there are good and shitty movies in every generation. do you agree or disagree? pick one. i will be happy to discuss laz.
Of course I agree. But my point, as you must be able to see since you're not slinging anymore names and curse words around, is that the ratio has shifted dramatically.
The 1970's was great. It was the heyday of shifting attitudes in filmmakers, styles flaired, and as we know looking back, a lot of amazing films were made. But most importantly - variety. We had gothic films (The Legend of Hell House), bug attack / killer animal / eco-terror films (Frogs, The Swarm, Squirm, Orca the Killer Whale), Devil movies (The Omen, Carrie, The Amityville Horror, The Legacy), the birth of Fantasy-Horror (Suspiria, Phantasm), Hammer horror still thrived, Amicus was born (Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, several others), AIP still thrived (Sisters, The Last House on the Left, Deranged), David Cronenberg had his own style and made 3 unforgettable films (Rabid, The Brood, They Came from Within / Shivers) while having a style no one else had. Argento was a one-of-a kind and made a slew of unique and damn impressive slasher films (Deep Red, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Grey Velvet). Canadian horror came to become a major force (Black Christmas, Deathdream / Dead of Night, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things). Wes Craven (Last House again, The Hills Have Eyes), George A. Romero (Dawn of the Dead), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Salem's Lot) - all made a name for themselves with films that were so good they influenced people for decades.
There were so many different styles, so much revolutionary filmmaking going on. That decade is HISTORY. Everyone knows the New Millennium can't compare. There isn't even 1 film (except maybe Ginger Snaps) that approaches even 1 shred of the brilliance of the best horror films of the 1970's. Because now we know - those filmmakers had intelligence and tried to make great films.
The 1980's - this was perhaps the first decade where mimics and imitators went a little crazy. But there were still filmmakers that used the framework of being an imitator to do their own thing, something classic, original, and timeless. Starting with John Landis (Schlock) and Joe Dante (Piranha). The horror directors of the '80s by and large still knew how to make a compelling story, write characters, and use style, atmosphere, great original music to their advantage.
Just look at the remake trend of this decade. In the 1980's, they didn't even remake movies. They updated them. When John Landis made An American Werewolf in London for Universal, they played it as a bit of a remake because The Wolf Man of course was a classic film that they made and they knew everyone was familiar with. So after that, they started greenlighting a ton of sequels (Psycho II, Halloween II, Jaws III, Halloween III: Season of the Witch) and remakes (The Thing, Cat People). But the filmmakers took charge of their films, had an actual vision, and more often than not made a better than Today's Average film.
I won't say the studios of today aren't at fault. Maybe they are even as much or more to blame than the filmmakers. But look at the filmmakers anyway. How many of them are even trying? Aren't most of them just directing maybe 1 horror movie then just moving on to directing an action film or something else? Zach Snider who did Dawn of the Dead went on to do 300. Tell me which film paid him better? And I think you'll find that these people don't care about having to deal with the studios. Because if they make concessions for marketability, make more money - they get a deal to make a film in any genre.
Back to the remakes of the 1980's - David Cronenberg (The Fly), Paul Schrader (Cat People), and John Carpenter (The Thing) had a real vision to take the films and make them something interesting (though I would never use the word interesting to describe Carpenter's Thing, a lot of people loved the film and I agree it does have its' moments so...), unique, and thought-provoking.
The 1980's had imagination. And the movies were a lot more fun. And if the characters sucked - the filmmakers still had style and atmosphere to draw attention off of them. I think most of us here like the Friday the 13th franchise quite a bit. Those movies may have had healthy body counts and quite a few memorably bloody scenes. But they were also extremely well made in many departments and were good escapist fun. And more than anything, they ripped each other off. Literally, maybe the only movie we can say visually the Friday the 13th films took the woods setting from was Mario Bava's Bay of Blood.
