The Horror Lexicon #17: Bio-Hazard Suits

Once upon a time, the wardrobe of the horror genre consisted of diaphanous white gowns and black vampire capes.  

But by the 1970s, traditional Gothic wear was out-of-fashion, and high-tech horror chic was in.  

In films such as Robert Wise’s The Andromeda Strain(1971), environmental, hazmat or “bio-containment suits” were often the only thing that could protect heroic scientists from a new and insidious form of monster: the virus or “germ.”

And yet, during the same era, in harrowing films such as George A. Romero’s The Crazies (1973), the hazmat suit also became a short-hand for terror itself.  There, American soldiers occupied Evans City, PA, in bio-hazard suits, and declared martial law during the military’s attempt to contain a biological weapon code-named “Trixie.” 

These American soldiers carried flame throwers and guns, and saw the innocent families and denizens of the town as something akin to expendable cattle.  Therefore, the protective suits – on one hand a protection from danger – also became a barrier to communication, an impediment to human and humane behavior on the part of those who wore them.  Behind those suit masks, we couldn’t see how the soldiers felt, or if they were agonizing over their difficult choices.  We could only see how (horribly) they acted in the face of fear.

In short, that’s the yin-and-yang of the hazmat suit in horror films.  This wardrobe can work as a defense if a hero wears it, but represents a form of alienation or fear if worn by callous-seeming others or villains.  

Some films, such as Outbreak(1995) play with the conventions of the hazmat suit by featuring scenes wherein the protective suits rip and tear, and our heroes are exposed to a bug and therefore mortally endangered.  At another moment in the film, a scientist (Dustin Hoffman) is so convinced that he has discovered the cure for hemorrhagic fever that he (foolishly, in my opinion…) removes his helmet in the presence of the infected.  Fortunately for him, his gamble pays off.

The late 1980s and early 1990s represents the era of what I term “the Horror Genome Project,” wherein many genre films featured “science gone amok” story lines.  These new age Frankenstein tales concerned irresponsible scientists who experimented with life – with the very building blocks of life – and created only…terror. The remake of The Blob (1988) concerned this idea, as did such efforts as Mimic (1998).  In these settings, the hazmat suit was the scientist’s garb of choice.  We know that“clothes make the man” (or woman), so therefore the hazmat suit became a  de rigueur fashion touch in stories of scientists confronting their own creations, as well as seemingly alien or unknown terrors; Phantoms (1998) for instance.

In Steven Spielberg’s science fiction films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. (1982), the hazmat suits are utilized by the master director as fearsome indicators of powers that audiences can’t understand.  The suits and helmets themselves obstruct transparency, hiding either conspiratorial government deceit, or “grown-ups” who obscure their “heart-lights” beneath layers of inhuman, inexpressive protection. 

The bio-hazard suit is featured in (but not limited) to appearances in films such as:

The Andromeda Strain(1971), The Crazies (1973), Close Encounters (1977), E.T.(1982), The Blob (1988), Alien ³ (1992), Carnosaur(1993), Return of the Living Dead III (1993), The Puppet Masters (1994), Mimic(1998), Phantoms (1998), Sphere (1998), The X-Files: Fight the Future(1998), [REC] (2007), Carriers (2009), and The Crazies (2010).

The Horror Lexicon #16 Female…Pulchritude

I referred to this cliché as “the breast part of the movie” in my books Horror Films of the 1980s and Horror Films of the 1990s.  

And yes, this element of the horror lexicon is proof-positive that the horror genre is not always high-minded or intellectual.  Sometimes the form appeals to more basic instincts; Sometimes, the first mission of horror is to exploit a fear or desire, and it’s foolish to deny that this is the case.

But absolutely without a doubt, the most common shot in all-of-the 1980s horror cinema involves a young female taking off her blouse and bra for the camera.  It’s almost a rite-of-passage for a prospective “Scream Queen” of that era. 

But why, you ask?

Some critics might inform you that the numerous instances of female nudity in genre films arose because we live in a sexist culture, and because young men – the dominant audience for horror films back in the 1980s — wanted to see it.  Newsflash: men like looking at naked, attractive females.  Women like seeing men too, but in the 1980s, it was mostly men making and green-lighting horror films.

Others might point more directly to the specific conventions of the slasher sub-genre.  And the slasher format is a deeply conservative form of horror concerning the draconian price people pay when they step outside of moral and social traditions.

In particular, “The Vice Precedes Slice-and-Dice” trope requires teens to act badly before being killed by Jason or his ilk, and pre-marital sex is, of course, a big no-no.  The “Breast Part of the Movie” or “Thanks for the Mammaries” convention is part-and-parcel of that dynamic.  The shirts come off, the sinnin’ begins…and then the killer shows up with a machete to put an end to all the fun.  Some may see this as sexist, but generally both participants in the sex-act get killed simultaneously, so I’m not sure that’s the case.

Today, the horror genre – which attracts a wider female audience – has backed off quite a bit from the heyday of this cliché in the 1980s. The genre has admirably focused instead on showcasing “final girls” as intelligent, resourceful, courageous heroes.  Even recent, tawdry fare such as Shark Night (2012) eschewed the Breast Part of the Movie cliché.  The trope was also mocked and satirized – and treated as a tease — in Kevin Williamson’s Scream (1996).

