How Can We Make the Horror Genre More Respected In Mainstream Culture

By strapping them to a chair and forcing them to watch extreme japanese horror until they are brainwashed?

I joke. Respect is different from enjoying it I suppose. I often get asked how I can watch "that stuff" and enjoy it. It's pretty hard to explain without looking like a sadistic animal but most people who know me know that loving my genre as much as I do, it hasn't turned me into a homicidal maniac anymore than them watching romcoms has turned them into Hugh Grant. I hate rom coms but respect them for giving people who like them enjoyment.

I'm like you TDSR, I like to wander off into the unknown on occasions. Usually I'm right to do so, other time I just wish you could unwatch stuff!

^^ I would force them to watch horror films of what they hate the most.

What I will do for the horror genre is continuosly adding horror related stuffs in all kind of things.

Unfortunately, we can't.  Thanks to lazy filmmakers who rely on the fact that in a horror film the genre itself is the star, and thanks to forty years of tits-and-gore horror being accepted as the norm by the vast majority of the horror audience, we've allowed the genre to become irreversibly tainted.  If Silence of the Lambs didn't convince folks what the horror genre is capable of -- or other masterful horror flicks like The Blair Witch Project, or Dawn of the Dead, or Halloween -- then nothing is ever going to.

^^^ My argument exactly.  Horror has been so saturated with gore, nudity and poor writing over the last three decades that we now have an entire generation out there who wouldn't recognize a GOOD horror film if it slapped them in the face. 

Silence of the Lambs is about a psychopath who skins his female victims to make himself a woman-suit from their flesh.  If that ain't horror, I don't know what is.  But thanks to the majority of genre filmmakers over the last three decades, it's tits and gore which have come to define the genre.  So "logic" dictates than since Silence had very little gore and almost no nudity, then it must not be a horror film.

We can only blame the filmmakers and the fans themselves that horror has so little respect among general movie-goers.  They made crap flicks and folks swallowed them up, and never bothered asking for something of more substance. 

But I remember when horror was about scaring people, about giving us characters we cared about and didn't want to see die, about telling a good and involving story.  Nudity and gore were perks, not bonuses, and filmmakers didn't pander to the lowest common denominator.  But those days are long gone, and I don't foresee them ever coming back.  Sure we'll get an odd quality film here and there, and fans will love it, but then it'll just be right back to tits and innards, because people raised on junk food don't have the pallet for fine dining.

And I am fully aware of how much a snob that makes me sound, but I'm fine with that.  If it's a sin to demand more of a genre which I know is capable of better, then my fat ass is going straight to hell.

I routinely point others to The Walking Dead as the kind of approach I'd love to see a return to in horror films.  Smart horror, with genuine suspense and tension, and believable characters that involve us on an emotional level.  Even the characters we dislike we become attached to, because they embody points of view we can understand within the context of the world they live in.  That's all you need to generate suspense easily: characters you care about placed in situations which threaten their well-being. 

Conversely, I point folks to American Horror Story as the kind of approach which has all but left the genre a laughing stock.  Horror for the attention-span deprived.  Vapid and gratuitous in every sense, with cardboard characters (Jessica Lange brings a touch of class, but the result is nevertheless the equivalent of spit-shining a turd).  All sizzle, no steak, with all the crass and base emotional impact of a child frying ants with a magnifying glass.

If the genre is ever going to get back the respect it had before the 80s, it's going to need a whole lot more of the former and a shit-ton less of the latter.  I'm sure others will disagree, but that's my take.

I agree with everything you said, except I disagree that nudity and horrible deaths are what horror is about.  Horror is about the threat of death/fear of dying in an unnatural way, yes, but I don't believe nudity has anything to do with horror at all.  I completely disagree with the age-old notion that there is a link between sex and death; I don't find sex horrific, and I'm not titillated by death.  I think the only reason the two became linked in film is that because they're both easy to execute in film.  And I find it unfortunate for the genre that of all the other primal emotions which could have been used alongside fear, some chump had to go and drag carnal desire into it.

That's not to say that there aren't filmmakers who handle sex and death very well and draw interesting philosophical comparisons between the two.  For instance, David Cronenberg has built himself quite an impressive list of films which incorporate both to fascinating degrees.  But again, while I believe the threat of unnatural death is a necessity in a horror film, I don't feel the same about nudity.