Topic summary
horror movie
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Horror film.
Characteristics
Before the release of Dracula (1931), as historian Gary D. Rhodes explained, the ideas and terminology of horror films did not yet exist as a codified genre, although critics had used the term horror to describe films in reviews prior to Dracula's release. Horror was a term used with a variety of meanings. In 1913, the magazine Moving Picture World defined horrors as showcasing "striped convicts, murderous Indians, grinning 'black-handers', homicidal drunkards". Some titles directly suggested horror, such as The Hand of Horror (1914), a melodrama about a thief who steals from his own sister. During the silent era, the term horror was used to describe everything from battle scenes in war films to stories of drug addiction. Rhodes concluded that the term horror film (or horror movie) was not used in early cinema.