At its most respectable, the trope actually can boast some iota of social value, as it did in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971).  There, in the early 1970s age of “bra burning,” there was a question about the line of responsibility and where was it drawn.  When lines of traditional behavior were breached, how would the “old” guard react to new freedom?

By contrast, one of the most exploitative examples of this convention occurs in Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1986), which during its final, end-credits montage features seventeen views of Sybil Danning ripping open her shirt and revealing her…chest.  Another movie that took the trope to absurd new heights was Jim Wynorski’s vaseline-colored The Haunting of Morella(1990). 

You’ll notice that, aside from this cliché, these  two films don’t really have much going for them in terms of quality.

I don’t know that I need to write anything else about this particular convention in the horror lexicon, and please forgive the illustrations for being PG rated. But I don’t want my blog to be mistaken for an adult site.  I already get linked to far too often on Russian porn sites (don’t ask).  

So…just use your imagination.

Here is a (very) partial list of “the Breast Part of the Movie” appearances in Horror Films

Straw Dogs (1971), Halloween (1978), Phantasm (1979), Altered States (1980), The Children (1980), Dressed to Kill (1980), Home Sweet Home (1980) Humanoids from the Deep (1980), Maniac(1980), Mother’s Day (1980), New Year’s Evil (1980), Night School (1980), Nightmare City (1980), The Silent Scream (1980), Terror Train (1980), American Werewolf in London (1981), Dead and Buried (1981), The Dorm that Dripped Blood (1981), Final Exam (1981), Friday the 13^th Part II (1981), Ghost Story (1981), Graduation Day (1981), Halloween II(1981), The Howling (1981), The Boogens (1982), The Burning (1982), Evilspeak (1982), Humongous(1982), Madman (1982), Curtains (1983), The Evil Dead (1983), Mortuary (1983),  Night Warning (1983), Pieces(1983), The Black Room (1984), Crimes of Passion (1984), The Initiation (1984), The Prey (1984), Biohazard(1984), Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning (1985), Fright Night (1985), Though Shalt Not Kill…Except (1985), Lifeforce (1985), From Beyond (1986), Howling II (1986), Psycho 3 (1985), Slaughter High (1986), Vamp (1986), Witchboard (1986), Angel Heart (1986), Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 (1987), Slumber Party Massacre 2 (1987), Night of the Demons (1988), Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988), Edge of Sanity (1989), 976-Evil(1989), Out of the Dark (1989), Society (1989), Baby Blood (1990), Demonia(1990), The Haunting of Morella (1990), Luther the Geek (1990), Maniac Cop 2 (1990), Highway to Hell (1992), Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil (1992), Jason Goes to Hell(1993), Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1993) Leprechaun 2 (1994), Embrace of the Vampire (1995), Lord of Illusions (1995), Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995), Bad Moon (1996), Cemetery Man (1996), The Ugly (1998), Disturbing Behavior (1998), The House on Haunted Hill (1999), The Ninth Gate (1999), Friday the 13^th (2009).

Horror Lexicon #15: The Organizing Principle

I wrote about this genre convention extensively in my reference book Horror Films of the 1980s (2007; McFarland) but if you seek to create a horror film in the slasher milieu, your first step must be to determine an organizing principle.

The organizing principle is a facet beyond mere setting or location.  It provides a horror film with a series of connected leitmotifs, and therefore a sense of unity.  In other words, the organizing principle is a film’s central idea, transmitted or expressed across creative factors such as setting, motive, and even characterization.

I utilized this example in the book, but it illuminate what I mean when I discuss the organizing principle.  Imagine that a producer seeks to create a knife-kill film titled The Librarian.  The organizing principle is therefore a character of a certain vocation, as the title indicates. That vocation lands that character in a specific place (a public library), and determines exploitable elements in the story: a card-catalog, a drop-off box, a study room, the long, dark aisles filled with books, and so on.  A decapitated head might be discovered in the drop-off box at a climactic moment, the key to the killer’s identity might be discovered in the card catalog, and the last-act chase of the final girl (a grad student) could occur in a labyrinth of book rows.  The crime causing the murders could be a defaced library book, or a book that was returned late.

See how the library provides more than one element of the film’s creative gestalt?  It grants you a lead character (a book-smart college student, let’s say), a villain (a psycho librarian), and a story (a crime in the past causing a murder spree in the present).  It might even provide specific weapons (like a heavy book, for instance, wielded at a crucial juncture).  

So the organizing principle is the very thing the slasher film hangs its (blood-soaked) hooks upon.  It is the key to motivation, setting, slasher and more.  

Let’s consider Terror Train (1980) in terms of the organizing principle.  In this film, the organizing principle is not the train, as one might suspect, but rather magic, or illusion.  Master-magician David Copperfield appears in the film as a red herring (a distraction in terms of determining the identity of the killer), and a magic show occurs on the train at one point.  Finally, the revelation of the killer’s identity depends on illusion-versus-reality. Do you trust your eyes, or are they tricking you?

