Horror-of-Armageddon
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The horror-of-Armageddon film is one of three sub-genres of the horror film that grew out of mid- and late-20th-Century American culture. As described by the film aesthetician Charles Derry, the horror-of-Armageddon film...
continues the linear development of the horror film from the science-fiction horror of the fifties into a more pure horror film, which deals, nevertheless, with most of the same issues and ideas as its precursors. The archetypal horror-of-Armageddon film is Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963); in this subgenre, the world is constantly being threatened with extinction, usually by nonhuman, unindividualized creatures such as birds, bats, bees, frogs, snakes, rabbits, ants, or plants. Although the nucleus of the horror-of-Armageddon subgenre is distinct, the outer reaches of the subgenre are downright fuzzy; indeed, the horror of Armageddon includes in its periphery films as disparate as Yog, Monster from Outer Space (Inoshirô Honda, Japan, 1970), The War Game (Peter Watkins, Britain, 1965), and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Sydney Pollack, USA, 1969). [1]
Derry draws a clear distinction in his use of the name Armageddon, which "comes, of course, from the Bible, and is the name of the place where the last battle between the forces of good and evil is supposed to take place. I use the term not because of its connotations of good and evil (for in this genre what is good is often intermingled with what is evil), but because these films always deal with a struggle that is obviously ultimate, mythical, and soul rending."
One niche horror genre that utilizes a horror-of-Armageddon setting is the zombie film, popularized by director George A. Romero. These films are typically characterized by a worldwide mass resurrection of dead bodies, who then proceed to feed upon the living in a cannibalistic manner.
[edit] References
- ^ Charles Derry, Dark Dreams: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film; A S Barnes & Co, 1977.