Whenever a filmmaker had an idea to make a movie that could be considered a rip-off, they had the brains to set it somewhere unique to the '80s and make it visually different. Not to mention that low budget and high budget horror was booming at the same time. Look at the studios that flourished in the 1980s - Full Moon, Empire (Ghoulies, Troll), Troma, New World (Hellraiser, Children of the Corn, C.H.U.D., House, The Stuff, Vamp, Slugs). And the boom of horror-comedies. Which never stopped the decade from also producing a lot of serious, dark horror films like Pet Sematary, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Child's Play, etc. The rise of special effects artists - forming their own hugely successful businesses. And winning Oscars (Chris Walas - The Fly, Rick Baker - American Werewolf in London).
The variety and style of that decade is overwhelming! So much creativity and imagination came from that decade, that it's crazy.
In the 1990's, the first 3 years still gave us great movies. They mostly operated on the same things that made the 80's so successful but updated the style with the latest technology. 1993 may have slowed things down, but great horror films still came out. And even more, the filmmakers and writers started to really think about what they were making. Which lead mainstream horror to become incredibly ambitious and intelligent. Scream, Tales from the Hood, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, Wolf, Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (which at least deserves credit for creativity), Mary Reilly, The Craft, the Scream sequels, and a huge boom of better than average made-for-TV horror (The Stand, The Tommyknockers, The Shining). Horror may have slowed down and placed a lot of emphasis on direct-to-video, but the work being done was full of integrity.
And that's pretty much where the story ends. The shift in the genre to making smarter, darkly funny, well acted, concept horror ended with Ginger Snaps, 28 Days Later, Bride of Chucky, American Psycho, Dahmer, Final Desination, Jeepers Creepers, Urban Legend, and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Because those films (even though Last Summer is very heavily flawed) were the complete exception to the rule. The North American horror film basically died with The Blair Witch Project - a completely idiotic film that relied on people forgiving the characters for being so damn stupid - and the remakes of that time (especially- The Haunting, Psycho, and The House on Haunted Hill).
Because those films were single-handedly the films that dictated how studios were going to make horror films. By copying the successes of those films. Their edicts: remaking a classic film is never a bad thing. So soon after The Ring and Thirteen Ghosts, they started shamelessly remaking the classics of the '70s and '80s. Not knowing that you cannot improve upon those films in the first place. And you can't out-concept some of the greatest visionary horror films of our time. All you can do is speed up the editing, bathe them in the Saw series' fluorescent lights or set them in Wrong Turn's decrepit shack-house, pluck the characters out of every other idiotic New Millennium movie where the cast have no character or motivation other than to talk like an idiot that we'll never care about, and make sure every single other popular horror cliche is in-check.
Yeah - every decade has bad movies. But, in almost every decade / year before 1998, the filmmakers from both the high and low budget ranges were smarter than the people making films now. They cared more.
At this point, the genre has been so irreparably damaged, it would take an already-established master to make another masterpiece. But one day, they will all be dead. Look at Romero, Carpenter, and Argento (even though he's working like a dog). They don't have very long left. And when they're gone, it won't be very long before Cohen, Craven, Dante, Hooper, and others follow suit. When the masters are dead... who will replace them? It sure as
hell won't be Alexandre Aja, James Wan, and Rob Zombie. And Eli Roth, who certainly does have explaining to do for Hostel: Part II is moving on to non-horror projects. I'd basically say - all we have left are Lucky McKee and his clan (Chris Sivertson, Adam Gierasch, Jace Anderson), but they're too busy adapting Jack Ketchum novels or making films with Lindsay Lohan.
Basically, the filmmakers with the most potential either sell out or get out of doing horror movies because they know the studios won't let them make great movies. As for the independants, they're mostly dominated by direct-to-video now. And those films still suffer from the exact same things that cripple big studio product. Not to mention that Lionsgate is still surfing the indies for horror and if they're picking out the best independant horror has to offer... the genre is over.