That gift of the ‘70s just keeps on giving, and will keep giving with remakes of the slasher classics either fairly recently released or in production.
I again offer that Stephen King quote: “I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.”
And, of course, shame and Hollywood don’t go together any more than Leatherface and personal hygiene.
I consider “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974) the daddy of the slasher genre (the constant screaming toward the end tends to get on my royal nerves, though). The typical slasher-film formula has evolved, but the basics of “Chain Saw’s” story continue to be picked up, most notably in Rob Zombie’s “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects.”
“Carrie” isn’t a slasher movie, of course, but I think the critically acclaimed novel and subsequent film, for which Sissy Spacek’s performance was a big fat plus, was a huge nudge to the slasher genre. There’s an awful lot of blood at the end to achieve that level of commercial success.
But if “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” is the slasher genre daddy, then “Halloween” is Big Mama. (I’m so glad the original title, “The Babysitter Murders,” was discarded.) Despite the attempts of several sequels and a remake I thought was insulting, nothing’s fit to tie “Halloween’s” ragged, bloody shoelace.
You got your group of teenagers, nearly all girls in this case, getting picked off one by one by an evil maniac wielding a knife, a perennial favorite of slasher films. The teenagers “deserve” what they get because the smoke, drink, get high and have sex. The virginal, grade-A student survives. Like in many slasher films to come, the heroine is a relative of the killer. You’ll notice, however, there’s not a lot of blood and gore onscreen.
The blood and body count increases in “Prom Night,” then it’s really upped in “Friday the 13th,” the film that launched a thousand sequels and rip-offs. This movie is unique also because while Jason has slashed his way to horror-movie and pop culture icon, he only reared his hockey-masked head in the last seconds of the film; his mother was the killer in the movie.
The next blockbuster slasher film, “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” popularized an important tweak. Freddy Krueger isn’t flesh and blood; he’s pepperoni pizza because he’s come back from the dead and he’s, well, something else. I really liked the freshness and creativity “Nightmare” offered (and this slasher speaks to his victims, unlike his strong and silent predecessors).
I think that’s why horror movie fans are drawn to slasher films, to see how creative the deaths, how clever the set-up. Including those fans that are, what the heck, just there for the splatter.
I’ll close out the history lesson; we already know what follows are unrelenting waves of sequels, copy cats and now remakes. Honestly, when the villain ends up in outer space, it’s time for the franchise to rest in peace. But like Michael Meyers, they just won’t die.
Boundaries have gotten a lot of push, too, and I don’t just mean blood ‘n’ gutswise. “Cube,” for example, has a slasher-similar storyline. I consider the “Saw” sequels to be slasher movies — I’m not buying passive-aggressive poster child Jigsaw’s contention that he’s never killed anyone. C’mon, of course he has.
And you gotta give a shout-out to “Scream,” and its gleeful skewering of slasher cliches.
I’ll leave you with a wee bit of information on classic-slasher remakes. Before I do, allow your Scream Queen to repeat that I’ve adjusted the original plan to do a day on each of the three top horror movies you posted at the beginning of the month. I think it’s very cool that there was such diversity, but that means no clear favorites emerged. So I’m going to wrap what’s technically the “top three” into a single entry on Friday, Halloween. I’ll offer you a small treat that day to make up for it.
“A Nightmare on Elm Street”: Slated for 2010, written by Wesley Strick. Variety recently reported that Strick was directing the remake, but the buzz on the Net in the last couple of weeks has discounted that as a rumor. This new “Nightmare” has been called a “re-imagining” loosely based on the original 1984 film. Robert Englund will not be portraying Freddy Krueger; those honors will fall to Billy Bob Thornton.
“Friday the 13th”: Planned to be released on (guess when) Friday, Feb. 13. We’ve seen lots of horror films lately pushed back for more retooling, so who knows; I suspect they really want to hold that date. Marcus Nispel director. This remake is said to incorporate elements from the first three “Friday the 13th” films. You may remember that Jason appeared only the last few seconds of the original, so that does make sense.
“Prom Night”: This 2008 movie recently became available on DVD, and is available for rent On Demand. I haven’t seen it — no reason, I’m just not interested — but the 1980 original has got to look pretty darned dated to modern audiences. Jamie Lee Curtis as disco babe is so, well, 1980.
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