Why was the 1970s the greatest decade for horror movies?
It’s not a rare occurrence to hear movie fans utter something along the lines of, “old horror movies just aren’t scary,” yet, whilst we can admit that many classics lack the bite and gore of modern flicks, for the most part, they simply don’t make them like they used to.
Across the decades, horror cinema has shocked and surprised, with the 1980s bringing slasher killers like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees to the fold before the 1990s screwed up the rulebook and innovated further.
Yet, if you ask most horror fans, the most popular opinion is that the 1970s was the greatest decade for horror. On Hollywood’s backdoor and across the world, the horror bug well and truly took hold, with homegrown terrors such as Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and William Friedkin’s Exorcist joining world cinema classics like Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and Dario Argento’s Suspiria.
To break down exactly why the decade was so good for the genre, we have to peel open the truths of the movie industry and world politics.
Hollywood horror changed in the 1970s
Leaving the archaic studio system behind, American cinema was renewed in the 1970s, with the decade continuing the optimism that flourished in the ‘free love’ era of the 1960s. The industry loosened up, and more risks were taken from studios and filmmakers, with this being typified by the rise of the ‘Movie Brats’ a group of filmmakers that included the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Paul Schrader and Steven Spielberg who were each dedicated to innovating cinema having taken lessons from a universal film education.
Sure, horror in the 1960s packed a punch, with highlights including George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, yet even these pioneering movies operated with a certain stiffness that echoed the old studio system. The rules of good taste still felt very much adhered to, at least in the mainstream, but the 1970s allowed for great change in the genre.
With a renewed focus on innovative, creative cinema, the 1970s became a breeding ground for exciting new talents such as John Carpenter, William Friedkin, Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven, who each brought visions of disgusting monsters and terrifying concepts that would go on to redefine the genre and change the face of horror as fans knew it. The boundaries of cinema itself were being pushed with dark, socially relevant visions that weren’t afraid to tackle the bleak reality of the changing world.
Horror cinema mirrored the bleak reality of the 1970s
It only takes one viewing of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to understand just how much America changed as it approached the 1970s. The horror of the Manson murders became illustrative of the violence and terror that had seeped into American society like a virus, informed by the darkened mentality of the national identity, tarnished by their part in the brutal Vietnam War.
American society no longer felt so full of the ‘free love’ of the 1960s, with the Vietnam War bringing a brutal sense of reality to the TV screens and homes of people across the nation. Gruesome footage of death was broadcast to tens of millions, dejected returning soldiers told of the horrors of war, and protests across the country underlined the urgency to stop the violence, breaking the facade that this war was somehow just, patriotic and honourable.
If this wasn’t bad enough, the Civil Rights Movement was rightfully fighting for equality for black people across the nation, sparking significant racial tensions as a result. The terror and corruption Americans were so used to seeing on their TV screens could now be seen outside their windows, with rising crime rates engaging widespread paranoia and the Watergate Scandal promoting distrust from those who were supposed to have the people’s best interests at heart.
It would certainly take much more than vampires, goofy ghouls, and icky creatures to scare contemporary audiences.
Instead of tentatively tickling audiences with occasional moments of terror, horror filmmakers of the 1970s went for the jugular, telling visceral stories that sent daggers into the retinas and branded the mind with pertinent concepts that inspired fear. Friedkin’s Exorcist doubted the institution of religion, Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre suggested that murder was a nihilistic inevitability, and Phillip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers fuelled the ‘red scare’ that was long-feared in the national culture.
Such was very much the case across the world, too, with similar social issues affecting Britain, where Hammer horror continued to thrive in the 1970s, whilst the Giallo movement grew in prominence in Italy thanks to minds such as Dario Argento and Mario Bava. No matter the country, horror pervaded without boundaries as filmmakers explored the endless terrors and truths about the wider world that the genre could unlock.
The best horror movies of the 1970s:
- Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
- The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979)
- Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)
- Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)
- The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971)
- Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
- Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
- The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
- Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Phillip Kaufman, 1978)
- Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
- The Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972)
- The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)
- Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)
- Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
- The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)