In virtually every slasher production you can name, the organizing principle determines virtually every ingredient the movie will require to succeed; a whole world of connections upon which to hang the narrative.  This is so important, I submit, because the slasher format is episodic by nature.  The narrative in most of these films consists of a series of stitched-together, almost complete-unto-themselves short films in which a victim is stalked and murdered.  When one victim dies, you rinse and repeat…and move to the next set-piece until, finally, the killer is destroyed.  The organizing principle unifies all these episodes and gives them consistency of setting, location, motivation and victim.

Below is a chart slightly modified from the one I used in Horror Films of the 1980s.  It illustrates the organizing principle’s usefulness in making coherent all the creative elements of a slasher movie.  I added two 1990s examples to the chart to show how, even after the 1980s, the organizing principle was utilized to make the format work.

Movie Title	Organizing Principle	Setting	Crime in the Past	Victim Pool
Friday the 13th	Summer camp	Camp, cabins, lake, woods	drowning; negligence	Camp counselors.
He Knows You’re alone	Weddings	Dress shop, bride’s home, chapel	Bride jilts fiancé.	The wedding party, dress tailor…
Night School	College	Classrooms, dean’s home	Infidelity	Students, dean of college, professors.
Prom Night	Prom night	High school	Accident caused by classmates as children	Prom goers who as children participated in accident.
The Dorm that Dripped Blood	College campus	College campus (cafeterias, dorms, basement, etc.)	Unpopularity with fellow students	College students
Final Exam	Exam Week	College campus, et.	NA	College students
Friday the 13th Part II	Summer Camp	Camp, cabins, lake, woods	Murder of Mrs. Voorhees	Camp counselors
Graduation Day	Track Team	Track field, high school, locker room, prom	Death of a young track student	Track coach, track team members
Happy Birthday to Me	Birthday parties	College, birthday party	Family break-up on birthday	Birthday party invitees
The Prowler	Jilted Lover	School dance	Dear John Letter	Young lovers at a dance
The Burning	Summer camp	Camp, cabins, lake, woods, island	An accidental burning	Campers, counselors
Slumber Party Massacre	Slumber party	High school, slumber party location, the house next door	NA	Slumber party attendees
Curtains	Theatre/acting	A casting retreat weekend	Losing an important role	Young ingénues; older actress, director
Sleepaway Camp	Summer camp	Camp, cabins, lake, woods	Twisted sex role	Camp employees, campers
The Initiation	Sororities	Sorority house, campus	Witnessing of burning and infidelity	Pledges, sorority girls, frat boys
Silent Night, Deadly Night	Christmas	Toy store at Christmas, Christmas eve	Santa Claus kills parents	Naughty teens.
Terror at Tenkiller	Summer vacation at a lake	Cabin, lake, local diner	NA	Vacationers
Scream	Horror movies	Video store, high school, movie party	Marital infidelity	Movie-loving teenagers
I Know What You Did Last Summer	Fishing community	Fishing boat, fishery, local store, fishing holiday pageant	Murder	Teens of the fishing community trying to make good and leave hometown.

The Horror Lexicon #12: Are You Ready for Your Close-up? (The Video Camera)

One of my favorite lines in all of horror cinema comes from The Blair Witch Project(1999).  Josh (Joshua Leonard) gazes through a video camera view-finder at Heather (Heather Donohue) and trenchantly notes that the picture isn’t “quite reality.” 

He’s right, of course.  And that’s part of the reasons we love movies so much.  For ninety minutes or two hours, the camera becomes our eyes, and what we see through that camera isn’t quite reality.  It’s heightened reality.  It’s manipulated reality.  It’s shaped and edited reality.

Given how crucially important film grammar is in constructing an effective horror film, in crafting a sense of escalating unease and terror, it’s only natural, perhaps, that the camera itself has become an important player and topic of debate within the texts of many popular horror films. 

Thanks in part to technological improvements, the portable home video camera became affordable and lightweight in the mid-1980s.  Accordingly, a revolution in home movies began, and very shortly, this trend “trickled down” into horror movie narratives.  Videographers or amateur movie makers started out by appearing in the “victim pool” of mid-1980s horror films (April Fool’s Day [1986], Friday the 13^th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan [1989]), but more than that the camera soon became a player itself in the longstanding social argument about the value of horror as a genre.

ConsiderHenry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1989), and the notorious scene in which Otis (Tom Towles) and Henry (Michael Rooker) go out “hunting” and kill a randomly-selected suburban family.  They record the horrific murder and rape spree on their camcorder and later — while drinking a few beers — kick back and watch their blood-thirsty escapades.  Otis even rewinds the tape, thoroughly entertained:  “I want to see it again.” 

The issue here is quite simply this: do we, as human beings, actually revel in the suffering of other people?  Does the video camera actually transform another person’s suffering into our entertainment?  This isn’t just a horror movie question, either.  This is a real life question.  Consider how often the grotesque footage of Saddam Hussein’s dead, bloody sons was replayed on cable television.  Or think how often the terror of the 9/11 attacks on the WTC were rerun in the days following the horrific event.  Do we, by watching recorded events, become complicit in a news event?  That’s certainly the territory of such films as Ringu (1998) and The Ring (2002).

A similar was developed in Flatliners (1990). There, a yuppie doctor-in-training, Joe Hurley (William Baldwin) secretly filmed all of his sexual conquests, and then watched and relived them later.  He had taken a liberty with his “lovers” and would have to pay for that moral trespass. His actions had consequences.  The video camera could be used to commit a crime, an invasion of personal space and privacy.

