Art Of Cinema Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Art Of Cinema - Essay Example The comedy in Young Frankenstein ranges from slapstick and farce to dirty, bawdy humor and irreverent satire. The film is an homage to the classical American horror films of the 1930’s and 40’s, however, it is a modern satire. In the early 1930s, American film producers began the tradition of popularizing the genre of the horror film with such American Gothic features as Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1933) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932), films that originated from Gothic literature. These evolved into a blending of science fiction with Gothic horror, films that were about scientists experimented with the human form, The Invisible Man (1933), The Wolf Man ( 1941) and, of course, Frankenstein (1910), which spawned a slew of re-makes and sequels, including Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939) and Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). As the complexity of horror films grew in the evolution of the genre, a sub-genre called for the study of specific â€Å"thrillers† and the psychology of them, including the films of director Alfred Hitchcock ( Psycho (1960) and The Birds(1963) ), as well as the development of the sub-genre of the serial killer films, (M (1931), Peeping Tom (1960), Silence of the Lambs (1991). Yet there still remains a basic formula that is inherent to the horror genre. As Bruce Kawin points out in his essay, â€Å"Children of the Light,† there is a need for a distinguishing between â€Å"good† horror films and â€Å"bad† horror films. Kawain’s discusses the components of a â€Å"good† horror film: â€Å"A good horror film takes you down into the depths and shows you something about the landscape†¦The seeker, who is often the survivor, confronts his or her own fallibility, vulnerability, and culpability as an aspect of confronting the horror object, and either matures or dies. (Matures in this sense refers to the adult act of making peace with the discrepancy