Before I begin, again, I want to express my thoughts and condolensces with the people of Maine and what has happened. Sadly, violence has always been a black eye on American history we don’t like to discuss, except in the positive way. We’ve romanticized The Revolutionary War and the Civil War, even though it should’ve been the second Civil War since most people were divided over the events that led to the Revolutionary War.
That being said, horror has always been viewed as the red-headed stepchild of cinema. And if horror is the red-headed stepchild than slasher is the equivalent of the one family member who had a serious drug/alcohol problem and/or did prison time. We don’t like to discuss it but they’re a person too. And while drama, romcoms, action/adventure and comedies get all the glory, people often neglect the others like science-fiction and fantasy. But at least they get the invites to the family events in hopes they’ll just send a gift or the holiday cards.
Slashers evolved in the 1970s even though Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Peeping Tom are both seen as the laying the foundation in the 1960s. Bob Clark made Black Christmas in 1974 and Tobe Hooper made Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While they’re not officially slashers, the elements are there such as the final girl such as Olivia Hussey’s Jess Bradford and Marilyn Burns’ Sally Hardesty. You could also argue Wes Cravens’ Last House on the Left also provides some elements such as young woman being terrorized by maniacs which is a common theme.
But it wasn’t until John Carpenter made Halloween in 1978 that the mold was set for the genre. A psychotic killer wearing a mask stalks people, mostly young women, and kills them off left and right with the final girl, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode remaining. Carpenter was inspired by Christmas especially with the first-person point-of-view shots of the killer. (Carpenter wanted Clark to help him write Halloween II, but Clark was working on another movie – Porky’s.)However, as Carpenter with co-writer/producer Debra Hill had the killer’s identity known from the start, the killer’s identity in Christmas remains a mystery, even though characters think it’s Keir Dullea’s Peter Smythe.
Strangely, what Carpenter and Hill didn’t know was that while their movie was set in Illinois, the Mid-West, a real-life serial killer was lurking that no one would suspect. John Wayne Gacy, who was known as a local business leader to the Chicago suburbs, was abducting young men and murdering them. He had been for many years. Two months after Halloween premiered in late October 1978, police were arresting Gacy a few days before Christmas following weeks of surveillance and investigating him. It was a very Black Christmas indeed for the people of Chicagoland.
In 1977, David Berkowitz, aka the “Son of Sam” killer, was terrorizing New York City, killing people with a .44 caliber handgun. But the city was known for its crime rate. They weren’t expected all this happening in the suburbs. It was an eye-opener. John Hughes would romanticize the Chicago suburbs as the typical America for the 1980s. The Zodiac Killer, a decade earlier, was in the San Francisco Bay area but only one murder actually occured within San Francisco’s city limits.
In other parts of the country, Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer was murdering people in Kansas and Ted Bundy was targeting women in the Pacific Northwest. The era of the serial killer had begun as FBI special agent Robert Ressler referred to “”serial homicide” in 1974. Serial killers had existed for decades or centuries, but know they had been properly identified as law enforcement began noticing certain similarities among the victims.
The popularity of Halloween inspired filmmaker Sean S. Cunningham to make Friday the 13th. Some reports indicate the script by Victor Miller originally titled A Long Night at Camp Blood was inspired by the Girl Scout Murders in the Ozarks section of Oklahoma in June 1977. However, no children were in the 1980 movie and would mostly be absent from the franchise.
Despite some negative reviews, Friday the 13th was a hit. And Curtis returned to the slasher genre with two other movies, Prom Night and Terror Train, which would further lay the guidelines for these movies. Someone is bullied and/or severely traumatized in the prologue and/or someone dies or killed by the actions of another. Years pass and a killer, usually wearing a mask lurks in the shadows and in darkness to kill those they feel are responsible.
Of course, the movie’s got bad reviews from critics and even more condemnation from the public. The movies were popular and producers filmed them really cheap, utilizing actors they could hire next to nothing who never went on to make anything much after. A lot of the movies like Terror Train and My Bloody Valentine were filmed in Canada to take advantage of tax shelter credits for filmmaking. And most of them had a veteran actor they could hire for a few days of work such as Donald Pleasence in Halloween, Ben Johnson in Terror Train, or Glenn Ford in Happy Birthday to Me. The latter was directed by J. Lee Thompson, a far cry from his Guns of the Navarone/Cape Fear days.
Some movies like Graduation Day, which featured a young Vanna White, were pre-sold to independent movie theaters to help finance. This was during an era in the 1980s before major chains bought up theaters and others closed. Most movies played in regions of the country and traveled around by word of mouth. Before the home video market exploded in the latter half of the 1980s, most movies stayed in theaters for a whole year or two. Raiders of the Lost Ark was still in theaters in 1983, two years after it was released.
