Horror, as a genre is probably my most favorite of all film genres, although I am always a sucker for a good action/drama movie. I know these are two genres are very different from one another, but in some ways they are similar. Both can use violence to shock the viewers’ senses. They can both have really powerful story lines that invest you into the characters wellbeing, but also have weak ones where you may ask yourself “When is this person going to die”?

“A Better Tomorrow” and “Nightmare on Elm Street” are two movies from the 1980s that gave a different perspective on their genres, and became very successful in doing so.

“A Better Tomorrow” is a Chinese film that came out in 1986, and was directed by John Woo. This film was the top grossing film in Hong Kong’s history for many years, and allowed Woo to be recognized as a great director not only in China, but also around the world.

 

 

Woo’s film reinvented the type of action films that were coming out of Hong Kong during that time. This film featured men in nice suits and long trench coats with big glasses that made gangsters look cool. In this film it is the relationship between brothers- one a cop named Kit, and the other a gangster named Sung who makes counterfeit money that propels the movie forward. They go from loving one another to having basically no relationship because of Sung’s criminal activities. In the end though the relationship is salvaged when the brothers are united in the end during a shootout against their common enemy. The blood and violence in this film was not what was coming out of the traditional Chinese Cinema. Instead of a cheesy overacted Kung Fu movie that viewers had come to expect, Woo gave audiences a take on the crime scene in Hong Kong that was ran by gangsters. This film was such a success, that Woo ended up making it into a trilogy, and some say the films that followed were even better then the first.

 

In 1984 “A Nightmare on Elm Street” came out and was not the horror movie that audiences had seen before. Wes Craven really shows his imagination in this movie with his character Freddy Krueger who murders teenagers in their dreams. Craven got the idea for this film from a group of people in Southeast Asia that came to America as refugees and were dying in their sleep. There was no known cause for the deaths other then the fact that they were having nightmares, refused to sleep until absolutely exhausted, and then would wake up screaming and die.
This is exactly what happens to Nancy and her friends through the whole film. They all have nightmares about Freddy Krueger who chases them in their dreams, and if he catches them, he kills them. As an unknown killer murders Nancy’s friends in horribly violent bloody ways through their dreams, she realizes that she must stay awake or she will also die. Eventually she figures out who is committing the murders – Krueger. Realizing the only way to stop him is to lure him into the real world, Nancy allows herself to fall asleep and does just that.
Craven ends the film in a way that makes you wonder if this is a dream or real life. Nancy and her friends drive away in a car possessed by Krueger, all while her Mom is being killed by him. Strange as that is, you realize while watching that there will in fact be a sequel, or eight. Today the Krueger franchise is still one that is hard to erase from memory.

Both Craven and Woo took the genres of these films and showed them in a different way. Both bloody and violent, but in completely different ways, and both being so popular that they required sequels that allowed both of them to become two of the best film franchises of the time.