Why 5 Once-Popular Horror Genres Now Just Look Ridiculous

So clearly, everyone was shitting their pants over rabies on the daily. That's a very big part of why Cujo worked so well, and why we got stuff like The Mad Death. There was also Dogs, Devil Dog, The Pack, Play Dead, and Monster Dog, because sometimes they forgot about the rabies and just focused on mean dogs. We even got White Dog, a vicious canine movie that's about racism and is also in the Criterion Collection. It says a lot about how big this trend was that we not only got B-movies but also prestige films that you can find in the back of a Barnes & Noble.

We still have evil dog movies, but they're rarely about rabies and usually about wolves. This is likely because no one is really afraid of rabies anymore. Hell, they made an entire episode of The Office about how a modern fear of rabies is pretty foolish. When the biggest voice for a problem is Michael Scott, you know it's kind of a non-issue.

Swamp monsters very much represented a fear of the unknown for audiences back in the day, when the average person actually lived near a swamp, or muddy creek, or some wilderness in which some kind of slimy creature could be lurking about. A lifetime of Mom and Dad scolding you to steer clear of it probably made for some vivid nightmares, imagining what could be lurking out there (when Mom and Dad really just wanted to keep you away from snakes and vagrant sex predators).

These days, most of us live in the suburbs or cities. The swamp could be lousy with monsters, but what would it matter? It's no longer tapping into a primal fear. Those monsters might as well be on Mars. If a swamp beast actually showed up in a suburban neighborhood, it'd probably get hit by a Prius.

But fears of atomic gigantism grew a little stale once it became clear what radiation truly does. If you could be a ten-story human, you'd probably be much better off than what happens if you actually get exposed to massive doses of radiation. Maybe no one in the '50s had done adequate research before they set to writing films. Had they been able to watch a few episodes of Chernobyl, then they might have changed their tune. Real radiation is terrifying in a whole different way. In comparison, radioactive giants are just big assholes with questionable tastes in loincloths.

Audiences back in the '70s and '80s were constantly terrorized by vehicular mayhem, and that's probably because fear of cars was a legit thing. Traffic accidents peaked throughout the late '60s and into the '70s, as more and more cars were on the road with basically no safety equipment. Seat belts didn't become standard until 1968. Before that, you had to drive with a rabbit's foot on the rear view mirror, because luck was the only thing saving your ass.

With the advent of seat belts and airbags, it was a bit harder to convince anyone that death was on four wheels at every corner. Ironically, though, since cars these days have onboard computers and can drive themselves or be hacked by malevolent outside forces, they're way scarier than they were in the days when your dad's Oldsmobile was stalking you.

But if Gremlins was Frosted Flakes, then you could find a number of store-brand "Sugar Square Cereals" in the form of knockoffs like Spookies, Munchies, Hobgoblins, and the incomprehensibly terrible Troll films. And their last major theatrical release seems to be 2011's Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark, a movie that might've signaled a return for the subgenre if it had made back its budget in the U.S.

Gremlins is still clearly the best of these films, since it was a rare one that got the comedy/horror blend right. That's super hard, because the immediate question you have upon seeing a poster for one is "Why should you be scared of being attacked by these little furball creatures that are inherently hilarious-looking?" And usually, the filmmakers don't figure out a satisfying answer.

For more, check out 4 Terrifying Psychology Lessons Behind Famous Movie Monsters - After Hours:

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