HORROR at the Oscars! Chapter IV (1999-present)

Nearly a decade following The Silence of the Lambs' victory in Best Picture, another horror film at last surfaced in the top category.

M. Night Shyamalan may be a polarizing filmmaker now - and deservedly so, given some of the junk he's inflicted upon the masses in recent years - but in 1999, he really did take Hollywood by storm with The Sixth Sense, an unlikely juggernaut that hit theaters that August and stayed atop the box office for five consecutive weeks. By the end of its run, it garnered nearly $300 million in domestic receipts alone, with only Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace reaping in more dough that year.

The Bruce Willis starrer, which made overnight sensations out of both Shyamalan and child actor Haley Joel Osment, was not thought to be a significant awards player that season, beyond for Osment and perhaps Shyamalan's twisty, clever screenplay and indeed, those were the two nominations it garnered at the Golden Globes. Shyamalan was recognized by both the Writers Guild and Directors Guild but the film missed at the Producers Guild Awards.

Nonetheless, come Oscar morning, The Sixth Sense exceeded even the greatest expectations of Oscar pundits, scoring six nods, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and even a jaw-dropping nod for the marvelous Toni Collette in Best Supporting Actress. The film capitalized on the lukewarm reception for Oscar bait The End of the Affair and The Hurricane and, let's face it, Being John Malkovich was probably a tad too quirky to grab a Best Picture nod.

On Oscar night, I'm afraid, the picture did not score any wins. American Beauty nearly swept the evening, with Michael Caine (for The Cider House Rules) and Angelina Jolie (for Girl, Interrupted) defeating Osment and Collette, as expected. There was, however, a smidge of good news for the genre that evening - Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow scored victory in Best Art Direction, and had been nominated in Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design. The bombastic retooling of The Mummy (1999, Sommers) also mustered a nod, in Best Sound.

The Blair Witch Project (1999, Sanchez/Myrick) was, no surprise, nowhere to be found at the Oscars.

At the start of the new millennium, in 2000, the Academy did not embrace Christian Bale's tour-de-force turn in American Psycho (2000, Harron). They did, however, on the heels of pictures like Ed Wood and Gods and Monsters, shower some love on another film about the men who made horror cinema.

Willem Dafoe's scenery-chewing portrayal of Nosferatu's Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire (2000, Merhige) scored him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000, Merhige) is not quite as satisfying or memorable a picture as the aforementioned two. It does, however, sport a bravura turn from Willem Dafoe, here portraying the elusive Max Schreck, who gave life to Graf Orlok in F.W. Murnau's legendary Nosferatu. Carrying the film on his shoulders, alongside John Malkovich as Murnau, Dafoe's eerie and amusing turn proved a hit that awards season - Dafoe was nominated just about everywhere and scored a few critics' awards wins too, most notably from the Los Angels Film Critics Association. As expected, Dafoe was defeated on Oscar night by Benicio del Toro in Traffic. The picture garnered a second nomination, in Best Makeup, which went to the truly horrific How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Also amusingly up for a nomination this year - Paul Verhoeven's raunchy Invisible Man clone Hollow Man, which picked up a nod for its memorable visual effects.

The rest of the decade to come and frankly, even beyond that, would not prove the best of times for horror at the Oscars.

There was hardly a shortage of terrific cinema. The Others (2001, Amenabar), for instance, garnered fabulous reviews and strong box office, and fared well at the precursor awards that season, but ultimately did not muster a single Oscar nod. Neither did Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, a true triumph in film editing, the following year.

The Academy did, despite underwhelming reviews, throw a few nominations to the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera musical (2004, Schumacher) but I consider it a real stretch to label that one a true horror film. Its nods came in Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design and Best Original Song and yes, you can read my full review on that year's Original Song line-up here. The picture, thankfully, did not go home with any prizes.

The endearing Monster House (2007, Kenan) was one of several horror-comedies to recently grace the Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars.

The gruesome, truly terrifying The Descent (2006, Marshall) was sadly not recognized by the Academy for its suffocating production design or superb cinematography. At least the genre was kinda-sorta represented this year, by Tim Burton's visually impressive, albeit not terribly memorable The Corpse Bride. It mustered a nod in Best Animated Feature, as did the cute Monster House (2007, Kenan) the following year. The films were no match for winners Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Happy Feet, respectively.

Speaking of 2007, this was a year that could have marked a real comeback for horror at the Oscars but, ultimately, only left a modest dent.

