Horror films within history have included some of the most popular and well known films of all time. They have varied through time, however, in the sense that within previous decades the term "horror" was associated with ghosts, vampires, curses, cannibals, haunted houses and the supernatural in general. Although over time, "horror" has now transferred into explicit gore, jump scares alongside the supernatural content in some cases.
Early horror films are based on classic literature; for example "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", "Frankenstein" and "The Phantom of the Opera". Many of the earliest feature length horror films in the early 1920's were created by German filmmakers, during the German Expressionist Films era. Little did they know, later on in time these would influence the Hollywood horror films. Early Hollywood horrors included "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"; then later on in the 1930's Universal Pictures Co Inc. popularized in the horror genre, where the popular "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" were produced, beginning to gain an audience for this genre. In this case, many actors such as Boris Karloff used horror as their speciality genre. Horror was becoming widely known.
Advances in technology then saw a change in the genre; where the gothic based focus changed to a more modern approach that would relate to the later century audience. This was the stage at which more gore was seen; which again met a hugely popular target audience. The 1980's saw the financial successes of low budget gore films from previous years; which lead to the release of films such as "The Excorcist" which through time has proved one of the most well known horror films of all time. Sexual overtones and the use of children were frequently becoming more popular and thhe subject of these films became more and more relevant to the target audience; increasing the amount of fear within the reaction hence giving a big word of mouth. At this stage, the audience of horror genre is at its peak.
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