In the aforementioned Blair Witch Project (1999), the video-camera, as Josh notes, functions as a shield, distancing the viewer from unpleasant reality.  Josh notes that the camera offers a “filtered reality” in which one can “pretend everything isn’t quite the way it is.”  

In other words, the act of perceiving reality through a camera lens distances oneself from the objects and situations perceived.  In a non-horror setting, this was actually the subtext for the final episode of the popular sitcom Seinfeld in 1998.  Jerry and his friends watched a crime being conducted (a car-jacking) through a video camera, but did not intervene to actually stop the crime as it was occurring.  The apparently-passive act of gazing through the camera enabled George, Elaine, Kramer and Jerry to see themselves as being somehow apart from reality, and apart from community, even from the law itself.  There was no need to help the victim of a crime.  They were merely…watching, as they would a TV show.

With the heyday of found footage films upon us (including [REC], Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, Apollo 18 and the like) we as viewers are asked again and again to reckon with the role of the camera in our lives, and in horrific scenarios. 

But where The Blair Witch Project asks us to assemble a sense of order out of grainy pixelized images that didn’t make sense in a conventional fashion and didn’t reveal anything about the looming threat (the Blair Witch), these later examples of the form strive more for certainty than uncertainty.  The Demon in Paranormal Activity (2009), for example, presents for a full-frame close-up at the end of the film, just so the audience gets its money’s worth out of a “creature feature.”  This (dumb…) ending belies the fact that more people own cameras now than at any time in human history, and nobody has ever, anywhere, recorded footage of a demon.    Films like Paranormal Activity don’t use the camera to reveal how our eyes can lie, only to assure that audience expectations are met.

The camera can also be a social good in the horror film.  It can be a tool of investigation and observation (The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Poltergeist), but more often the point of many horror films is that you can’t really hide from terror behind the eye-piece.  The camera may be a filter, but, in the final analysis, it’s a filter that doesn’t protect you.  Beyond the camera lens, life is happening in all its unpredictable, horrific, and sometimes wondrous forms.


The greatest terror associated with the video camera is that it could be all that survives a terrible event, a witness to death, and to your very end.  Years later, your footage might be found…

The video camera and videographer appear in (but are not limited to) such films as: Dead of Winter (1985), April Fool’s Day (1986), Slaughter High (1986), Cellar Dweller (1988), Friday the 13^th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), A Nightmare on Elm Street IV: The Dream Master (1989), Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1989), Flatliners (1990), Mr. Frost (1990), Puppet Master 2 (1991), Basket Case 3: Progeny (1992), Prom Night IV: Deliver us From Evil(1992), Man’s Best Friend (1993) Brainscan (1994),Scream (1996), Anaconda (1997), Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Scream 2 (1997), Ringu(1998), The Blair Witch Project (1999), The Rage: Carrie 2(1999), The Descent (2006),  [REC](2007) Diary of the Dead (2007), Cloverfield (2008), Paranormal Activity 3 (2011), Apollo 18 (2011).

The Horror Lexicon #10: Based on a True Story

From: The Last House on the Left (1972)

I wrote in some detail about the Savage Cinema last week, and the way that this particular genre sub-type positions horror situations not in foreign locales and other time periods, but right here and now, where we live and breathe.  In this fashion, horror films somehow seem more related to our modern lives, and play as more realistic…and thus more emotionally and viscerally immediate.  

Another long-standing trick of the trade designed to enhance further a horror film’s sense of urgency and “closeness” to the audience is to suggest on-screen — usually before the opening credits — that the film is actually “based on a true story.”  

From: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Of course, a whole lot of territory is covered in those words “based on,” right?  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) is very loosely based on the story of serial killer Ed Gein, but the details of the narrative and the incredible presentation both arise from Tobe Hooper, Kim Henkel and DP Daniel Pearl, among others, not from accurate historical details.

Even though as intelligent viewers we absolutely realize that the claim of being “based on a true story” is often total bunk, it works on our psyches anyway.  It gives us pause. It creates uncertainty.  It also makes us sympathize, and consider what it might be like to drive to rural Texas and run out of gas, or to accidentally pick up a gang of four criminals, etc. 

Do we fall for this “based on a true story” trick because we’re all just suckers at heart?  Or is it because we have all heard atrocious but mesmerizing true stories that expose the dark side of human nature? The horror movies that employ the on-screen “based on a true story” card deliberately play on this fact; the fact that the darkness inside us is very real, and present in reality.

From: The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Sometimes, just a screen card’s positioning at the front of the film suggests to us we’re about to see a true story.  The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), for instance, both provide details about a story…but neither film actually out-and-out declares the story is true.  In this way, I suppose, the filmmakers’ avoid an outright lie.  We just think the films are claiming a truthful basis because that’s what we are conditioned to expect.

In the horror movie, claims of veracity hook us, render us unsettled, and prepare us for what is to come.  All the while, in the back of  our traumatized minds, we wonder: did this really happen?  Could this even happen at all? 