Stephen Sondheim's marvelous Sweeney Todd: The Demon of Barber of Fleet Street was at last receiving a film treatment, and from none other than Tim Burton, who, while hardly an Oscar favorite, at least had a pretty solid track record of delivering the goods on the big screen. With Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter headlining, the picture garnered solid critical notices but fared only modestly at the box office. After flying out of the starting gates at the beginning of the awards season, winning Best Director from the National Board of Review and Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical at the Golden Globes, the film slowly petered out, just as it did among audiences. Ultimately, it garnered three Oscar nods - in Best Lead Actor, Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction, the last of which it won. What looked like a Best Picture contender in December was suddenly a complete also-ran by February.

A significant snub that year - no Best Foreign Language Film nod for Juan Antonio Bayona's exquisite The Orphanage, which garnered ample notices from overseas film awards. Tomas Alfredson's critically acclaimed Let the Right One In was also overlooked in this category, the following year, despite plenty of precursor attention.

At last, at the start of the new decade, another horror film - the fifth to date - graced the Best Picture category.

Following lukewarm reception to his Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky at last won over the Academy with his horrifying Black Swan.

Up until 2010, visionary filmmaker Darren Aronofsky had not been whole-heartedly embraced by the Academy. Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler were among the finest films of 2000 and 2008, respectively, but failed to leave a dent at the Oscars, beyond a few acting nominations.

The Academy could not, however, resist 2010's Black Swan, a truly terrifying, exquisitely staged vehicle for Natalie Portman that would mark the most incredible work of her career (to date, at least) and finally nab her an Oscar. An enormous critical and box office hit, ultimately amassing more than $100 million in domestic receipts, the picture mustered five nominations in total, for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Lead Actress, Best Film Editing and Best Cinematography. With The King's Speech and The Social Network in a tight dual for overall Oscar glory, Black Swan itself was somewhat overshadowed that season in terms of wins. That did not, thankfully, keep Portman from prevailing.

One more horror item from 2010 - Joe Johnston's silly, overstuffed The Wolfman showed up in Best Makeup and managed to score the win, securing Oscar #7 for the legendary Rick Baker. Universal's original (and, unlike the remake, awesome) The Wolf Man was of course the recipient of zero Oscar nominations.

Ever since Black Swan and The Wolfman claimed Oscar victory, the genre's presence has, unfortunately, dimmed quite a bit at the awards. Only two horror films have garnered recognition, both in 2012, in the Best Animated Feature category - Tim Burton's Frankenweenie and Chris Butler and Sam Fell's ParaNorman. Pitted against the latest from Disney-Pixar, Brave, the two flicks hardly stood a real prayer.

Critically acclaimed and financially successful horror films like The Cabin in the Woods (2012, Goddard), The Conjuring (2013, Wan) and The Babadook (2014, Kent) failed to make inroads in their respective awards seasons. This year's The Witch (2016, Eggers) appears exceedingly likely to also miss out.

Could The Witch (2016, Eggers) emerge a player this awards season?

Regardless of this ho-hum showing in recent years, it is of course inevitable this fantastic genre will again surface in a big way at the Oscars, and not just in Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup. One of these days, we will again be greeted by a critic-adored box office mammoth, in the mold of The Exorcist and Jaws, or perhaps another horror flick that rides the strength of a performance (ala Bette Davis and Natalie Portman) to a boatload of nominations. The Witch very much proved there's still plenty of juice and creativity - and genuine frights - in horror.

HORROR at the Oscars! Chapter III (1980-1998)

On the heels of their lukewarm reception to Alien (1979, Scott), the Academy continued, for the most part, to neglect horror cinema at the start of the new decade.

Stanley Kubrick's divisive The Shining, adored by countless horror buffs and notably loathed by author Stephen King, was not the Academy's cup of tea (though it did inexplicably garner Razzie nominations in Worst Director and Worst Actress, for the amazing Shelley Duvall). Brian De Palma also struck out with his comparably divisive Dressed to Kill, also nominated for several Razzies in spite of a number of critical raves, including from the legendary Pauline Kael. Peter Medak's eerie and underrated The Changeling? Also M.I.A.

The one 1980 horror flick the Academy could bring itself to embrace was the collaboration of two Academy favorites, filmmaker Ken Russell and screenwriter Paddy Cheyefsky, the trippy and visually compelling Altered States. It garnered Oscar nods in Best Original Score and Best Sound, losing to Fame and The Empire Strikes Back, respectively.