Some people view slashers as a reflection of the AIDS crisis as the plot revolved around young people dying after having sex and/or drinking underage and doing drugs. Halloween has Annie (Nancy Loomis) being killed on her way to pick up her boyfriend in hopes of having sex with him later. Then, Lynda (P.J. Soles) and Bob (John Michael Graham) are killed after they have sex. In Friday the 13th, the prologue has two young counselors being killed while they’re almost about to have sex. Later, Jack (Kevin Bacon) and his girlfriend, Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) are killed after having sex.
It was obviously the Sexual Revoluton of the 1960s and 1970s was over. “That sumbitch Reagan” was in office and the Moral Majority had helped get him elected. It’s ironic that so many people rallied against slashers since they were the epitome of capitalism in the 1980s. Produce something cheap to take advantage of a trend, make all the money you can and walk and forget the rest. It’s a good bet many of the actors of these slasher movies didn’t get a lot of residuals. A lot of them quit acting altogether shortly after only to pop up at conventions in recent decades as they’ve become more popular.
But then there was the threat of Stranger Danger of the creeps lurking to go after our children. Slasher movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street reflected that terror that we can’t keep out kids safe no matter what. Most horror is a reflection of the era. The old Universal horror movies of the 1930s and 1940s were a response to the influx of immigrants, mostly from Europe. Dracula is about someone coming from one land to another and inflicting terror. He arrives to England by boat as he leaves a death in his wake on the Demeter. Frankenstein takes place in the Bavarian Alps. Even in The Wolfman, the inclusion of a Romani fortune teller, has almost become a stereotype of European cultures and the difference with Western civilization.
Then in the 1950s with movies about animals being affected by radiation were the result of the fear of a nuclear holocaust during the height of the Cold War. Movies like Them!, The Beginning of the End and other movies of the “Big Bug” era were comments on the dangers. Even the orignal title for Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster was originally titled Bride of the Atom. George A. Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead points to space radiation as a reason the dead are being re-animated.
But as the Golden State Killer and and Richard Ramirez, aka The Night Stalker, made headlines, it seems to mirror the horrors of the original Halloween. We’re not really safe in our own homes anymore. We can’t leave doors unlocked or slightly ajar. We have to close our windows and lock them. And we have to lock our doors. Because there will be a monster in the closet waiting for us. However, it’s not some grotesque creature snarling and growling. It’s a just a human being with a disturbed mind wanting to harm others.
Even as critics and parental groups pushed back in the mid-1980s successfully getting Silent Night, Deadly Night pulled from theaters, it didn’t stop horror as the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies were popular in the decade. Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Leatherface, etc are no different than Bundy, Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer or Gary Ridgway, aka The Green River killer.
Law and Order and other police procedural shows have the “Ripped from the headlines” plotlines but there is always a connection between life and art. How odd was that The Silence of the Lambs was popular while Dahmer was still committing his awful acts? But the horror movie, Body Parts, which was supposed to be a modern day Frankenstein movie about a mad scientist was theaters in August of 1991 following the arrest of Dahmer. It was pulled from theaters in the Milwaukee area.
This pushback caused studios to reject horror. Child’s Play, another slasher, was successful, but MGM refused to make the sequel. That was until Steven Spielberg, of all people, came in to help convince Universal Pictures to produce the movies. Silence of the Lambs won the big awards at the Oscar (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay) and no one wanted to call it a horror. And when Se7en got rising Hollywood heartthrob Brad Pitt and revered actor Morgan Freeman in the leads, they used the phrase “psychological thriller.” But both movies are horror.
There about monsters. Jame Gumb, aka John Grant, aka Buffalo Bill played by Ted Levine in a great role is a serial killer. John Doe, played by Kevin Spacey, is a serial killer. They are “slashers” but well-made slashers. It’s like when Stanley Kubrick said he was going to make a porno in the 1970s just to show how it can be done well. And with Scream reviving the slasher genre, it’s remained popular still into the 21st Century and current day.
And the reason they’re still popular is because we know who the real monsters are. Women clutch their purses or walk on the inside of their husbands/partners when they sense strange people in the area. We still kids not to talk to strangers. Car doors lock automatically when we’re driving. We’re afraid of each other. And we’re becoming more afraid that when a lost person knocks on a door, they get shot. I still believe the majority of people are still genial and friendly in nature.
But then again, we are just really animals who walk upright just like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm greedy for power and control.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 