For most people, Halloween is a holiday where little kids put on costumes and go trick-or-treating around neighborhoods. And it's also a day where grown ups get to play dress up and make fools of themselves. But what is Halloween without a scary story? And what is the nature of those spooky tales?
So, with that in mind, what are your favorite horror films and stories?
In horror movies bad things happen to the characters if they break certain rules, with a lot of them being moralistic rules that when crossed "allow" the characters to die. Stephen King once presented the argument that most horror stories are fundamentally conservative, because the main tension of the stories is a struggle to preserve the status quo. Another important aspect of horror movies is the hero. Usually they're female, white, virginal, represent everything wholesome and pure, and have a unisex name. (e.g. Sam, Ripley, Sidney, etc.) The basic slasher film has its roots in a myriad of places. For example: "Little Red Riding Hood." The fairy tale we know as Little Red Riding Hood is derived from two sources—Charles Perrault (also known as "Mother Goose") and The Brothers Grimm. However, the story is much older than either of them, and like a lot of well-known fairy tales, in the original iteration of the story it's quite gruesome. In some of them, the Big Bad Wolf actually feeds the grandmother to a naive Little Red Riding Hood, and then gets her to disrobe and get in bed with him.
- In The Brothers Grimm version, the girl and her grandmother were rescued by a passing hunter, and then proceed to fill the Wolf's belly with stones.
- Perrault's version is noted for adding the "Red Hood," which takes on some symbolic significance since there is no happy ending for his Little Red Riding Hood. The Wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood ... The End. Perrault intended the story to be a moral to young women about "all wolves" who deceive. The redness of the hood has been interpreted as a symbolic representation of sin, sexual awakening, and lust.
Variations of almost every element of Little Red Riding Hood appear in modern horror movies. The Big Bad Wolf is the archetypal "slasher" villain; a predator who shows almost (or true) supernatural abilities to deceive and manipulate his victims, which are almost always mainly women. Throw in Perrault's sexual symbolism, and you have the virginal "Final Girl" of many horror movies.
These movies usually operate under a set of rules, which conform to traditional morality. Any character which violates these rules tends to be either maimed, tortured and killed in varying and creative ways.
- Teenagers + Premarital Sex = They Will Die.
- Also, as your friends/family are being hacked to bits day after day, it just sets the mood and always the perfect time to have sex with the boyfriend, who may or may not be the killer.
- Teenagers + Alcohol and Drug Use = They Will Die.
- Instead of running out the front door, when confronted by serial killer/monster/alien, characters will instead trap themselves inside their domicile by running up the stairs, or into dark basements and closets.
- If said characters should be smart enough to run out the front door, brand new cars, which had no signs of problems earlier in the film, will not start.
- Do NOT go into the bathroom!!! Bad shit lurks in bathtubs and behind shower curtains.
- Do NOT go into the woods if you hear an eerie sound coming from that direction! Whatever it is can stay in the fucking woods. Let the squirrels and deer deal with it.
- If the lights go out, do NOT look for the circuit breaker! Look for the damn door!
- Cellphones and flashlights are affected with either low batteries or no signal at the most inopportune times.
- If something from outer space should land near you, do NOT be curious by running up to it and poking it with a stick. Run the fuck away!
- Although it's not as prevalent today as it once was, gays and transsexuals tend to be serial killers in a lot of movie plots. Those stories usually try to justify it by having the character's sexual "confusion" be a part of the killer's psychosis, which leads to the implication that being gay and/or transsexual is sick.
- Apparently all evil monsters, aliens and serial killers are racists, since people of color hardly ever survive, and usually die first in horror movies.
- If you should hear something that sounds like screaming and/or a death rattle coming from the other room, the words "Let's Go Check It Out" should not come out of your mouth. And if your friend, boyfriend or girlfriend should say it, they're an idiot that's going to get you killed, possessed or eaten.