The following year, 1981, marked the establishment of a new Oscar category - Best Makeup. Twice before, to 7 Faces of Dr. Lao and Planet of the Apes, the Academy had awarded special honorary Oscars for achievement in makeup. Never before, however, had their been a competitive race. That changed here as two makeup legends in cinema - Rick Baker and Stan Winston - faced off for their work on An American Werewolf in London and Heartbeeps, respectively. John Landis' American Werewolf is an intense, gory horror-comedy, hardly traditional Oscar-calibur fare. Heartbeeps, however, was even more unacceptable - an ambitious, yet completely dreadful romcom with Andy Kaufman (in his final film role) and Bernadette Peters as robots who fall in love. Baker, thankfully, prevailed.

The Spielberg-written/produced Poltergeist (1982, Hooper) lost all three of its Oscar nominations to the Spielberg-directed E.T.

In 1982, the Academy sadly did not recognize John Carpenter's breathtaking remake of The Thing or George A. Romero and Stephen King's delightfully scary Creepshow - which, at the very least, would have been worthy of Original Score and Film Editing nods, respectively. They did, however, toss a few technical nominations to Tobe Hooper's (or Steven Spielberg's, for the conspiracy theorists out there) Poltergeist, which made appearances in Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects, all of which went to Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. Over at BAFTA, Poltergeist actually managed to edge out the Spielberg flick for their Visual Effects prize.

Two years later, Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street was, not surprisingly, not making a killing during Oscar season. The Academy could not, however, resist that year's second-highest-grossing picture, a little horror-comedy called Ghostbusters (1984, Reitman). The film, which garnered Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical and Best Lead Actor - Comedy/Musical (for Bill Murray, of course) nods at the Golden Globes, showed up in Best Visual Effects and Best Original Song on Oscar nominations morning.

It was not until 1986 that a horror flick really made a significant dent at the Oscars this decade.

Aliens (1986, Cameron) was more warmly embraced than Alien (1979, Scott) by the Academy, scoring seven Oscar nods, including two wins.

The first Alien picture (1979, Scott) did not much move members of the Academy. By 1986, however, voters were more receptive to this franchise. James Cameron's sequel, Aliens, was critically acclaimed and performed solidly at the box office that summer, holding the number one slot for four consecutive weeks. It was not, however, expected to be much more of an awards contender than its predecessor, though leading lady Sigourney Weaver was in the running for a Best Lead Actress nod.

On nominations morning, however, Aliens overperformed even the highest expectations by scoring seven nods, including for Weaver and the film's editing and original score (by James Horner). Still, Weaver was, unfortunately, not seen as a serious contender for the win. On Oscar night, the picture scored two victories, in Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Editing. Marlee Matlin, as generally expected, defeated Weaver for her work in Children of a Lesser God.

Also in the mix at the 1986 Oscars - David Cronenberg's horrifying retooling of The Fly won that year's prize in Best Makeup. Leading man Jeff Goldblum was a dark horse for a Best Lead Actor nom - he received notices from the National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics Circle - but ultimately did not surface on nominations morning. The uneven Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986, Gibson) scored a Best Visual Effects nod, while the delightful horror-musical-comedy Little Shop of Horrors (1986, Oz) showed up in Best Visual Effects and Best Original Song. (My review of 1986 Best Original Song can be found here.)

1987 wasn't quite as hot a year for horror at the Oscars, though George Miller's amusing The Witches of Eastwick managed to sneak in for Best Original Score and Best Sound nominations, falling to Best Picture winner The Last Emperor in both. Another horror comedy - Tim Burton's Beetlejuice - scored the win in Best Makeup the year after. Headliner Michael Keaton, who also starred in Clean and Sober that year, was named Best Lead Actor by the National Society of Film Critics.

The genre got off to a strong start at the Oscars with the start of a new decade.

In 1990, Kathy Bates took home the Best Lead Actress prize for her unforgettable breakthrough turn as Annie Wilkes in the film adaptation of Misery (1990, Reiner). A shame James Caan didn't garner some recognition for his comparably terrific work.

The following year, however, marked the strongest performance for a horror film at the Oscars since The Exorcist in 1973.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991, Demme) marked the first - and, to date, only - horror film to score the Best Picture Oscar.

