The history of the action horror genre

The Horror genre has been around for over 100 years beginning as silent short films created in the later 1800's. Since then the genre itself has became on of the most popular genres in film history spawning countless film franchises from around the world. One of the most important moments in the horror genres history was in the rise of hybrid genres which allowed film producers to become more creative when making films.

Here you can see a prezi that I have created that shows the origins of the horror genre since the 1800's all the way to modern day.



As you can see the Horror action genre first began with the release of Psycho (1960) which was one of the first globally successful Slasher film. After the films release many other film producers started creating their own Slasher films attempting to capitalise on Psychos success this lead to some of the most iconic horror films of all time to be created such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) which helped boost the Slasher genre even further with critics clamming that it 'set a new standard for slasher films' and without Leatherface the films iconic antagonist we may of never seen arguably the most famous Slasher antagonist of all time Jason Voorhees from the just as famous Friday the 13th film series.

However, you may notice that my prezi mainly focuses on the horror genre and how that lead to the creation of the horror action genre so I have also created a prezi showing the history of the action genre and how it lead to the creation of the horror action genre.


After researching the history of the Horror and Action genres and how they became a hybrid genre I can see that it conforms with Jane Feuer's 1992 theory as over the years the genres have become more abstract as they weren't just a single genre as within them you have dozens of different sub genres all with unique conventions and themes only seen in those films. Genres then became harder to identify as they then started to combine creating hybrid genres which took popular conventions from a multitude of genres and fused them into one uniting fans from a variety of genres. This also conforms with Henry Jenkins (2006) theory on how genres are breaking the rules which allows them to hybridise more creating unique films.