Or even better: I’m sure as hell glad this didn’t happen to me…

From: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

From: Return of the Living Dead (1985)

The Horror Lexicon 9: Useless (Police) Authority

In real life, I boast tremendous respect for the police force, and for the men and women who patrol our streets and protect and serve.  

In my last home, I had reason to call upon the police from time-to-time — like when we found a bag of crack cocaine in our flower beds — and they always responded quickly and efficiently.  In fact, I’m truly grateful for the police because I remember one incident when I was editing The House Between in my old home office when I turned away from my computer — headphones still on — only to see a stranger’s cackling face pressed hard against the studio window.   I totally freaked out and called 911, and the police were there quickly to apprehend the guy.  My blood pressure still ticks up even now when I think about that night (Joel was only two…), and the electric jolt I received at seeing a deranged person’s absolutely insane face just inches away from me.

But if police in real life are worthy of our support, the same cannot always be stated for horror movie policemen, who tend to represent what I term “useless authority.”  One of the core approaches of the horror genre involves making people feel alone and therefore vulnerable.  In the horror lexicon, the police force represents society, and society’s attempt to enforce the law to keep people safe.  Therefore, in horror movies, the police are often dangerously ineffectual so that greater terror can be generated.

Going back as far as The Blob in 1958, the police always seemed slow on the uptake.  There, a gelatinous invader from another planet oozed its way through the population of a small American town, and the local police could only pin the blame on teenager Steve McQueen and his buddies.  One cop, in particular, held a grudge against teenagers because his wife had been killed by a teen driver, and so concocted all kinds of reasons why McQueen must by lying, or culpable.  The result was that by the time the town police marshaled a response to the Blob, many folks had already unnecessarily died.  In the end, it was up to McQueen’s character, also named Steve, to save the day with some quick thinking regarding fire extinguishers.  In fact, he had to create a civil disturbance (by getting his teenage friends to honk their car horns…) to even get the police force’s attention.

Over the years and decades, the face of useless (police) authority didn’t much change.  In Gremlins (1984), for instance, the police were also slow to respond to Billy Peltzer’s (Zach Galligans) warnings about the dangerous Mogwai.  Finally, even when faced with the monsters themselves, the police were unable to mount a meaningful defense against the critters. 

Policemen in horror films also regularly fail to recognize the dangers posed by vampires (Fright Night), serial killers (Halloween, Friday the 13th Part VI) and other monsters.  The idea underlining each of these examples is that the bad guy cannot be neutralized by the law.  That’s the Final Girl’s job, right?

Sometimes horror movies play wickedly with the tropes of the police and useless authority.  In Wrong Turn (2003), for instance, a trooper shows up just in time for the climax, and audience hopes are raised that he will save the day.  But the in-bred hill-billies quickly kill him in cold blood, dashing those hopes.  So much for law enforcement…

In other films, such as Cabin Fever (2002) and the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), the police not only fail to prove helpful, but are actually complicit in the evil that seems to be running amok in their districts.  Once more, the notion is that you must trust yourself, not the safeguards of society, if you hope to survive a horror film.

Many horror films of the police procedural variety have featured heroic policemen, it is true, including Se7en (1995), The Bone Collector (1999), and Resurrection (1999). Semi-heroic policemen (Dewey in the Scream films) also appear regularly, but in the slasher films in particular, you must reasonably expect that help is most decidedly not on the way.

My favorite hapless, useless policemen in the slasher milieu has to be Deputy Charlie (Troy Evans) in Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers.  Charlie has been tasked with protecting young Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) in the Myers House.  Sheriff Meeker and Dr. Loomis are using the child as bait, hoping that Michael will return to the original scene of the crime to go after his niece.   In a nice, well-shot scene, Deputy Charlie speaks encouragingly and lovingly to Jamie, telling her to stay strong.  He’s there to protect her.  What could go wrong?  What a nice guy…

But when Michael Myers shows up at the door, Charlie proves utterly hapless with a gun.  With Michael bursting in, Charlie gets Jamie to safety (which is something, anyway…) but can’t get a clean hit on the guy.  We actually see all the bullets go astray against the door-frame.  The explicit message: Charlie can’t even shoot straight.    Jeez, we already know how hard it is to kill Michael when you actually hit him, but this guy is way out of his league.  Dirty Harry he ain’t.

Accordingly, Michael offs poor deputy Charlie in short order…and the last we see of him he’s swinging from the second floor of the Myers house on a rope.

If Charlie is my favorite example of useless authority, the most infuriating ones must come from Last House on the Left (1972).  In that violent but socially valuable Wes Craven classic, two policemen played by Martin Kove and Marshall Anker actually run out of gas on the way to the Collingwood house, where lives are in jeopardy.  After walking on a country road for a longtime, they must hitch a ride on a  slow-moving chicken truck…

By the time the police finally do arrive, some lives have been ended (brutally) and other lives have been permanently shattered.   The police in this film absolutely boil my blood because of their incompetence, and  indeed that’s part of director Craven’s point.  He builds-up an escalating sense of blood-lust in the film and then defuses it all at the end with the worthwhile realization that violence solves nothing.  The road leads to nowhere.  The castle stays the same…

But gee whiz, the accumulated message of all this useless authority is this: If you’re living in a horror movie, you better not wait for the cavalry to ride in…

The Horror Lexicon #8: Welcome to Prime Time! (The Television Set)

Modern horror films boast a unique and not all together comfortable relationship with television. For a generation of movie brat directors like Spielberg, Dante, Carpenter, or Hooper, the television represents, on a basic level, the avenue through which clips of favorite old movies make it into a new generation’s works of art. 