Initially, Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs, based on the eponymous 1988 Thomas Harris novel, was not expected to be something of an Oscar contender. For one, the piece focused on a cannibalistic serial killer - not exactly traditional Oscar bait. To boot, however, the Demme picture was released by Orion in February of 1991, nearly a full year out from the awards season. Films released in the spring are often forgotten by the following winter, let alone pictures from February.

Nonetheless, The Silence of the Lambs had real staying power in 1991. It remained in the box office top 10 through that May, eventually earning more than $130 million domestically and clocking in as the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year. At the start of the awards season, the film was also helped by the first Oscar precursor to vote - the National Board of Review, which gave the film Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor (Anthony Hopkins) prizes.

Despite the NBR nod, Orion opted to campaign Hopkins for the Lead Actor prize, pitting him against early front-runners Warren Beatty in Bugsy and Nick Nolte in The Prince of Tides. At the 1991 Golden Globes, The Silence of the Lambs took home just one prize - Best Lead Actress for Jodie Foster - with Bugsy, Nolte and Oliver Stone (for JFK) beating Silence, Hopkins and Demme. The critics awards, however, were largely with the Demme film and the film swept the important guild awards.

By Oscar night, the awards were largely unsettled. Foster looked like a shoo-in, as did Ted Tally for his screenplay. But Demme was locked in a tough race with Stone and the picture was contending with the Beatty and Stone films and a complete wild card, Beauty and the Beast, the first animated film ever nominated in Best Picture. Hopkins and Nolte looked completely deadlocked.

Come Oscar night, however, The Silence of the Lambs made a killing, sweeping the big five - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Lead Actor, Best Lead Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. The Nolte film went nowhere and Bugsy and JFK were left only technical scraps. It was, of course, the first (and to date, only) horror flick to ever win the Best Picture prize.

We cannot, of course, forget The Addams Family (1991, Sonnenfeld), which mustered a nomination in Best Costume Design.

The following two years were halfway decent for the genre too, at least for the technical prizes. The zany horror-comedy Death Becomes Her (1992, Zemeckis) and ravishingly designed Dracula (1992, Coppola) garnered nods in Best Visual Effects and Best Costume Design/Best Sound Editing/Best Makeup/Best Art Direction, respectively. Sans the Art Direction prize, the films took home trophies for them all. The next year, Addams Family Values (1993, Sonnenfeld) and The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, Selick) showed up in Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects, respectively. No wins, I'm afraid.

Martin Landau won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his brilliant turn as horror legend Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood (1994, Burton).

Horror-comedy continued to resonate with the Academy in 1994, with the release of Tim Burton's flat-out brilliant Ed Wood, arguably the greatest movie ever made about making movies. Though deserving of a whole plethora of nominations and wins, the film struggled at the box office and had seemingly lukewarm support from its studio, Touchstone Pictures. Only Martin Landau, portraying horror legend Bela Lugosi, really broke through that awards season, taking home the Best Supporting Actor prize nearly everywhere, including the Oscars. The pic also took home the Best Makeup prize.

Also nominated in 1994 - the beautifully designed, if miscast and rather hollow Interview with the Vampire (1994, Jordan). The film garnered nods in Best Art Direction, Best Original Score and Best Makeup. Kirsten Dunst, the best part of the film by far, was a contender in that year's messy Best Supporting Actress race but ultimately failed to land the Oscar nom.

After four consecutive years of horror flickers mustering multiple nominations at the Oscars, only one nod was received in 1995 - for Richard Francis Bruce's exemplary editing on Se7en (1995, Fincher).

Sir Ian McKellen's portrayal of Frankenstein filmmaker James Whale in Gods and Monsters (1998, Condon) netted him a Best Lead Actor Oscar nomination.

As the genre underwent a so-called "revival" with the popular likes of Scream (1996, Craven) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997, Gillespie), its presence completely dried up at the Oscars. Only in 1998 did it kinda-sorta resurface, with Bill Condon's brilliant Gods and Monsters, a look at the final, tragic days in the life of Frankenstein director James Whale. Nominated for three Oscars - Best Lead Actor (Ian McKellen, who should have prevailed), Best Supporting Actress (Lynn Redgrave) and Best Adapted Screenplay - Condon took home the film's sole prize, for his screenwriting.

Next up, the final (for now) chapter - how horror has fared from the close of the 1990s, through present day, from The Sixth Sense to Black Swan and beyond.

