Horror
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse." --The Gothic Flame (1957) by Devendra Varma "Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies" --Aristotle, Poetics [...] "The horror. The horror." --Marlon Brando as Kurtz in Apocalypse Now "The time is short. You die at dawn."-- from the intertitles of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) by Robert Wiene "Fear is the most powerful emotion in the human race and fear of the unknown is probably the most ancient. You're dealing with stuff that everybody has felt; from being little babies we're frightened of the dark, we're frightened of the unknown. If you're making a horror film you get to play with the audiences feelings" -- John Carpenter "The Alps […] fill the mind with an agreeable kind of horror."--Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705) by Joseph Addison |
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Horror is an intense painful emotion of fear or repugnance; an intense dislike or aversion, an abhorrence. It is also a genre of fiction, meant to evoke a feeling of fear and suspense. The horrors, informal, also refers to an intense anxiety or a nervous depression.
Horror may mean:
- Horror (emotion), the physical and mental sensation
- Horror art, art focusing on horror themes
- Horror fiction, the general genre
- Horror film, the genre in film
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Horror tropes
Horror as a genre started with gothic fiction. Its tropes include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets and hereditary curses.
Stock characters
The stock characters of gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.
Modern subgenres
Modern subgenres and tropes include bio horror - body horror - carnivorous plants - Count Dracula - erotic horror - exploitation - fantastic - Frankenstein - freaks of nature - gore - ghost - gothic fiction - grindhouse - horticultural horror - magic - Mondo film - monster - phantom of the opera - psychological horror - slasher films - snuff films - survival horror - vampire - video nasty - werewolf - zombie
Related vocabulary
Related vocabulary includes terms such as bizarre - blood - controversial - cruelty - dark - death - demon - devil - disgusting - disturbing - evil - fantasy - fear - gothic - grotesque - hidden - inquisition - macabre - midnight - night - occult - offensive - pain - phobia - prison - repugnance - secret - shocking - sadism - sick - strange - sublime - supernatural - surreal - terror - torture - ugly - uncanny - violence - visceral - war
Etymology
From Latin horror (“a bristling, a shaking, trembling as with cold or fear, terror”), from horrere (“to bristle, shake, be terrified”).
See also
