Two more ideas came to mind when I asked my self the simple questions- When is a comedy effective in making us laugh, and when does a horror film really get us scared. Which films have made me laugh?
Well I am afraid that I have to refer to the master of gags: Charles Chaplin in the comedy genre. I will be interested in analyzing his film The Circus, and Easy Street in order to explore which techniques did the master of masters used to make us laugh still today.
In the horror genre, I will be interested in researchingt one of my favorites and in fact the precursor of the Zombie genre: Night of the living dead. This movie is not only effective at scaring but also it contains strong political and racial discourses. Let us consider for a minute that the protagonist is black, and that the U.S. had just gone through Vietnam. The narrating conventions used in order to do both, conveying a scary plot that stands by itself an incorporating inter-textual discourse are remarkable.
I have a second candidate for the horror or if we were to get picky with classifications with the suspense genre. Lynch’s Blue Velvet is perhaps one of the most scary movies, since it keeps the spectator in a continuous limbo of suspense. I will like to analyze how Lynch achives that.