Horror Films

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that traditional Christian morals play a large part in the modern horror film genre with religious iconography almost equally represented as a righteous force. The unspoken rule of horror films, the paper points out, is that the most morally virtuous character usually survives in the film the longest. Slasher films, such as "The Exorcist", "Dracula" and "A Nightmare On Elm Street", the paper states, grew out of stories from the Bible and classics, such as Dante's Inferno.

From the Paper:

"What really is the vampire but a representation of our societies repressed sexual desires, what are zombies but the upper class fear of the scourge of the underclass? When questions of morality are boxed into a context as black and white as evil vs. good, a very dangerous delineation can occur. The power of moral ideology being dispensed on the big screen to audiences across the globe cannot be ignored. Such simplicity in story content acts as an excellent vehicle for the proliferation of these messages to the middle class, non-cultured Americans."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Owan, douglas. Scared Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen. Baylor: Baylor University Press, 2008. Print.
• Di Muzio, Gianluca. "The Immorality of Horror Films." International Journal of Applied Philosophy 20(2006): 277-294. Print.
• Muir, John Kenneth. "Horror Films of the 1980's."Encyclopedia of film. 5th. 2007. Print.
• Frann, Michel. "Life and Death and Something in Between: Reviewing Recent Horror Cinema." Psychoanalysis, Culture a& Society 12(2007): 390-397. Print.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street. Dir. Wes Craven. Perf. Robert England, Jonny Depp,. DVD. New Line Cinema , 1984.

More papers on Horror Films:

• Essay # 46619 : "Horror Films"
• Persuasive Essay # 146253 : "Women in Horror Films"
• Term Paper # 119544 : "Gender, Sexuality, and Horror Films"

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