Horror movie facts for kids

Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monsterin the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein.

A horror movie is a movie made to scare the viewer. The main stories of horror movies often involve supernatural forces or characters of evil origin. Horror movies are often confused with thrillers, which are similar.

Popular horror movie characters usually include monsters. Early horror movies often took ideas from classic literature, such as The Mummy, Dracula and The Wolf Man.

Comedy horror movies

Those are movies which blends horror and comic elements in its plot. Unlike common, traditional horror movies, in this movie genre, the viewer may be scared and laugh at the same time. Most of time, the type of humour used in these movies is black comedy.

Some examples includes Zombieland (2009), The Raven (1963) and Shaun of The Dead (2004).

Notable horror film directors

• Dario Argento
• Mario Bava
• John Carpenter
• Roger Corman
• Wes Craven
• David Cronenberg
• Terence Fisher (directed for Hammer Films)
• Lucio Fulci
• Tobe Hooper
• F. W. Murnau
• Hideo Nakata
• George A. Romero
• Leslie Stevens
• James Whale

Notable horror film actors

Vincent Price in House on Haunted Hill

• Lon Chaney and his son Lon Chaney, Jr.
• Jamie Lee Curtis
• Peter Cushing
• Robert Englund
• Boris Karloff
• Christopher Lee
• Peter Lorre
• Bela Lugosi
• Donald Pleasance
• Vincent Price

Images for kids

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  Max Schreck as Count Orlok in the 1922 film Nosferatu. Critic and historian Kim Newman declared it as a film that set the template for the horror film.

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  Depiction of the usage of mirrors in horror films.

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  Filmmaker and composer John Carpenter, who has directed and scored numerous horror films, performing in 2016.

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  Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931), a film noted as inspiring a wave of subsequent American horror films in the 1930s.

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  George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) led to what Newman described as a "slow burning influence" in independent and thoughtful horror films in the 1970s.

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  Some cast and crew members of The Blair Witch Project (1999), one of the highest grossing horror films of the 1990s.

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  Still of Madhubala in Mahal (1949), an early Indian horror film.

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  Park Chan-wook, the director of Thirst (2009), one of the many varied Korean horror films from the early 21st century.

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  French director Julia Ducournau (centre) won the Palme d'Or for horror film Titane. She is pictured with actors Agathe Rousselle and Vincent Lindon, who star in the film, at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

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  Jörg Buttgereit in 2015. Buttgereit was described by Kai-Uwe Werbeck as "arguably the most visible German horror director of the 1980s and early 1990s"

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  Still from Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977). Curti described the film as developing an "artistic rebirth" and "irrational dimension" to the Italian gothic from its "set pieces to the color and the music."

See also

In Spanish: Cine de terror para niños