"Although it's a statistical fact that people are much safer from violent crime in rural areas than in the cities, the majority of horror films take place in small towns and rural forests. This may be a reflection of filmmakers' prejudices, since most of them hail from urban environments and view America's vast rural areas as foreign, hostile, and potentially scary territory. Or at the very least are unfamiliar with what life is really like there. "Urban horror" is thus a severely underrepresented part of the horror genre.
Especially the 1960s and 1970s, the New York City area was a dystopian mess—it was the hell-on-Earth city depicted in films such as Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, and The Warriors—none of which were technically "horror" movies, although they convincingly portrayed the horrors of life in New York City. The horror movies made in New York during those years perfectly convey the decay, blight, and dissolution of urban living - -"