- If in a group larger than three people, the characters must not do the logical thing of staying together when trying to escape from the haunted house, scary-ass woods or other place in the middle of nowhere. No, they must split up so they can "Cover More Ground" and be killed off one by one.
- People over the age of 30 are useless. This includes the police and anyone of any authority. No matter how much evidence you may have that weird shit is happening, your parents will not believe you. In fact, the more you protest, the more they will think you are crazy and take actions that will indirectly help the killer to kill you (e.g., parents in the Nightmare On Elm Street films loading their kids up with sleeping pills).
- The character set-up at the beginning of the film as the town drunk/idiot/batshit crazy person will always know more than everyone else by the end of the film. In fact, at some point toward the end, he will explain the entire plot to the main character (and audience), as well as the motivation for the monster/killer.
- The lead female character, who has done nothing but scream, run, and cry for 90 percent of the movie, will display a clever genius-level intellect by film's end, when confronting the unspeakable evil.
- No monster or villain is ever dead, even when killed in the way that is supposed to kill them once and for all. And victory only comes through sacrifice. A character will do something incredibly brave, and gives up something of great importance or gets killed/seriously injured in the process. There's something tragic, romantic, and triumphant about a Heroic Sacrifice. One of the most famous examples in history is the story of a certain Jewish Carpenter that defeats death.
Sometimes the scariest things in movies or books is not the killer, monster or demon jumping out of the dark. Sometimes it's the individual or societal anxieties that express very real fear causing aspects of life, albeit in grossly exaggerated ways. Some of the best works scare people with what they can get the viewer or reader to imagine to be behind the creaking door, without ever spelling out what was really behind the door, or even if there was really anything behind the door. For a little kid, what lurks underneath their bed can be anything the fear of their mind can imagine. The best horror fiction brings people back to that childhood innocence and naivete, and then exploits it.
► The Haunted House
1982's Poltergeist is now considered a classic of this particular genre. And that's interesting for a number of reasons, given some of the controversy and trivia that surrounds the movie. Poltergeist is a great example of a theme usually associated with Steven Spielberg's movies from the late '70s to the mid '80s (i.e., suburban, middle-class families dealing with extraordinary circumstances). One of the knocks usually levied against Spielberg is that he idealizes American suburbia and visualizes it in a nostalgic tone. That's not really true. In E.T. and Poltergeist, both families have flaws and suburban life is one in which unsupervised children stay up all hours watching TV, eating junk food, surrounded by products and things that provide no meaning, while living in cookie-cutter neighborhoods. But if Spielberg sentimentalizes anything, he idealizes the ability of a family's love to overcome all obstacles.
Elements for what became E.T. and Poltergeist are derived from the script of an aborted '70s movie that would have been called Night Skies. In the story for Night Skies, a team of alien scientists land and begin testing around a family's home for any signs of sapient life. The aliens eventually turn their attention to the family itself, and begin terrorizing them. Melissa Mathison used the idea of aliens in search of life and communication for E.T., while Spielberg re-purposed the notion of a family being subjected to paranormal forces for Poltergeist. Also, the film borrows from Richard Matheson's short story The Shores of Space, which was adapted for television as The Twilight Zone episode "Little Girl Lost."
Matheson wrote the short story based on a real-life incident involving his young daughter, who fell off her bed while asleep and rolled against a wall. Despite hearing her daughter's cries for help, Matheson's wife was initially unable to locate her daughter.
Other tidbits about the movie:
- Skeletons in the pool: Allegedly, the skeletons in the pool scene features real skeletons. At that point in time at least, it was cheaper to buy real skeletons than to purchase prop-skeletons made out of plastic. Also, Jobeth Williams was afraid all of the lights around the pool might fall in and electrocute her while shooting the scene. So Steven Spielberg waded into the pool, and told her it was going to be okay. And he was so sure it was going to be okay, that if the lights were to fall in, he would die with her. So, when watching the scene, Spielberg is actually (off-camera) in the pool with her.
