Sunday, December 16, 2012

The types of horror movies


Hello! The topic of this blog is “horror movie of Japan”. I will talk about Japanese horror movie through 10 weeks. So, I’m sorry for you if you are surprised by pictures and movies.

 
By the way, do you think of the most famous horror movie of Japan? For example, “Ring”, “Juon”, “Honogurai-mizu-no-sokokara”, “Tyakusin-ari”, etc... Those works are called J-horror. But, J-horror is not traditional horror movies genre. This genre started to be made from 1990’s. Before then, Japanese horror movies were not “J-horror” correctly.

 
A horror movie is one genre of movie. It was made to give enjoyment feeling horror, fear, and terror for watcher. For that purpose those movies can are called horror that including suspense, thriller, splatter, panic and zombie. (But they are not always frighten for people like a grade-B zombie movie.) Foreign horror movies have a lot of times to be made. But in Japan, many movies of those genres are made.

 
Japanese horror movies of early stage have almost the subjects of ghost story. You may know “Yotsuya-kaidan”, “Bansyu-sara-yashiki” and “Botan-toro”. Those stories are called the Japan three major ghost stories. In the Edo period, those stories were known a lot of people as Kabuki and Rakugo. Also, those were chosen as the subject of horror movies many times. remade many times in Japan. Especially, Yotsuya-kaidan is remade 10 times. Kabuki and Rakugo are the most popular amusements for people before movies were introduced in Japan.


Also, Japanese horror movies are not only ghost stories. For example, you can watch an movie the subject of Japanese monsters. One of the most famous movies is “Youkai-daisenso”. This is the movie which has a scene of numerous strange-looking people acting in a group and strange things. As resemble genre, you can watch the changing by an animal or person of its original form to a different visible form, too. A raccoon dog and a fox assume another form, or a goblin cat changes form of human and attacks people. Not only animals, a human often change into something. “Transformed human series” is strange movie. This series were made by Toho Movie Company in 1950’s. I will write about this in another week. This genre is remade many times, so I think this is more popular.

 
One the side, some horror movies also have no ghosts and monsters. This was written the thing that the mad action and feeing of people is the more frightening in the world than ghosts and monsters. For example, the title “Torihada” of movie have realism that the scene might happen at any time, so it isn’t strong point for me to watch it.

 
Then J-horror is the most popular and famous in the genres of horror movie. J-horror movies were remade by Hollywood for the reason. Why J-horror has high value? So, I would like to compare the original and remake work in other week because I consider this question


Next week, I will talk about the history of Japanese horror movie in detail. I would like to use more picture and movies. But, I’m careful to not choose too much terrifying pictures. See you again :)!

 

(Souses)

wikipedia


『怪奇と幻想への回路―怪談からJホラーへ―』内山一樹[] 株式会社森話社