In films such as Halloween (1978), Halloween 2 (1981), Gremlins (1984), and Gremlins 2 (1990), for instance, “old” or “classic films” appear in the body of the new work, thus serving as an important reference point to the action.  The appearance of these beloved Hollywood gems could be a simple way of paying tribute to the “greats.” 

Or, on a more meaningful level, the productions that appear on the television sets in these horror films could boast a more complicated, inter-textual relationship with the new work.

For example,  in Halloween, little Lindsay watches a horror film marathon that consists of such classic gems as Howard Hawks’ The Thing (1951) and Forbidden Planet (1956).  

Both of these classic films, in some significant manner, relate directly back to the theme of Halloween.  In the case of The Thing, a scientist tries in vain to understand the malevolent alien creature, only to realize (with fatal results…) that it is an implacable, nearly unstoppable monster.  Similarly, in Halloween, Michael Myers cannot be diagnosed by science, but instead must be dealt with as a force of super-nature.  He’s the Shape, or the Bogeyman. 

Forbidden Planet, of course, concerns “Monsters from the Id” (the human subconscious), and there’s a line of critical thought that Michael, in Halloween, represents a manifestation of Laurie’s Id.  She wishes for a man to have all to herself (as she sings), and Michael appears in the foreground of the frame almost simultaneously.  Soon he is killing everyone that Laurie knows, setting up a relationship of bizarre exclusivity between them, just as the song portends: “just the two of us.”  

In both instances, the nature of the film featured on the TV in the horror marathon relates to what seems to be occurring on-screen.  This idea is even extended (as a wicked joke) in the 1981 theatrical sequel.  After impossibly surviving six point-blank bullet shots, Michael continues to walk…and kill.  On the television: George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968).   

In both Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2 (1990), director Joe Dante uses films playing on TV such as Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) not as reflections of the movie’s themes, but as in-text influences on Gizmo’s growth as a warrior against the other Gremlins.  Gizmo watches TV (to his owner’s chagrin), and begins to imitate the heroic behavior he sees championed by the likes of Clark Gable or Sylvester Stallone.  In this case, movie history affects the shape of the narrative, creating “teachable moments.”

Importantly, Dante also highlighted moments from the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) in Gremlins to telegraph the important action of his story.  Very soon, Kingston Falls (like the film’s Santa Mira) would become the fulcrum of an invasion by monstrous creatures.

The specific footage seen in Gremlins is from Body Snatchers’ climax, during which Dr. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) warns passersby on a highway (in vain) that the aliens are already here; that the threat has commenced.  Coming where it does in the story of Gremlins, his warning is just as important to unaware Kingston Falls.  The Gremlins have arrived (and the rules governing their behavior have been broken.)

Many of the same horror movie directors have utilized the television as a portal of evil, one that sits right near the family hearth, in the American living room.  

This was the underlying premise of Hooper’s Poltergeist, which saw “The TV People” (really ghosts) invade our reality.   In one very funny moment, Mom Freeling (JoBeth Williams) implores her daughter Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) not to look at the static on the television set.  She flips the channel to a station playing a violent war movie instead.

This disturbing cinematic imagery, ostensibly, won’t damage Carol Anne’s “sight” as much as the static.

Poltergest’s brilliant last shot sees the imperiled Freeling family kick a “dormant” TV set out of their hotel room, and then a long, slow camera retraction away from the offending appliance. The implication being that the family would be safe so long as it eschewed…tv watching.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) involves television on an even more fundamental, critical level.  Here, a malevolent inventor, Cochrane (Dan O’Herlihy), plans to send a signal across America’s television sets that, when transmitted, will kill a wide swath of innocent children as a Halloween “prank.”   Once more, TV is an avenue for absolute horror and destruction, a social critique, perhaps of the very form.  Does TV destroy children’s minds, literally?

In 1988, director John Carpenter went even further in They Live.  He began to see widespread “brain death” in America and he attributed it, in part, to the pervasive nature of television in our society.  

Here, aliens beamed a hypnotic signal through the nation’s TV sets, one that would lull people into a trance so they would not notice when Yuppie aliens began lapping up all the resources, all the wealth, even all the good-looking women.  TV was viewed, literally, in They Live as the opiate of the masses.  And the “sound bytes” of politicians — hopelessly vapid platitudes — were part of the “lulling” effect.

In some fashion, Wes Craven’s Shocker (1989) built upon Poltergeist’s example and introduced a serial killer, Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi) who could enter and exit from the “TV world” into different victims’ homes.  

The film’s final, stunning, tour-de-force chase through cable television programming gave new meaning to the term “channel surfing.”  An example of Craven’s brilliant eye for “rubber reality,” Shocker was perhaps the ultimate in the horror film’s commentary on the dangers of television.

In the 1990s, references back and forth between filmmakers became sort of “in jokes” in many horror films. Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven featured a clip of Halloween in Scream (1996), and in 1998, the Halloween franchise returned the favor by including a clip from Scream 2 (1997).  Talk about cross-pollination.