- No deaths: This is considered among the best horror movies ever made, and none of the characters die in it. And the movie is actually rated PG. But, to be fair, it's an '80s PG. There's no way it wouldn't at least get a PG-13 in today's market, especially with the scene of a man ripping his face off. Plus, Poltergeist was originally rated R before Spielberg appealed and was able to secure the PG.
- Who actually directed the movie?: Officially, Tobe Hooper is listed as the director of the movie. But since the day it was released, there has been speculation that Hooper didn't really direct Poltergeist. Spielberg had a clause in his contract with Universal Pictures that stated he was forbidden from directing anything else while making E.T. However, Spielberg's fingerprints are all over this film, and no other Tobe Hooper film really matches the vibe of Poltergeist. And from the stories about the production, it seems like it was more of a TV-production type of directing, where Hooper called "action" and "cut," but most of the creative decisions were made by Spielberg, who also did the hiring, put Michael Kahn in the editing room, and developed and co-wrote the script.
- The Curse: After the deaths of Dominique Dunne and Heather O'Rourke, a myth began that the movie was cursed. However, the "curse" seems to have avoided almost every other actor in the film, as well as Hooper and Spielberg.
- That scary-ass clown almost killed the kid: The clown scene is probably one of the most infamous moments of the movie. Whenever I hear people talk about Poltergeist, that damn clown comes up. It's interesting to note that when Robbie (Oliver Robins) is being strangled in the scene, the material around Robins' neck became so tight he actually was choking. So much so that during the scene he screamed "I can't breathe!" Both Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper thought Robins was ad-libbing and continued to give him direction. It was only after Spielberg saw Robins's face turning blue the scene was stopped.
- Mood whiplash: Jerry Goldsmith's theme for the movie is so peaceful and soothing that it becomes unnerving when contrasted with the events that happen in the film. I remember the first time I saw the movie, and you get to the end where the family escapes to a Holiday Inn after skeletons come out of the pool, a closet becomes an inter-dimensional throat that tries to swallow two children, coffins shoot out of the ground, and a house implodes. And then that lullaby comes up with the credits, and it feels so creepy.
The thing that made Poltergeist work so well and scare the shit out of so many children is that it's set in a "normal" house, and normal neighborhood, instead of the spooky haunted mansion/castle that had been the standard in most horror movies up to that point. So, if this normal house could be haunted with trees that want to eat little boys, killer toy clowns, and skeletons in the pool, anyone's home could potentially suck them into a closet.
Other distinctive examples of the haunted house genre:
- The Haunting (1963)—Based on the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Robert Wise's film follows a group investigating the weirdness of Hill House. Many suspicious accidental deaths have happened at the home, and Eleanor "Nell" Vance (Julie Harris) has volunteered for a study on paranormal activity conducted by Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson). Nell is a lonely, withdrawn woman who supposedly had a supernatural experience at the age of 10 and has devoted her life to caring for her invalid mother. Two other participants: Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn), who stands to inherit Hill House, and Theodora (Claire Bloom) a supposed psychic. It's left to the viewer to decide whether anything supernatural actually took place, or the ghosts and haunting are figments of the characters decreasing sanity.
- The Shining—Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, loosely based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King, centers on Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd). Jack is an alcoholic writer who takes a job as the caretaker of the isolated Overlook Hotel during the winter. Torrance is warned the previous caretaker snapped and killed his family, but takes the job anyway. As time passes, Danny begins to exhibit psychic abilities, and Jack's sanity slips as the Hotel begins manipulating him towards murder. Theories as to Kubrick's intentions for the film run the gamut from possible to borderline insane, with some seeing it as a commentary on Native American genocide to others alleging the movie was Kubrick's subtle way of confessing to faking the Apollo moon landings.