HORROR at the Oscars! Chapter II (1960-1979)

Alfred Hitchcock's inimitable Psycho was met to both enormous critical acclaim and audience interest upon its release in 1960. The picture, which was the second-highest grossing film of the year, just behind Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, would go to top the American Film Institute's list of "100 Years...100 Thrills," released in 2001.

Alas, the film, for all of its success, was greeted to a somewhat cool reception by the Academy. Psycho did muster four nominations - in Best Director (Hitchcock's fifth and final Oscar nomination), Best Supporting Actress (the unforgettable Janet Leigh), Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography. Leigh, who won the Golden Globe, was defeated by Shirley Jones' fine turn in Elmer Gantry. It failed to win in any of the other three categories to boot.

Notably snubbed was of course Anthony Perkins, flat-out brilliant as Norman Bates. There was other notable horror work overlooked here too - Georges Franju's chilling Eyes Without a Face would've been richly deserving of recognition in Best Foreign Language Film. Also, Michael Powell's inventive and unsettling Peeping Tom, while not whole-heartedly embraced upon its initial release, was surely worthy of attention.

The following year, a real bone-chiller did surface in Best Foreign Language Film - and manage to triumph too - Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, a picture which served as the inspiration to Wes Craven's 1972 cult classic The Last House on the Left.

Bette Davis' Best Lead Actress nomination was among five Oscar nods for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962, Aldrich).

In 1962 and 1964, a horror sub-genre, the so-called "psycho-biddy" picture - that is, a film involving an older, once-glamorous woman who cracks and terrorizes those around her - garnered significant Oscar love. Two Bette Davis-headlined, Robert Aldrich-directed films - What Ever Happened to Baby Jane and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte - received a combined 12 Oscar nominations, including three acting nods (for Davis and Victor Buono in the former and the dazzling Agnes Moorehead in the latter). The films only delivered a single win, however, for Norma Koch's costume design in Baby Jane.

Between those two camp classics, in 1963, Hitchcock's The Birds - which, while a box office success, did not reach the critical acclaim of Psycho - scored an Oscar nod in Best Special Effects, where it lost to the epically overblown Cleopatra. Notably missing this year was the brilliant The Haunting, which did at least manage a Golden Globe nomination for its director, Robert Wise.

The next three years were not gangbusters for the genre at the Oscars, or in general. Roman Polanski's startling Repulsion garnered runner-up mentions in Best Director and Best Lead Actress (for Catherine Denueve) at the 1965 New York Film Critics Circle Awards - and a Best Cinematography BAFTA nod to boot - but was a no-show on Oscar nominations morning. Beyond the Polanski film, there were few, if any Oscar-calibur horror films to speak of.

Audrey Hepburn received her fifth and final Best Lead Actress Oscar nomination for Wait Until Dark (1967, Young).

At last, in 1967, horror resurfaced at the Oscars, through a Best Lead Actress nomination for Audrey Hepburn in Terence Young's Wait Until Dark. The suspenseful and claustrophobic film, which features its leading lady as a blind woman terrorized by drug-scouring criminals, is among the boldest and most interesting efforts of Hepburn's career. (She ended up losing to another Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.)

It's no surprise that, in 1968, the Academy was not ready to recognize a film like George A. Romero's terrifying Night of the Living Dead. At least they did have the courage to shower some affection on another sublime horror picture this year, Polanski's exquisite Rosemary's Baby. While the lack of nomination for Mia Farrow is truly unforgivable (and perhaps surprising - she garnered both Golden Globe and BAFTA nods), it is pretty sweet that the scene-stealing, equal-parts-hilarious-and-horrifying Ruth Gordon took home the prize for Best Supporting Actress. Polanski's screenplay was nominated too, losing to James Goldman's incomparable work on The Lion in Winter.

In 1972, horror cinema surfaced in the most unlikely of Oscar categories - Best Original Song, where Michael Jackson's "Ben," from the eponymous rat picture (1972, Carlson), garnered a nomination and ultimately lost to The Poseidon Adventure's dreadful "The Morning After." (If interested, feel free to check out my full analysis of '72 Best Original Song here.)

The Exorcist (1973, Friedkin) garnered 10 Oscar nominations, the most of any horror film to date.

