Horror Sub-genres

Cafe Society
1

I’m making a guide to horror movies for the library I work at and in doing so I’m trying to separate out the titles into sub-genres. A sort of “if you like this… you might like this…” thing. I’ve got a bunch of sub-genres so far, but I’m not sure if I’m missing some obvious ones.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Aliens
Classics
Comedy-Horror
Ghosts
Masters of Horror (TV Series)
Monsters
Slashers
Splatter
Stephen King
Thrillers
Vampires
Werewolves
Zombies

I was specifically thinking “Ghosts” and “Monsters” could probably be split out into more specific sub-genres, but I don’t know what. I’m also on the fence about including “Asian Horror” as 1) we have very few of the originals, just the American remakes, which aren’t really “Asian” per se and 2) 99% of them fall under “Ghosts.”

Oh, and before anybody says it, don’t worry about “Giallo” as we don’t own any, so it won’t be included in the guide.

OK, can I get any help from my fellow dopers?

2

There’s one category that I love, although it tends more toward science fiction these days than horror. I call it the “Giant Killer Something” movie. This would be your Godzilla, your Them!, your Cloverfield and such. Even Jaws would technically fit in this category, being a larger-than-usual shark.

You may also want to splinter off “Possession” as a sub-category, or more broadly “Devils & Demons”. That’d be stuff like The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, but the broader category could include Rosemary’s Baby and the Hellraiser movies and so forth.

3

Devils & Demons, I like that. I think “Possession” might be too limited as that would really only cover the Exorcist movies, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the first two Evil Dead movies.

But I like Devils & Demons.

4

What’s the difference between Splatter and Slashers? Is Splatter the torture stuff and Slashers the Freddy and Jason movies?

What are you including under Classics?

Would you put Shaun of the Dead under Comedy or under Zombies?

I like Max Torque’s idea of a Devils and Demons category. That’s where I’d look for the Evil Dead movies and Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist.

Do you need a Voodoo section? How about Foreign? Where would you put Pan’s Labyrinth?

5

Exactly.

The Blob, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Psycho, stuff like that.

Both

Voodoo is definitely not needed (the only thing that I think would have qualified, The Serpent and the Rainbow, was stolen months ago). Foreign is a possibility, but most of the foreign stuff is not that different that they’d need their own category.

And Pan’s Labyrinth is a horror movie?

6

There are some horror elements. If you have a fantasy section, maybe it fits better there.

Have you considered putting your Classics in the other categories? Some folks might see the word Classic and think “old and dull”.

7

Where would H.P. Lovecraft’s- inspired stuff go?

8

Death to the Horny Teenagers is a sub-genre, right?

9

I don’t know what’s in your inventory, but I’d have seperate categories for the Universal horror films of the thirties and the Hammer horror films of the sixties.

Universal:
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
The Cat and the Canary (1927)
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
The Last Warning (1929)
The Last Performance (1929)
The Cat Creeps (1930)
Dracula (1931)
Dracula (Spanish Version) (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
The Mummy (1932)
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)
The Old Dark House (1932)
The Invisible Man (1933)
The Black Cat (1934)
The Raven (1935)
Werewolf of London (1935)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
The Invisible Ray (1936)
Son of Frankenstein (1939)
Tower of London (1939)
Black Friday (1940)
The Invisible Man Returns (1940)
The Invisible Woman (1940)
The Mummy’s Hand (1940)
The Wolf Man (1941)
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
Invisible Agent (1942)
The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
Phantom of the Opera (1943)
Son of Dracula (1943)
Calling Dr. Death (1943)
Weird Woman (1944)
Dead Man’s Eyes (1944)
The Climax (1944)
House of Frankenstein (1944)
The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944)
The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)
The Mummy’s Curse (1944)
House of Dracula (1945)
Strange Confession (1945)
The Frozen Ghost (1945)
Pillow of Death (1945)
She-Wolf of London (1946)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)
Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953)
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Revenge of the Creature (1955)
The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

Hammer:
The Quatermass Experiment (1955)
X the Unknown (1956)
Quatermass 2 (1957)
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Dracula (1958)
The Mummy (1959)
The Revenge of Frankenstein (1959)
The Brides of Dracula (1960)
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)
Taste of Fear (1961)
The Phantom of the Opera (1962)
Maniac (1963)
Paranoiac (1963)
Nightmare (1964)
The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964)
Hysteria (1965)
Fanatic (1965)
The Nanny (1965)
She (1965)
The Mummy’s Shroud (1966)
Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
The Reptile (1966)
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
The Anniversary (1968)
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969)
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)
Scars of Dracula (1970)
Crescendo (1970)
The Vampire Lovers (1970)
Lust for a Vampire (1971)
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)
Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)
Dracula AD 1972 (1972)
Twins of Evil (1972)
Fear in the Night (1972)
The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)
Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter (1974)
To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

10

How about replacing Voodoo with a Witchcraft section, of which Voodoo could be a sub genre ?

11

Hell, why not call the torture porn what it is?

12

While I’d like to carry a lot of those movies, we just don’t have the budget for that. Thanks though.

13

Justin, I’d be glad to cull my own stuff and send some things on to you. I have some DVDs I probably won’t watch again. PM or e-mail me with your address if you’re interested.

14

I wouldn’t worry too much about splitting hairs; you’ll be cross-referencing a lot, right?

Here’s a few I’d consider:

Portmanteaus [Trilogy of Terror; Tales of, Tales from, Creepshow, etc.]
TV Series [Masters of Horror; Tales from the Darkside, Tales from the Crypt…]
Haunted Houses [cross-refs with a lot of “Ghosts,” “Classic,” and “Slasher”.]
Conspiracies/Outsider vs. the Villagers [The Wicker Man, Children of the Corn…]
Jacques Tourneur [Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, etc.]
Roman Polanski [Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, The Ninth Gate…]
Supernatural [most of Stephen King]
Occult [demons, devils, Antichrists…]
Atomic Mutants and Giants [lots of postwar camp classics and overlap with comedy-horror, as well as giant ants and such. Surely one of the biggest (no pun intended) categories of all.]
Genetic Horrors [overlaps with “Classic,” “Monsters,” “Aliens,” “Zombies,” “Splatter,” and “Atomic…” – The Fly, The Village of the Damned, Species, Bride of Re-animator, Videodrome…]

I’d consider disbanding “Classics” in favor of plot genres, since so many of the horror classics are patently about vampires, werewolves, other monsters, haunted houses, etc.

I’d also consider disbanding “Thrillers” in favor of “Slasher,” “Splatter,” and a new one, “Psychos” [Psycho, Repulsion, Sisters, The Other [TV], The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Dead Ringers, etc.]

15

Mainly under ‘Crap’ - nobody’s ever made a decent movie featuring Lovecraft’s “Old Ones” ( “Re-animator” was decent, but not typical of Lovecraft’s familiar Cthulian tales.)

Haunted Houses: the Amityville Horror, the Uninvited, the Shining, the Changeling, the Haunting - all deal with specific houses/buildings being possessed by spirits.

Body Horror: movies in which the horror is mined from ghastly things happening to the body - the Fly (and every other David Cronenberg film ever made), the aforementioned “Re-animator”, Alien, etc.

Evil cults - the Devil’s Rain, the Believers, the Serpent & the Rainbow, etc.