- The Amityville Horror (1979)—There is a house on Long Island at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, New York with a weird history. The facts that everyone can agree to is that on November 13, 1974, 23-year-old Ronald "Butch" DeFeo, Jr. shot his parents, two brothers and two sisters with a .35 caliber Marlin rifle while they slept. DeFeo attempted to plead insanity, claiming voices had told him to commit the murders. However, he later recanted that story and admitted he killed his family while drunk and high on heroin. On December 18, 1975, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the home with their family, and left 28 days later. What happened during those 28 days is heavily disputed and the source of over a dozen lawsuits and many films. The Lutzs claim the house was haunted and they fled for their lives. The alternative explanation is the Lutzs bought a house the family couldn't afford, and concocted a story to sell books and gain notoriety. And it should be noted, there have been families living in the house since 1975. None of them have reported anything supernatural at the home. The only evidence ever presented as possible proof is a photograph taken in 1976 by Ed and Lorraine Warren's team of paranormal investigators, which seems to depict a young boy with glowing white eyes who is peaking out of a doorway. But others argue the photo is concocted and is of one of the Warren's team using an infrared camera to give the effect around the eyes.
- Hell House—Written by Richard Matheson and published in 1971, as well as adapted into the film The Legend of Hell House in 1973, the story of Hell House concerns a team of investigators hired by a dying millionaire, who wants proof of life after death, to investigate the Belasco House. The Belasco House is nicknamed "Hell House" because of the acts of depravity, perversion and murder that have occurred at the home. The story pits spirituality and science against each other, as each member of the team tries to reason the events that occur at the home through their own perspectives and the house plays on their insecurities.
► Cosmic Horror
If there's one theme that resonates in H.P. Lovecraft's stories, it's how he gets across a nihilism of how insignificant humanity appears in the grand scheme of things within the tales. Not only are there strange, monstrous Eldritch abominations out there unknown to man that might kill us all or drive us mad at the very thought of their true nature. The strange, monstrous things really don't give a shit about humanity one way or the other. It's just that they would not think twice about killing us, since it would be no different to them then stepping on a bug going from point A to point B would be to us.
Although, The other interesting thing about Lovecraft and this theme is how his work can be viewed as a reflection of racism. The biggest threats in Lovecraft's works is the unknown, discovery and knowledge always leads to a bad place, and "miscegenation" between humans and things that are not human creates abominations. In private letters, Lovecraft wrote about his dislike of racial impurity.
Notable works of this particular genre:
- At the Mountains of Madness—Geologist William Dyer is the leader of an expedition to Antarctica in 1930. While digging for ice cores, an advance group, led by Professor Lake, uncovers the frozen bodies of things unknown to science that can't be classified. Contact is lost with the advance group and Dyer's party goes to their last known location to only find a ruined camp and the slaughtered remains of Lake's party. Dyer and a graduate student decide to venture further over the mountains to investigate. What they find drives one man insane, and the other is left trying to stop a second arctic expedition from taking place, but no one will believe the reason why.
- The Thing—Considered a flop after its initial release, John Carpenter's The Thing gained a huge cult following and is now considered one of his best films. Based on John W. Campbell novella Who Goes There?, which was more loosely adapted by Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby as the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, Carpenter's film features not only an alien creature that's bizarre in its biology and who seems to have no interest in communication, but the tension of the story is predicated on a paranoia that can never truly go away given the threat. In any dangerous situation, the odds of survival go up if you can act rationally together as a team with the people around you. But how do you do that if you can't trust that the people around you are actually who they are?
- The Blob—Pro tip for all of you out there. If a meteorite should land in your vicinity, and gelatinous goo crawls out of said meteorite, please don't poke it with a stick. Otherwise you might get your face melted off and devoured by a giant alien phagocyte.
- The Conspiracy against the Human Race—Depending on how you look at it, the philosophy of Thomas Ligotti's non-fiction novel was either payed homage or outright stolen for Matthew McConaughey's Rust Cohle in HBO's True Detective. Ligotti argues the very nature of reality is horrific. That we are paradoxical creatures, which are little more than "thinking meat," created by a universe that doesn't care.