The following year, 1973, marked arguably the most impressive year for horror at the Oscars. While Robin Hardy's eerie The Wicker Man did not show up, nor did Nicolas Roeg's haunting Don't Look Now (which nonetheless went on to score seven BAFTA nominations, including a Best Cinematography victory), William Friedkin's blood-curdling The Exorcist proved a huge player that awards season. The second-highest grossing film of '73, the film went into Oscar night with an eye-popping 10 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and nods in three acting categories (for Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller and Linda Blair). It set a nominations record for horror at the Oscars, which remains unbroken to this day.

At that year's Golden Globes, The Exorcist scored victories in Best Picture - Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress. Surprisingly, the film received no love at all from the critics' awards and would only go on to receive a Best Soundtrack nomination at BAFTA. The film was a sure bet to win Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars - it was the sole Best Picture nominee among the five - but, beyond that, its winning prospects were greatly uncertain. Blair began the race an overwhelming favorite but was dogged by press coverage on Oscar-winner Mercedes McCambridge's dubbing of the Regan character. This led to chatter that Blair's performance was more an effects-driven one than a real tour-de-force in acting. Many also suspected the picture was just too bold to make a real killing with the old-school Academy.

Those suspicions were right - The Exorcist indeed took home Best Adapted Screenplay on Oscar night, and just one other victory, in Best Sound. Blair lost to Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon, Miller (as expected) lost to John Houseman in The Paper Chase and Burstyn lost to Glenda Jackson in A Touch of Class. Friedkin and the film were ultimately trampled over by George Roy Hill's even more financially successful (and more Academy-friendly) The Sting.

1974 did not, sadly, find Bob Clark's influential and truly terrifying slasher flick Black Christmas steamrolling the awards season. Instead, coming off the heels of dark and draining The Exorcist, the Academy catered to lighter horror fare, throwing a few nominations to Mel Brooks' ingenious Young Frankenstein (in Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound) and Brian De Palma's delightfully inventive Phantom of the Paradise (for Paul Williams, in Best Adapted Score). No surprise, there were no wins among the three nominations - as if Brooks' script had a prayer against The Godfather Part II - but kudos to the Academy for at least giving some recognition to these fantastic films.

Despite missing out on nominations in Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, Jaws (1975, Spielberg) garnered four Oscar nods, including Best Picture.

In 1975, while Tobe Hooper's exhilarating The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was filling drive-ins across the nation but hardly winning support from the Hollywood establishment, newcomer Steven Spielberg's smash box office and critical sensation Jaws landed with a modest splash at the Oscars. The picture garnered four nominations - in Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing and Best Sound - but was notably left out for Spielberg's direction. The Academy instead gave a surprise nomination to Frederico Fellini, whose Amarcord won Best Foreign Language Film. The Spielberg snub - coupled with no nod for screenwriting - all but ensured Jaws would not take home the top prize. It did, however, manage to take home the other three Oscars, one more than The Exorcist had mustered just a couple years back.

The following year found a Brian De Palma picture (at last!) receive major Oscar nominations. His film adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie was a decent-sized box office and critical hit - impressive for a De Palma horror flick but hardly on the level of a Jaws or Exorcist. Piper Laurie, who was previously Oscar-nominated for 1961's The Hustler, had not acted in a motion picture since the Paul Newman classic. Her presence in the 1976 awards season was not only a result of the dazzling notices for the De Palma film but also something of a "welcome back" after the 15-year hiatus. She was Oscar-nominated for the picture, as was leading lady Sissy Spacek. While Spacek likely didn't have a real prayer against front-runner Faye Dunaway (for Network), Best Supporting Actress was a real jump ball that year (and the Golden Globe winner, Katharine Ross in Voyage of the Damned, wasn't even Oscar-nominated). Beatrice Straight ultimately claimed victory for Network but it wouldn't surprise me if Laurie was a close runner-up in the final vote.

Also nominated in 1976? Richard Donner's The Omen, which scored nominations in Best Original Score and Best Original Song (both for composer Jerry Goldsmith), winning for the former. (My review of the nominated "Ave Santini" and the rest of '76 Best Original Song can be found here.)

1977 did not prove a prime year for horror at the Oscars - Dario Argento's Suspiria, which features some of the most gorgeous, eye-popping production design to have ever graced the big screen, was nowhere to be found. The following year was not much better, despite the releases of the legendary Dawn of the Dead (1978, Romero), Halloween (1978, Carpenter) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978, Kaufman). Of course, while snubbing those masterpieces, the Academy had the nerve to recognize Irwin Allen's horrendous bee disaster flick The Swarm in Best Costume Design.

