Halloween Horror Movie Franchises Overview

Since October is upon us, and Halloween is getting every so close, lets take a look at the Horror we like to go see at the movies to get scared.

Now this is all very personal opinion and you are free to disagree.

I consider there to be 3 very defined eras in horror movie franchise industry. The first era spanning from the inception of movies to around late 1960 or early 1970's brings us the now classic movie monsters. Portrayed by such icons as Bella Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. and Boris Karloff, the first monster movies may seem ridiculous by our standards today but they opened the door for future horror flicks to come about.

Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolfman and the Mummy are now staples of Halloween. everybody has dressed up as them at one point or another for Halloween. They are unmistakable, and known the world over, and their likenesses are everywhere come the Halloween season. These icons have been reused and modernized over the years, but the originals still remain the best that horror movies have to offer.

There were also some films that while true horror franchises to this day, they stand on their own by what they brought to the table at the time. One such franchise is The Exorcist a truly scary tale based on factual data, it has become a revered staple of horror cinema, but unlike other movies it hasn't really become a Halloween staple. At least not that I can tell. Maybe its too horrific to be used as a costume who knows, but I've yet to see anyone dress up as Regan for a party.

The Late 70's and 80's brought us a new breed of horror movies and icons. These are the heavy metal, slasher monsters. I'm talking of course about Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. These are the horror movies I grew up with in the 80's, the ones I went to see to get scared. These characters define the horror industry of their time as much as the Dracula and the other's did for theirs.

These icons offer a more personal scare than the monsters before them because they are more human. All 3 of them start of as regular human beings that transform into these representations of the evil living inside all of us. More so Jason and Michael who human f=through most of their respective series This is what happens when you let your inner demons run loose. This scares us more than the other monsters because it hits a cord with us. It shows us what we are capable of if we let ourselves be free of all inhibitions and give in to our evil desires. This is scarier than transforming into a werewolf or becoming a vampire because these monsters are doing all of this purposefully rather than being driven to it by some external force.

The 80's horror flicks sadly spiraled down into ridiculousness rather than horror and took us out of the short lived second era and into the 3rd.

While the 90's managed to create a new horror icon in the shape of Ghostface from the Scream franchise it was never a real horror franchise to me. It was more slapstick comedy and over the top scenarios for getting killed than anything else. Yes Ghostface is now very well known around the world but he's become a punchline rather than a horror icon

The 2000's made a change in the functionality of horror films rather than have actual characters to deliver the scare we get situations, items, or over the top scenarios. Things like videotapes, computers, circles, generic hauntings etc... these horror films really don't give me much in terms of scares I keep finding them boring and not all that scary. Pointless actually. nothing has been particularly good in terms of horror flicks recently. Even the remakes of Nightmare and Halloween have been somewhat of a letdown.

There is of course the Saw series Jigsaw character but again he's more about psychological torture than outright terror. The saw series has been described as torture porn which is a pretty accurate description in my book.

Of course there's classic Horror flicks that left the horror and turned sci-fi, like the Alien franchise. It started out as a bonafide space horror flick, but then moved to the more sci-fi-esque aspect of it rather than the horror aspect. Other franchises like Creepers, Gremlins, etc..never embraced the horror genre and went for comedy instead.

At the end of the day, its hard to find a horror movie that is intelligent and scary. Most end up making the characters too stupid to live for the sake of amping up the gore factor.

I know I neglected many other "horror" franchises but I feel the ones mentioned are basically what people think of when asked about horror movies. Its difficult to come up with things like Blade, or Underworld which are more action oriented rather than horror.