In the American remake of Ringu, called The Ring (2002), the film’s monster, Samara, emerged from the television — again a portal for evil and destruction.  

Here, the filmmakers comment on the idea in the War on Terror Age that the suffering of millions can be transmitted to the innocent, and even the innocent are impacted negatively through the mere act of watching.

Probably my favorite television-oriented moment in modern horror, however, comes in the sequel A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors (1987).  There, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) actually emerges from the television set and kills a fame-seeking girl, Jennifer (Penelpe Sudrow) by jamming her head into the set.  

“Welcome to prime time, bitch,” he says, and in some way, both his diabolical bon mot and particular mode of violence seems to presage the coming of reality television, in which TV introduces and then quickly disposes of the likes of Richard Hatch, Omarosa, or Justin Guarini.  They all had their “big break” on the boob tube, and then got spit out.

Horror movies and television have intersected in a number of other films beyond those explored above including Cronenberg’s  incredible Videodrome (1983) — about the total biological blending of man and home video entertainment, Cohen’s satirical The Stuff (1985), Demons 2 (1986), Child’s Play (1988),  The Seventh Sign (1989) and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994).

The Horror Lexicon #7: This Boy’s Bedroom

Beginning perhaps in the late 1970s, many horror filmmakers began charting a new domain important to the horror film: the suburban child’s bedroom.  

In films and TV-movies such as Salem’s Lot (1979), The Funhouse (1981), Creepshow (1982), Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), The Stuff (1985), Invaders from Mars (1986), Neon Maniacs (1987), The Lost Boys (1987) and The Monster Squad (1987), movie brat nostalgia, product placement, and production-design combined to create a perfect storm in terms of this familiar setting.

Suddenly, a teenage or pre-adolescent child’s bedroom carried a whole new resonance. This domain now reflected the director’s (and audience’s?) love of movie monster/horror movie history, as we can see prominently in the works of Tobe Hooper, Joe Dante or George Romero.  Because these directors love monsters and horror movies so much, they champion them in their films, showcasing how the genre possesses moral (and survival) value.

In Hooper’s Salem’s Lot, a love of magic and monsters is important, because that’s the “training” by which you detect the real vampire in your midst.  When  Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin) is visited in his bedroom by friends transformed into menacing vampires, he knows what they are and that he is in danger.  The reason why he survives, explicitly, is his love of horror, and that love is reflected in the production design of his bedroom.

Similarly, in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) utilizes his love of monsters and even his talent making monster masks to put (a temporary) end to the monster Jason.  In this situation, once more, the love of horror is the factor that saves and protects lives.

In Romero’s Creepshow, a little boy reads a comic-book (that his father does not approve of), in his bedroom, and he ultimately gets revenge on his Dad for being so cruel.

There’s a point to all this.  For the movie brat generation, parents did not always understand or approve of a love of the horror genre.  In fact, kids who liked horror were teased and mocked not just by parents, but by classmates too.   So this isn’t merely homage to E.C. Comics or Aurora Models. It goes deeper than that.  By featuring these bedrooms in these films — bedrooms filled with monster posters or models — the directors are making a point that horror is in fact normal, and possesses value. The unjust or villainous are punished here, and those who “know” horror also realize how to survive because of their “training” in the genre.

The production-design dictating the shape of “this boy’s bedroom” is important for another reason too:   The media’s understanding and application of advertising techniques.

Specifically, toys from popular movies or television series (such as Star Wars) began appearing in prominent genre films in the 1980s; ones that, like Star Wars, guaranteed big, devoted audiences.  Return of the Jedi (1983) bed covers appeared in The Stuff, and Star Wars figures and spaceships appeared in Poltergeist (along with Milton Bradley’s Big Trak).  

Accordingly, fans of horror films and non-horror films such as E.T. became, like me, life-long collectors of toys, models, trading cards and other movie/tv-related goodies. I must wonder if, in part, this is specifically so because of these films, and the product-placement that appeared in them so frequently.  

When I first watched Poltergeist or Gremlins, I knew what I wanted my bedroom (and now my home office…) to look like.  This idea was recently resurrected in J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 (2011), which also charted a late 1970s/early 1980s bedroom, replete with models, toys, posters and board games.  These pop culture items are not just period details, they generate nostalgia.  I played with those trading cards!  I had that model kit, and so forth…

More satirically, the notion of product placement run amok was commented upon in Tom Holland’s extraordinary horror film Child’s Play (1988), which saw a little boy menaced by the very Good Guys toys he loved. Here, your favorite franchise — down to the sugary Good Guys cereal, I suppose — could kill ya!

In terms of narrative or thematic utility, the bedroom of a child is a pretty important location in a horror film.  When we go to sleep, we are all vulnerable.  Poltergeist, Child’s Play and Gremlins all play on this conceit, whether with clown dolls, evil Good Guy dolls, or monster eggs.