Alien (1979, Scott) was a big, fat box office hit but only mustered two Oscar nominations.

The decade ultimately ended on a so-so note for the genre. Ridley Scott's brilliant Alien was a juggernaut at the 1979 box office and richly deserved a boatload of nominations. It only, however, mustered two - Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects, prevailing in the latter. The even more financially successful The Amityville Horror also managed an Oscar nod, for Lalo Schifrin's gangbusters original score. It lost to A Little Romance.

Coming up in Chapter III - Aliens and Hannibal Lecter, among others, take their bite at the Oscars...

HORROR at the Oscars! Chapter I (1928-1959)

In looking back at the history of horror cinema and its performance at the Oscars, it must first be acknowledged that a plethora of outstanding pictures in this genre were released prior to the very existence of the Academy Awards.

The legendary likes of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Wiene), Nosferatu (1922, Murnau) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925, Julian), among others, all garnered releases prior to the first Oscar ceremony, in 1928. Decades later, of course, the Academy would embrace multiple remakes of Phantom, as well as as a picture about the making of Nosferatu.

There were not many horror films eligible for consideration at the first Oscar ceremony - the most worthy of such recognition would have been Paul Leni's haunting The Man Who Laughs, one of countless horror films released in the first half of the century by Universal Pictures. Leni's film did not garner any awards love and neither did Universal's much more successful and iconic Dracula (1931, Browning) and Frankenstein (1931, Whale) a few years later.

Fredric March won his first of two career Oscars for Paramount's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932, Marmoulian).

It was not until the following year, in 1932, that the Academy embraced a horror film. It was not Freaks (1932, Browning) or The Mummy (1932, Freund) that won this recognition but rather a non-Universal production, Paramount's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and featuring a stirring leading turn from the great Fredric March. Nominated for three Oscars - Best Lead Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography - the picture ultimately went home with one award, for its leading man. March would, 15 years later, go on to win a second Oscar in this category, for The Best Years of Our Lives.

The next seven years would prove much of a dry spell for horror at the Oscars. The much-hyped and adored The Bride of Frankenstein (1935, Whale) only mustered a single nomination, in Best Sound. Other, admittedly lesser Universal productions were ignored entirely.

In 1939 and 1940, however, horror made a notable return to the Oscars. Four pictures, including two Universal productions, one Paramount effort and one RKO film, garnered nominations.

RKO's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939, Dieterle) received Oscar nods in Best Original Score and Best Sound.

RKO's costly The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939, Dieterle), starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara, won nominations in Best Original Score and Best Sound. The other three pictures - Paramount's Dr. Cyclops (1940, Schoedsack) and Universal's The Invisible Man Returns (1940, May) and The Invisible Woman (1940, Sutherland) - were nominated in Best Special Effects, none able to to prevail. That the latter two pictures garnered Oscar love while the first (and best) film in the series, The Invisible Man (1933, Whale), received zero nominations, might seem a bit of an eyebrow-raiser, except that Best Special Effects category did not really come to fruition until 1939.

In 1941, the Academy sadly did not embrace George Waggner's classic The Wolf Man. They did, however, curiously opt to reward that year's production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a starry vehicle for Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner, directed by the incomparable Victor Fleming. Despite all of that star wattage, however, the picture is kind of a snooze, half-heartedly delivered by all involved. Nonetheless, the Academy went for it anyway, rewarding it three nominations, in Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing and Best Original Score. The Academy also this year gave a Best Original Score nom to Jean Yarbrough's silly horror-comedy King of the Zombies. (Bernard Herrman's composition for The Devil and Daniel Webster ultimately defeated the two horror flicks.)

Universal's sumptuous 1943 retelling of The Phantom of the Opera garnered four Oscar nominations, including two victories - in Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography. It was the last of the studio's classic "monster movies" to receive an Oscar nod.

No, there was inexplicably no love for RKO's Cat People (1942, Tourneur) the following year. In 1943, however, Universal at last got one of their "monster movies" to resonate in a significant way with the Academy. Arthur Lubin's ravishing The Phantom of the Opera, headlined by the always-outstanding Claude Rains, was not at the time a real box-office or critical smash. It did, however, receive four Oscar nominations - Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography - winning the last two prizes. Sadly for Universal, Phantom would prove the last of the studio's classic horror films to receive any Oscar recognition. (And no, no love to be found for any of Universal's Abbott and Costello horror vehicles.)

