Hey guys nearly October 13th, who knows what's the difference between Terror and Horror?

Hey Helio, I got this off another site... I think it answers everything in detail. :)

"Terror / Horror. Terror is fear, taken raw. Horror is fear, digested. Let's omit for now the political context, and deal with these things as they affect one individual. Terror is what happens when you are in great and immediate fear (provoked by danger and menace, and perhaps other things). It activates the sympathetic nervous system, initiating what some have called the "fight or flight" response. The body prepares itself for an emergency which is not emergent, but already here. You may sweat, get goosebumps, and have your irises and bronchi dilate. You need to pump air, because your heart is already pumping out more blood. Some blood vessels (like those in the long muscles and skin) enlarge to accommodate more blood, to provide energy where it is needed. Some vessels compress, like those in the G.I. tract, where the sphincters also may contract. Incontinence is observed in some individuals. The sympathetic nervous system includes many nervous pathways, and the endocrine system as well. The adrenal glands pump out epinephrine at a greatly increased rate. Some individuals may be paralyzed by fear ("in a funk"), others may be able to take off running. Some can even fight back (circumstances permitting). Being terrified is a whole body experience.
Being horrified may lead to nausea and nightmares, but we experience it much more cerebrally, as an observer. We are appalled by what we observe, disgusted, sometimes filled with dread and foreboding. It's an emotional experience, but it has more to do with what's happening around us than what's happening to us."

Did you get this out of the Ravenloft AD&D rulebook?


Phil

Are you asking me, Phil?

I'm asking Parkster.  The Ravenloft compendiums explain the difference between the two.  I was wondering if this is where he got it.


Phil

You can be horrified without being terrorized, but you can't be terrorized without being horrified.



Terror - fear of someday looking in the mirror and looking like your 40!
Horror - waking up one day, look in the mirror and looking like your 40!  :o :'(

Quoted from tomson Terror - fear of someday looking in the mirror and looking like your 40! Horror - waking up one day, look in the mirror and looking like your 40!  :o :'(

Happy - waking up one day, look in the mirror and looking like your forty, saying, "It's good being a guy!"


Phil

From a genre perspective, there isn't a difference here. There actually isn't even a "terror" genre, officially. Some close genres are thriller, suspense, and horror (with the slasher subset), but no terror. Thought I'd throw that out as well...

Alfred Hitchcock did thrillers.  He didn't do horror.

Now I'll just sit back and wait for this statement to bite me on the ass.


Phil

Was your question serious, Helio?  The serious answer is there is no difference.  They are synonyms.  Terror and horror are the same thing -- it's like asking what is the difference between dumb and stupid. (Not that you are either of those haha)

The difference between Horror and Thriller is the "reality" factor.

Horror is monsters and ghosts and Jason and stuff.  Things that can not actually happen.

Thrillers involve people.  Technically, everything in Psycho could have actually happened.  I would contend that Scream and IKWYDLS are actually thrillers.

Dogglebe is right about Hitchcock for the most part.  Except for maybe The Birds.  That is a Horror film.

Quoted from dogglebe Did you get this out of the Ravenloft AD&D rulebook?

I got it from a site called The Phrase Finder... or something like that. It was posted by some guy who may have gotten it from somewhere else. Why did you ask? Is it from where you said?

I haven't played D&D in a while, but they referred to each.

Phil

This is a tricky question.

DVD's like "The Exorcist", for example, are found in the Horror section, yet this type portrays something that can (and does) really happen to people

Simplistic Horror is usually thought of as teens getting killed off by numbers in a scary location--with little or no reaction to the loss of human life. Monsters, giant vegetable attacks, etc. are often more funny than scary.

Thrillers generally avoid blatant gore. Ghosts can fit in nicely here.

Looks like a category called "Terror" is needed to separate  the fine lines of mixed genres.

I also noticed that on some DVD's it will be rated whatever for scenes of horror, and then on another DVD there will be scenes of terror. I've always been confused by that thing.

i always figured the two were seperated as ...Horror is disgust and Terror is fear

Thriller is a whole other genre from horror. The Interpretor is classified as a thriller, but you wouldn't classify it as horror. Lucky Number Slevin is classified as thriller and it even has extreme violence, blood, and body count, but you wouldn't call it horror.

The Sixth Sense stands on the line between horror and thriller. It can get subcategorized as suspense thriller to give a better idea of what it is doing.

I see the horror genre as having to do with primarily fear. If the point of the movie (or let's rather say what the filmmaker's intention) is to (attempt to) scare you, then the movie is horror. Scream, while it has a lot of suspense and thriller elements, is primarily horror because it wanted to evoke fear in its viewers.

Back to the Sixth Sense, the goal there was to intrigue you and even curdle that pit of your stomach, but not to scare you. Mystery movies are suspense because they are not looking to scare you, but they have a lot of the elements that make up a horror movie. The Sixth Sense has a lot of these elements as well.

Of course, this can be debated until we're dead, but those are my opinions.

I once heard that horror is fear and terror is finding out. I don't know if that's technically true, but it stuck with me.  

Films from the horror genre are designed to elicit fright, fear, terror, disgust or horror from viewers. In horror film plots, evil forces, events, or characters, sometimes of supernatural origin, intrude into the everyday world. Horror film characters include vampires, zombies , monsters, serial killers, and a range of other fear-inspiring characters. Early horror films often drew inspiration from characters and stories from classic literature, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, The Phantom of the Opera and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film

Terror" can refer to a genre that may overlap with horror or horror fiction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_fiction

I've always thought that horror was the genre itself and terror was one of its elements. I've even seen a few movies in which terror was actually contained in the MPAA rating description. Terror, to me, implies suspense while horror can imply many things.

ter·ror     
–noun 1. intense, sharp, overmastering fear: to be frantic with terror.  
2. an instance or cause of intense fear or anxiety; quality of causing terror: to be a terror to evildoers.  
3. any period of frightful violence or bloodshed likened to the Reign of Terror in France.  
4. violence or threats of violence used for intimidation or coercion; terrorism.  
5. Informal. a person or thing that is especially annoying or unpleasant.  



hor·ror
–noun 1. an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting; a shuddering fear: to shrink back from a mutilated corpse in horror.  
2. anything that causes such a feeling: killing, looting, and other horrors of war.  
3. such a feeling as a quality or condition: to have known the horror of slow starvation.  
4. a strong aversion; abhorrence: to have a horror of emotional outbursts.  
5. Informal. something considered bad or tasteless: That wallpaper is a horror. The party was a horror.  



Close enough to be synonyms.