When we sleep, we can’t defend ourselves, and so “This Boy’s Bedroom” is the very place where children feel most ill at ease.  They are alone.  Their parents are away.  The room is dark.  When the bedroom is invaded, terror  blossoms.   The bedroom is the gateway to dreams — and nightmares — so it makes perfect sense that many horror films feature scenes set in this domain.  The bedroom is the last conscious sanctuary we have before monsters can enter our (unconscious) minds and threaten us.  Hoopers’ Invaders from Mars (1986) makes a lot of this fact, and the film’s horror plays out, specifically, in the (mental) span between bedtime and morning.

This Boy’s Bedroom is the place where we face the monster, the place where we surround ourselves with the tools for defeating the monster, the realm that showcases nostalgia for youth and the “monsters” we grew up with, and even, finally, a venue for selling us very expensive toys.  It’s hard to make a horror movie featuring kids without at least scene set in this important, and multi-faceted setting.
  

The Horror Lexicon #6: The Coup de grâce

The Coup de grâce is defined in general terms as the “death blow.”  

In horror movies, the Coup de grâce is that terrifying and disgusting moment that often caps off the whole movie.  Call it a high note to go out on, a crescendo of violence.

The Coup de grâce most frequently involves an egregiously bloody or over-the-top moment that makes the audience shriek in disbelief and revulsion.  It could be a sting-in-the-tail/tale, or it could be the moment that precipitates the climactic chase of the final girl.  Or it could be the (colorful and violent) death of the antagonist (Friday the 13th [1980]).

We just knew something terrible was going to happen…but we never anticipated the human head in the fish tank (He Knows Your Alone [1981])!  

And we certainly never expected the villain to actually explode and soil the carpet (and the walls, and the ceiling, and the bed sheets, and etc….) in Brian De Palma’s The Fury (1978).

The point of the Coup de grâce is to escalate terror to the next level, and makes audiences aware, at least subtly, that all bets are off. Anything could happen.  To anyone.  

The Coup de grâce often takes the form of a decapitation, perhaps because losing one’s head is so terrifying a prospect. Consider that the head can survive for a moment after decapitation, long enough recognize what is occurring to it (and the body…).

That’s just…incredibly disturbing.  

The Coup de grâce moment, then, is the instance of highest revulsion, nausea and fear, and it often provokes gasps and even laughter because of its outrageous, dramatic nature.

No slasher movie is truly complete without a really great Coup de grâce.

The Horror Lexicon #2: The Car Won’t Start (or Runs Out of Gas)



Why won’t it start? From Silent Hill (2006)

 This week in reviewing the horror film lexicon — the common visual/thematic language of the genre –we gaze at another trope that frequently appears in scary cinema.  In “The Car Won’t Start (or Runs out of Gas)” composition the only means of escape — an automobile — proves a possibly fatal disappointment to the protagonist, usually a final girl on the run.  Like that hero, we are stranded in battle, with an enemy nearby.  We are vulnerable.

Amy Steel cranks it, to no avail, in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981).

The Car Won’t Start trope usually consists of a series of tight compositions in the following sequence: a close-up of the desperate protagonist getting into the car and drivers’ seat, and then insert shots of a key twisting in the ignition, and perhaps wheels grinding uselessly in the mud, or dirt. 

This sequence of shots often repeats itself two or three times in quick succession in order to fully express the futile nature of the enterprise.  Sometimes, the Car Won’t Start trope also ends in success…at the very last moment (The Fog [1980]).  The car suddenly starts, and the protagonist zooms away from danger (only, usually, to find another obstacle somewhere close by, ahead…). 

The Car Won’t Start trope — a tightly-edited, tense montage of short moments — is designed to express the significant idea that technology is undependable in the face of a crisis.  We take for granted the idea that our cars will start up on command, and that we can travel wherever we want.  We’re a mobile people, and we live by this very belief.  It’s at the heart of our economic survival, and even connection our to our communities and food supplies.  In horror cinema, however, technology is undependable and twitchy, prolonging the state of suspense/terror.  Sometimes the villain has sabotaged the car.  Sometimes the environment — mud, again — mitigates the advantage technology provides. 

Ash turns the ignition over and over, in The Evil Dead (1983)

Many Car Won’t Start moments are featured in the 1980s slasher milieu and that is so because slashers are almost supernatural predators who appear to operate above our laws of nature and beyond the reach of our cultural infrastructure. 

Jason in the Friday the 13th films, for instance, is frequently associated with nature, with thunder storms and lightning.  His presence often coincides with power shorting out, and if the car won’t start, it’s a good guess that he is nearby, ready with the machete.

In the horror films of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s there are well over 75 examples of moments wherein technology fails, and our preferred mode of transportation fails or stalls.  



The wheels are spinning. From Jeepers Creepers (2001).



Some of the prominent horror films that feature this familiar and common visual language and situation are:

The Hearse (1980), Mother’s Day (1980), Dead and Buried (1981), Friday the 13th Part II (1981), Halloween II (1981), The Howling (1981), Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3-D (1982), Hell Night (1982), Madman (1982), Cujo (1983), The Evil Dead (1983), Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), Silver Bullet (1985), The Hitcher (1986), Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986), Creepshow 2 (1987), Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987), Leatherface (199), Night of the Living Dead (1990), Leprechaun (1992), Sleepwalkers (1992), Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993), Urban Legend (1996), Phantoms (1998), Jeepers Creepers (2001) and Silent Hill (2006)