Psycho casts a long shadow over American horror cinema. It's commercial and critical success gave filmmakers the permission to break the established rules of storytelling. If you fancy killing off your lead halfway through, by all means. Psycho made horror an even scarier place, where anything could happen.
An explosion of American horror films dragged horror kicking and screaming into the present day where contempory settings and uncompromising content remained controversial. A NEW GOLDEN AGE OF CINEMA HAD BEGUN, WHICH ALSO LEFT A RATHER TROUBLING LEGACY.
Horror conventions - Horror cinema now has a following which protects it from it's periodical slumps of previous years. Many films of this particular era are branded only to be watched by hardcore horror fans, but the masterpieces deserve more of a following.
Independent film Night of the Living Dead put American horror back on the map. Director George A Romero reinvented the meaning of Zombies. The film was made cheaply and resourcefully, shot by friends at weekends, showing that quality films can be made without a large budget.
Night of the Living Dead challenged audiences expectations in even more important ways by having an afro-american lead actor which Romero stated was "purely an accident...he was the best actor in the group" 
The hit zombie film created a superb social commentary on life at the time and Gatiss says- "The film feels in time to the era in which it was made; one of civil rights protests, political assassinations and the Vietnam war". The film tells of the disintegration of community and the world in a state of collapse which people were trying to repair. It even shows children turning against their parents. Maybe the start of the idiology of the rebellion of youths. Night of the Living Dead changed the horror business model, it showed that low budget independent films could turn a decent profit.
Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre brought a new type of horror film to the table; there was nothing supernatural or science fiction about it. It was all about how a typical comfy, family house can be turned into a slaughter house, therefore setting out to scare people even in the solidarity of their own homes! Leatherface (often compared similarly to Karloff) was the name of the films 'monster' and he was arguably the first iconic american horror monster since the 1940's. The film surprisingly had a lack of gore, suggesting again that it is not what you see, but what you hear which is truly terrifying. Similar to Val Lewton's theory. Some of the screams from the film become endless, almost acting as if it becomes a genuine nightmare. (Psychological rather than physical torture), Interestingly, on set, it was 117 degrees inside the house, meaning the actors felt even more part of the nightmare and Director Hooper described that his actors would run to the window between scenes to be sick. Apparently they hated him by the end of shooting. Rosemary's baby (1968) *Roman Palanski's first picture - Independent films started taking their views and creations from television documentaries rather than the gothic. Big hollywood studios also began to rediscover their horror touch and didn't want to let the supernatural go. The film had an interesting subtext about womens independence. Rosemary did not just give birth to the devils baby, she spawned a whole new batch of films about demonic children. Linda Blair- who would have thought one of the scariest horror monsters of all time would be a 14 year old girl?! OMNIPRESCENSE OF EVIL.
1976- First horror BLOCKBUSTER...The Omen- Writer David Seltzer, David Warne, supporting British actor. We never see anything explicitly supernatural happen on screen, just a series of rather unfortunate events such as a nanny hanging herself at a childrens party. The film also shot amazing and grounbreaking scenes without the use of CGI that is available now. For example, in the scene where a sphere like object falls from the top of the church, all they did was string a fishing line from top to bottom and lowered the sphere slowly. Clever camera angles then made it look like the actor was genuinely stabbed right through his body. Director - "an effect that would cost $200,000 now, cost us $7".
Richard Donner - one of the best onstage deaths EVER, where his head is sliced right off. In a later interview, when asked what happened to the severed head, the actor replied "I lost it in the divorce" lol. UNLIKE THE EXORCIST, IN THE END, GOOD DOES NOT TRIUMPH EVIL IN THE OMEN! At the end of the tale, Damien, the antichrist, is the last character left standing, but in it's final shot, the film does something very daring for a 70's horror films...IT BREAKS THE FOURTH WALL. What does this mean? Maybe that the devil knows that we are watching on, or that the devil is contstantly watching US?
Writer, Seltzer, states he does not believe in the devil himself or he wouldn't be messing about with this kind of stuff.
Later on, George A Romero's film, Martin, about a teenage boy who thinks he is a vampire has a modern twist. Martin beats his victims to death, subdueing them through use of drugs and violence. The film was originally intended to be a spoof of a vampire having trouble settling into the real world. It also does what other tilms were scared to even imply...vampirism is no different to rape!
Canadian director David Kronemburg started taking the genre in a new direction and his obsession with sex and body horror definitively brought a new twist to horror. His 1975 production, Shivers (aka the parasite murders) explores infection by parasites which releases the victims most sexual urges (similar to the new e4 series, Misfits) An interesting shot in the film again, does not show anything actually happen, it is just implied. The actress, Barbara steele is in the bath washing and a parasite crawls up between her legs, the camera stays static but a pool of blood appears and she starts screaming. Very effective use of gore without showing anything! The film ends with the parasites triumphant, free to infect society and ironically, the film was a full frontal assault on canadian values, but ended up being one of the most successful Canadian pictures of all time. Physical and psychological transformation became a continuous theme in Kronemburg's work, and he said that it should be accepted, just like ageing etc. Most horror films have a pretty clear sense of defeat or victory, few end on such a disturbingly ambiguous note.
Moving back to director George A Romero, his dawn of the dead taught us to love the living dead. At the time, the first indoor shopping mall was opened and Romero took his chance to film there. The films blend of slapstick gore and social sattire showed just how much films had evolved in the 1970's.
Next up though, a film that went straight back to the basics, its sole aim, to scare us out of our wits. John Carpenters' 1978 production of Halloween. The middle America setting not only made the picture feel more 'homey' but also set a sense of bleakness and isolation, almost like a ghost town in your own neighbourhood. Michael Myers, the crazy killer, builds up a sense of stalking his victims and a lack of money for production helped usher in the age of the SLASHER MOVIE. Many describe the scariest scenes in horror build up periods of suspence then show someone (the killer) appear from nowhere. John Carpenter - "If you establish that he can be anywhere (the killer), then the audience is going to believe he is in any shadow". The killer is omnipresent and unstoppable by any physical means it seems. Halloween cast a long shadow over the genre and it's mark is still felt today. The location of the set now holds memorials, shrines and even stabathons for keen fans. Gatiss- "Overwhelms the genre with slashing serial killers! Like horrors equivalent of dutch elm disease" As stated above, the film opened the door for the slasher monster of horror films. Unlike its victims, the halloween film franchise became unkillable. Gatiss - "For me, 1978 marks the end of the last sustained period of horror creativity. Todays directors often seem content to follow 'zombielike' in the footsteps of Carpenter, Hooper and Romero".
Gatiss also says how as you get older in age, the more your taste for horror shifts as you are closer to your own mortality. He himself has gone from loving gore, to prefering the supernatural. We personally need to think more about our target audience upon learning more about taste shifts over age.
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