We know that nature has veered into the supernatural by fabricating a creature that cannot and should not exist by natural law, and yet does ... And the worst possible thing we could know — worse than knowing of our descent from a mass of microorganisms — is that we are nobodies not somebodies, puppets not people ... Human existence is a tragedy that need not have been were it not for the intervention in our lives of a single, calamitous event: the evolution of consciousness—parent of all horrors.
For the rest of the earth’s organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death—and nothing else. But we know too much to content ourselves with surviving, reproducing, dying—and nothing else. We know we are alive and know we will die. We also know we will suffer during our lives before suffering—slowly or quickly—as we draw near to death. This is the knowledge we “enjoy” as the most intelligent organisms to gush from the womb of nature. And being so, we feel shortchanged if there is nothing else for us than to survive, reproduce, and die. We want there to be more to it than that, or to think there is. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.
► Gothic Horror
The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's only novel. Originally published in serial form for a magazine in 1890, Wilde's story tells the tale of a young attractive man named Dorian Gray who is the muse (and as close as you could get in the 19th century to a gay object of affection) for artist Basil Hallward. Dorian's life takes a turn after Basil paints a portrait of Dorian, and Dorian begins to worry about his appearance will fade with time. Enter Lord Henry, who leads Dorian into a life of self-indulgence and corruption. Dorian cruelly rejects the affection of Sibyl Vane, and this act creates a chain of events that culminates in murder and destruction. Years pass, but Dorian doesn't age. But his image in the painting does.
Critics charged the story was indecent and immoral. Moreover, Wilde was put on trial under English sodomy laws for acts of “gross indecency” after his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas was made public by Douglas' father. The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence at Wilde's trial, where he was eventually convicted and given two-years hard labor in 1895.
Charles Gill (prosecutor): What is "the love that dare not speak its name"?
Oscar Wilde: "The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.
Notable examples of the genre:
- Dracula—Bram Stoker's story is not the origin of the vampire myth, but most of the modern elements of vampire stories are taken from Dracula. The vampire story is usually seen as a metaphor for sexual anxieties and venereal disease. The victims in vampire stories are usually female, they come under the "thrall" of an attractive man, and that experience either leaves them dead or permanently changed.
- The Pit and the Pendulum—Edgar Allan Poe is considered one of the best writers of Gothic fiction, with prime examples being his poem The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher, or the beating of The Tell-Tale Heart. With The Pit and the Pendulum, it's a short story first published in 1842 and details vividly the sensations felt by an unnamed narrator as he experiences sadistic torture at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. Interestingly, the story has many elements of what people now call "torture porn" in horror movies.
- Frankenstein—Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has a subtext of a fear that science and technology are encroaching on the territory of the Gods. Hence the novel's subtitle: The Modern Prometheus.
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.
► Psychological Horror
Director Michael Haneke is probably best known for films such as Funny Games, The White Ribbon and Amour, all of which received much critical acclaim. However, his films are also a place where hope goes to die.
There are movies I can really appreciate and think are great works of art, but I probably never want to see again. I pretty much have that reaction to all of Haneke's films. Haneke's The Seventh Continent is a haunting film that sticks with you, and leaves the audience contemplating the situation. The movie depicts a middle-class Austrian family that slowly destroys itself. The mental process by which someone decides they don't want to live in this world anymore can be fascinating to dissect. And The Seventh Continent does that by looking at a husband and wife that's successful, but numb to their lives. One day they decide to quit their jobs, withdraw every penny they have from the bank, and tell their young daughter the family is "moving to Australia."
One of the most disturbing sequences in the movie is when the husband and wife methodically destroy each and every one of their possessions.
Other examples of this genre:
- Psycho—Pretty much most of Alfred Hitchcock's filmography could be listed here. Based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch, and loosely inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein (and a lot of movie murderers are inspired by Gein), Hitchcock's Psycho has two big twists, but is mostly remembered for the shower scene. The movie begins as a crime drama that has elements of film noir, and then shifts once things get to the Bates Motel.