The remainder of the 1940s and all of the 1950s were not so great for horror cinema at the Oscars in general.

1945's The Picture of Dorian Gray, directed by Albert Lewin and headlined by George Sanders and Donna Reed, was not a box office success but did win nominations in Best Supporting Actress (for the exquisite Angela Lansbury), Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography, the last of which it managed to win. It would take more than a decade from here, however, for another horror film to garner multiple Oscar nominations.

Ted Parmalee's The Tell-Tale Heart was one of several short features in the horror genre to garner Oscar recognition.

Three short subjects from the horror genre, two animated and one live-action, received Oscar nominations in these in-between years - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse (1947, Hanna and Barbera), Return to Glennascaul (1951, Edwards) and The Tell-Tale Heart (1953, Parmaelee). While the Hanna-Barbera short is merely an amusing Tom & Jerry parody of that classic story, the other two productions are truly outstanding, must-sees for any fan of classic horror.

The deliriously entertaining Them! (1954, Douglas) also managed to show up at the Oscars, landing a Best Special Effects nomination. (That prize ultimately went to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.) No Oscar love, unfortunately, for 20th Century Fox's legendary The Fly (1958, Neumann) or Warner Brothers' groundbreaking House of Wax (1953, Toth), the first-ever 3-D film in color. Also egregiously overlooked - all of the gorgeously produced British Hammer Horror pictures.

Warner Brothers' outrageously campy The Bad Seed (1956, LeRoy) was embraced by audiences and the Academy alike - it received four Oscar nominations, including three acting nods.

The final horror film nominated in the 1950s, and the only one in the decade to win multiple nominations, is, I would argue, barely a real horror picture. (That is, unless the sight of relentlessly campy, unintentionally funny acting sends shivers down your spine.) Warner Brothers' The Bad Seed (1956, LeRoy) was certainly at least marketed as a horror flick, however, and fared exceedingly well at that year's box office. It garnered four Oscar nominations that year - for Best Cinematography, Best Lead Actress (Nancy Kelly) and two in Best Supporting Actress (Patty McCormack and the scene-stealing Eileen Heckart) - albeit, with no wins. The Bad Seed would prove just the first of several horror camp classics to win over the Academy.

Before we get to those other horror campfests, however, I'll be taking a look at the year 1960, when a certain Hitchcock classic took its stab at Oscar glory...

Coming Soon...HORROR at the Oscars!

Over the past seven months, I have embarked on a Best Original Song project, reviewing all 82 years of that Oscar category's nominees. I don't plan on tackling another adventure like that for a while, not until the coming awards season is wrapped up. I have, however, very much wanted to do one more project before exclusively focusing on the 2016 horse race (in addition to my usual film reviews) and October, with Halloween not too far off on the horizon, is the perfect month to do it.

During October, I will be taking a fond look back at the Oscar history of my very favorite film genre...horror.

As a film buff who was raised on horror - and whose parents somehow had no qualms about renting R-rated slasher films for him as a young lad (in addition to milder mainstays like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and Killer Klowns from Outer Space) - I have long been enamored with this genre. My father got me into the classics - the Universal monster movies and Hammer horror flicks (which, let it be known, also sported some of the most drop-dead gorgeous women to ever grace the big screen) - while my mom was all about the '70s horror, plus Freddy Krueger, Chucky, Leprechaun and so on.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of course, unfortunately, did not opt to recognize any of the films of those horror franchise legends. Looking back, however, there are a number of surprises and eyebrow-raisers in terms of what horror pictures the Academy did nominate. Awards buffs know the critically acclaimed likes of The Exorcist and Jaws were embraced but just wait 'til you see which of the Universal monster movies the Academy honorned in technical categories - and no, it ain't Dracula or The Bride of Frankenstein.

During this small-scale Oscar Flashback, which I plan to break down in four chapters over four weeks, I'll be looking back at every single horror film nominated for an Oscar, including the well-known, Oscar-winning contenders, the nominated short subjects of the genre and the real duds that made it into Oscar night with a single nomination. I'll also discuss the horror films that struck out with the Academy, despite precursor attention, and the unimpeachable classics that failed to make any awards dent at all.

Note that it's entirely possible, if not likely, that I will gloss over a film that was nominated or a true juggernaut of the genre that deserved Oscar love. That's what the comments section is for - enjoy and respond away!

But just remember, on my blog, no one can hear you scream...