DVDThis tutorial explores the form and
conventions of the Western.Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974; director: Tobe
Hooper); Carrie(1976; director: Brian De Palma);
The Omen(1976; director: Richard Donner); Dawn
of the Dead (1978; director: George A. Romero);
Phantasm(1979; director: Don Coscarelli); The Evil
Dead(1981; director: Sam Raimi); Poltergeist(1982;
director: Tobe Hooper); Evil Dead II(1987; direc-
tor: Sam Raimi); Hellraiser (1987; director: Clive
Barker); The Silence of the Lambs(1991; director:
Jonathan Demme); Braindead(1992; director: Peter
Jackson); the TV miniseries The Kingdom(1994;
directors: Lars von Trier and Morton Arnfred);
Scream(1996; director: Wes Craven); Ringu(1998;
director: Hideo Nakata); The Blair Witch Project
(1999; directors: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo
Sánchez); The Sixth Sense(1999; director: M. Night
Shyamalan); The Others(2001; director: Alejandro
Amenábar); 28 Days Later... (2002; director:
Danny Boyle); Shaun of the Dead(2004; director:
Edgar Wright); Nightwatch(2004; director: Timur
Bekmambetov); Rec(2007; directors: Jaume Bala-
gueró and Paco Plaza); Paranormal Activity(2007;
102 CHAPTER 3TYPES OF MOVIES
Halloween lighting in Bride of FrankensteinLike film
noir, the horror genre utilizes a style of lighting (referred to
as low-key, or chiaroscuro, lighting) that emphasizes stark
contrasts between bright illumination and deep shadow.
These shadows are used to create unsettling graphic
compositions, obscure visual information, and suggest
offscreen action. Lighting a subject from below, a technique
often referred to as “Halloween lighting,” distorts a subject’s
features by reversing the natural placement of shadows.
director: Oren Peli); Let the Right One In(2008;
director: Tomas Alfredson); and Drag Me to Hell
(2009; director: Sam Raimi).The Western
Like most of the major genres, the Western pre-
dates the invention of motion pictures. The explo-
ration and settlement of the western United States
has fascinated European Americans since the fron-
tier was just a few hundred miles inland from the
eastern coast. Set in 1757 and published in 1826,
James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans
is widely considered the first popular novel to
explore the tension between the wilderness and
encroaching civilization. But the considerably less
reputable literature most responsible for spawning
the Western movie didn’t come along until about
twenty-five years later. Dime novels (so called
because of their cheap cost), short novellas written
for young men and semiliterates, delivered sensa-
tional adventures of fictional cowboys, outlaws, and
adventurers, as well as wildly fictionalized stories
starring actual Western figures. By the 1870s, stage
productions and traveling circuslike shows featur-
ing staged reenactments of famous battles and
other events capitalized on the growing interna-
tional fascination with the American West. Movies