ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on three components of West African video film: the audience, the film producer and films themselves. This is in order to investigate why these video films have displaced Hollywood productions that dominate in so many other parts of the world. As morality tales these films therefore play a vital social role, and are used by many women as a way of showing their partners the right way of living. Recent Hollywood horror movies have tended towards more graphic, realistic and gruesome scenes (see the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th films in the 1980s or the Scream films in the 1990s). It is interesting to note how a film such as the Blair Witch Project (1999) represents a return to a more allusive style that suggests horror to the imagination of the viewer rather than explicitly showing it.
