented as sensible and intelligent enough to survive an attack from this monster, she's made to look independent and not typically naive and clueless as many other horror movies have done before, she's one of the only people who survived unlike many of the other victims who will quickly killed off throughout the film, in the late 70s many people became fond of the horror film and other writers and directors followed in their footsteps as the film made a significant amount of money for its time, the drawback affect of this was that so many horror movies were becoming predicable as they all lacked unique setting and theme, they all had the same common codes and conventions which became tiring for horror movie lovers, Halloween was successful because it was the first of its kind to include many great features which made horror movies what they are today.
In 1997 Wes craven (also director of nightmare on elm street) has directed the horror movie “scream” which was a whole different aspect of horror movies as it brought new features and ideas to the table, instead of using the same codes and conventions, Wes craven intelligently thought of the concept of over emphasizing the codes and conventions and adding comical features to create a twist to the way horror movies were seen, in the movie scream the two main villains are two young no good teenagers that lack all classic codes and conventions such as scary super strength or powers that would make them mortal from the rest of the characters throughout the movie, instead they are seen as the same type of people as any of the other characters, another reason that scream was able to try such new things and features was because it was a large budgeted film meaning that a lot of money and effort had been applied to the movie in order for the result of a successful horror movie, the film features some very well known stars such as; Courtney Cox, Neve Campbell, Drew Barrymore and Harry Winkler, as well as this the sound track, music and overall equipment used was a lot more expensive in comparison to the equipment and features used in Halloween.
In the horror movie scream the victims that have been used are not represented as sex crazed teenager girls but instead they are seen as normal teenage girls living their average teenage life, in the film the victims are given the chance to fight back against the killers which challenges generic codes and conventions of other horror movies such as Halloween because where they have the chance to fight back against the killers, in Halloween they has no chance against the super strength huge Michael Myers, so Wes craven is mocking the over used conventions to give it a new twist when using it within a horror movie, this emphasizes how predictable it would be for the killer to just come into the scene and kill off a number of various victims, but in this film this has been taking into consideration and changed up to make a joke out of the over used convention, Wes craven definitely used over used conventions to his advantage throughout the movie, another example of this is that drew Barrymore is interrogated by the two killers and asked questions about Halloween, this challenges generic conventions as the killer is normally silent which adds a sense of mysteriousness to them, this is then mocked by allowing the killers to talk and have a normal conversation with the victims. The film scream is a lot more gory and bloodier than the scenes in Halloween, this could be down to the budget that Halloween had to work with in comparison to scream which was a lot more money for resources for the movie, another feature was nudity and sex appeal throughout the horror movies. Although scream has a lot more attractive stars in the movie the film Halloween showed a lot more nudity which is another way that the films differ from one and other.
Although Wes Craven challenges a lot of the generic conventions of horror movies he did however used some of the classic features so that he was able to stay in touch with the horror movie lovers and offer to them the conventions that they know and love without being too generic, for example the killers in scream are still wearing iconic masks to hide the identity of the killer, which is commonly used in horror movies, another convention was the use of ‘steadicam’ which was where the camera was hand held, this would create more suspense for the audience and gives you more of a realistic effect when the victim is either running away from the killer or hiding from them, scream uses point of view on the victims and on the killer, by using POV on the victims it allowed you to see the movie from the victims point of perspective, which in some way could in effect make you more sympathetic of the victim, scream also uses low key lighting which creates suspense when looking at the atmosphere that the victim is in, this reinforced the over used generic conventions that have been applied to horror movies, the movie was a huge success and it changed the approach that horror directors when choose when creating their perfect horror movie, other movies which create the same concept of taking old over used generic horror conventions and creating a comical effect to them are night mare on elm street and the majority of the Child's play movies.
In conclusion Halloween started off a number of good conventions used throughout horror film making, but they became overused, so I agree that scream was a great concept because it brought something new to the table and showed people that there were other approaches to horror movies rather than just making them generic and the same generic conventions applied to them.
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