Modern Horror vs Old School Horror Movies

I grew up watching cheesy horror movies. I still love them today, however I avoid most modern ones. Horror film-makers of today think that for a movie to be scary they must give us an abundance of sex and gore and very little plot. Although, most of the older movies aren't scary either they at least try to engage your brain or at least entertain you with their campiness. Maybe it's my age, but I really don't need to see a bunch of naked bimbos running around screaming and getting slashed or impaled, mostly by their own stupidity. I also don't need to see bucket loads of fake blood, mucus, bile, internal organs, etc. The human imagination is a wonderful thing. Sadly we live in a world where most of us can fill in the gory and sexual details without having to have it thrown in our face for ninety minutes straight on the screen. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a prude. I have no problem with nudity and if it enhances the story or has a purpose by all means have it in the movie, but the majority of nudity used in film today is extraneaous. At one time it was used as shock factor as was all the gore, but today's society sees so much of it on a regular basis that the majority is numb to it. There is nothing creepy about seeing yet another ax (fill in with your weapon of choice) wielding inbred psycho hacking a nubile coed to pieces while mumblng and drooling. Why? Because it has been done a thousand times, we've seen it in countless movies made by people who lack the imagination to come up with something more original. Of course all they care about is how many tickets and DVD's they can sell and sadly the youth of today loves it.

I think the original Friday The 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street started these trends. And they are classic horror movies. What the film makers of today fail to realize when they imitate these movies is that when those came out they were shocking, they did grab our attention and they did scare us. And yes there was some nudity and there was some gore but those movies centered around the plot not the other way around. Then you have your other great classics like Rosemary's Baby, Omen, The Excorcist. I can watch any of those today and not be fazed (which is sad), but when they came out they scared nations of people. Of course some of my favorite horror movies are the ones that never scared anyone even back then but they had great stories and the campy acting made them classics. Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, Boris Karlof, Christoher Lee.... those names among others will live on forever, do any of us really remember the names of these modern actors in horror movies? We don't, because like the movies they star in they are forgettable.