And so we begin.  Today:  the intro. It'll take a bit for me to edit the next part as it will get into the body of the paper then.  The cited works in this section are:  Reynold Humphries's "The American Horror Film:  An Introduction", Joseph Maddrey's "Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue:  The Evolution of the American Horror Film", and Kendall Phillips's "Projected Fears:  Horror Films and American Culture".  I will be saying that info at the beginning of each part.  Now then:  *clears throat*

MILESTONES IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HORROR FILM AS TRACED THROUGH THE ROLES OF WOMEN

"One word can sum up the shift from classic horror to modern horror: Psycho" (Humphries 85).
"While there is considerable debate over which film inaugurated the modern era of the horror film, Psycho(1960) is among the earliest candidates" (Maddrey 48).

      To write a film criticism piece solely claiming that Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is influential, a milestone in the history of horror, or a general masterpiece of American cinema would be redundant, derivative, and, some might say, unnecessary overall due to the sheer mass of analysis of the movie that exists. The impact of this excess of research is expressed by Kendall Phillips in the chapter devoted solely to the film in his book Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture: "With little doubt, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is the most heavily analyzed film in the long career of the most investigated director in the history of American film. [...] The film has been the subject of numerous books, hundreds of essays, and indeed, the critical and academic attention to Hitchcock and Psycho played an integral part in the development of film studies". (61)

      However, to claim, as Reynold Humphries does in the quote that begins this essay, that Psycho is the sole dividing line between a "classic" horror movie and a "modern" horror movie is short-sighted and somewhat flawed. While it is true that, style-wise, Psycho was a visionary work that influenced numerous other movies over the years, to say it is the only movie to divide between "classic" and "modern" both oversimplifies the development of the horror movie and neglects numerous other movies that have advanced the plots and popularity of horror through the last 40 years through various stylistic approaches. Instead, this particular analysis will attempt to first show the flaw in describing Psycho as a totally revolutionary movie, different in every way from those which came before. It will then divide the "modern" horror movies that followed Psycho into subsections based on the development of female protagonists from the helpless, weak characters of the 1960s, through the strong, self-aware characters of the 1970s, into the stereotypical "Final Girl" of the slasher films of the 1980s, and finally into the protagonists of some 1990s movies featuring "hybrid" protagonists, women whose character traits are enhanced by stereotypically masculine actions. It will conclude with an examination of movies from the 21st Century both proving just how influential these previous films have been overall, and depicting the state of the female protagonist since 2000. In this way, it will be proven that Psycho, while undeniably a cinematic tour de force, was not the final step in either the evolution of the horror movie or the progression of the female main character.