![]() ![]() One of the most famous jump scares that came after Psycho was in 1965’s Repulsion. The success of Psycho led to some more jump scares popping up in films like The Haunting (1963), Wait Until Dark (1967), and Night of the Living Dead (1968). The shower scene from Psycho has one of the most famous pieces of film music ever composed, Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking strings as Marion is slainmaking the scene even more jumpy and terrifying. Cat People, unlike Phantom, had sound, but it didn’t have a musical score (though it could have done and isn’t a technological limitation, just a creative decision). People reportedly screamed and fainted during this scene back in 1960. And then, to the sound of screeching music, the curtain is pulled back, and Marion is murdered. As Marion is in the shower, the audience is introduced to the shadow of a person behind the curtain who slowly approaches with a knife. ![]() It’s difficult to talk about techniques used in horror without mentioning the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, and specifically without mentioning Psycho, featuring of the most famous scenes in cinematic history. However, the next truly great jump scare came in 1960. There are a few jump scares throughout the 1950s, though, one of the most mainstream ones appearing in 1951’s The Thing from Another World. However iconic or effective Cat People proved to be, it didn’t set off a trend of jump scares in every film. This is the scene to which all modern jump scares can trace their heritage. We can hear Alice’s footsteps getting quicker, we can hear her breathing getting faster, and we hear the obtusely loud bus hiss into the frame, all synchronised. This was incredibly effective and has what the Phantom scare lacked sound. This is so famous the technique of a fake-out jump scare became known as the Lewton Bus, named after the film’s producer Val Lewton. ![]() Her pace quickens, and she is scared, it’s dead silent, the audience is on tenterhooks, and then… a bus innocently pulls into the frame with its brakes loudly hissing and making the audience scream like fools. It’s dark, she’s looking over her shoulder. In the scene, Alice is walking down a street, being followed by Irene, one of the titular Cat People. It’s the first record of a fake jump scare too. ![]() Cat People was really the first film to know how to deliver on a jump scare. The most famous and earliest effective jump scare comes from 1942’s Cat People. It wasn’t until almost 20 years later we’d see it in a major Hollywood production again. Finding jump scares from the same era as Phantom is difficult. The gothic horror of Universal’s early monster films didn’t lend itself to jump scares where the horror was more atmospheric. However, the jump scare was something new. These include the likes of Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933), Werewolf in London (1935), and The Wolf Man (1941), as well as many sequels to all of these. The success of Phantom led to Universal making many more horror films, in a collection that came to be known as Universal Monsters. Apparently, audience members screamed with horror and even fainted, which sort of seems ridiculous now. And so, the lack of original music makes it difficult to imagine what it was like in 1925. Then boom a loud high-pitched noise makes the scare not just visual but auditory too. It builds, getting louder and louder, before cutting out to painful silence. Showings of silent films would almost always be accompanied by live orchestral music, but we have no reference for what that music would have been in 1925 (there was a re-issued sound version of Phantom in 1930, but it was lost in a fire). Phantom was a silent film, with no synchronised recorded sound, meaning no musical score. This is an early jump scare, it is not as effective now as it would have been in 1925. The first major film (that has survived) to use any form of a jump scare would be 1925’s Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom’s mask is torn off to reveal the iconic shot of Lon Chaney with pins in his nostrils, revealing the famous, horrifying face we all know now. It’s something that exploits the most primitive side of us. Regardless of who you are, when the screen is dark, the music is rising, the tension is building, and something suddenly pops up, it makes you jump. The jump scare is one of the most effective techniques a filmmaker has in their arsenal. As the spookiest night of the year approaches, let’s look at one of cinema’s defining techniques-the jump scare. ![]()
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