- Blue Velvet—The opening of David Lynch's Blue Velvet is a montage of a beautiful suburban community, with all the vestiges of Norman Rockwell Americana, and finally ends on a man having a stroke while tending to his perfectly manicured lawn. The camera then pushes into the yard and we see all of the bugs crawling under the surface, which is a metaphor for Frank Booth's (Dennis Hopper) existence in the town. This movie is considered one of Lynch's best and is somewhat infamous for Roger Ebert criticizing it as misogynistic in its treatment of Isabella Rossellini.
► Religious Horror
Over 80 percent of the world's population is affiliated with some form of religion. Religious horror basically takes the CliffsNotes version and various apocrypha of those religions and turns it into a scary story. For example, take the The Book of Revelation. It's been the source of many, many spooky stories. However, the word Antichrist does NOT appear anywhere in that book of the Bible. The word does appear in other books of the Bible (e.g., First Epistle of John), but not in the context or meaning that is behind supernatural horror movies like The Omen.
To get the little kid from The Omen, one has to combine characteristics of both "Beasts" from the Book of Revelation (i.e., the "Beast from the Earth" and the "Beast from the Sea") and the "Man of Lawlessness" in Second Thessalonians. This sort of thing happens in other areas too. For example, angels. The most common conception of an angel is a humanoid figure with wings and a halo, usually carrying a harp or sword. However, for the most part, the description given of what an angel looks like in the Bible is much, much different. In fact, the Bible's description of angels is more in line with Lovecraftian Eldritch abominations mentioned above. And that description holds true across the Abrahamic religions. The Qur’an describes a meeting between the Archangel Gabriel and the Prophet Muhammad, in which Muhammad sees Gabriel's true form and is terrified.
In any horror movie, if it comes time to battle the forces of darkness and there is a possibility of defeating the evil by some vestiges of religion, the means by which it will be defeated will probably be quasi-Catholic. So thanks a lot for nothing Martin Luther and the rest of you protestants! The reason for this is the Catholic Church is old and has a history of ornate ritual and majestic symbolism. Plus, cursing out a demon in Latin just sounds cooler.
Notable examples of the genre:
- Rosemary’s Baby—The 1968 film by Roman Polanski, based on a novel by Ira Levin, is mainly a supernatural horror film, but it also has elements of psychological horror. The main tension of the story comes from a woman (Mia Farrow) coming to believe that everyone around her is manipulative and conspiring against her, and the conflict of whether she's right or going insane. Of course, she is right and her dickhead of a husband (John Cassavetes) made a deal with cultists to let Satan rape her for some acting gigs.
- The Exorcist—Based on a novel by William Peter Blatty, and the first horror film to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, the story was supposedly inspired by a claimed case of real demonic possession. The movie follows the life of a young girl named Regan (Linda Blair) as her physical and psychological state deteriorates. As the demon Pazuzu takes hold more drastic changes occur, which include green projectile vomit, spinning of the head and bed levitation. The behind-the-scenes happenings on this film are also interesting. Director William Friedkin has a bit of a reputation for not exactly caring about actor safety if it means getting a good take for his films. With The Exorcist, Friedkin took enforced method acting to a new level. Max von Sydow and Jason Miller's shivering and visible breath in the film is no illusion. Friedkin refrigerated the set to get a convincing depiction of how hard it would be to keep chanting while freezing to death. Friedkin would also fire a gun off in-between takes in order to keep everyone jittery and on-edge. And on one occasion, just before shooting, he slapped one of the actors across the face as hard as he could in order to get the actor scared/enraged for the take. Friedkin's methods also caused permanent spinal damage to Ellen Burstyn for the scene where Burstyn's character is thrown across the room by the possessed Regan. Part of this film’s infamy comes from having a (possessed) teenage girl masturbate with a crucifix and spout lines like: “Your mother sucks cocks in Hell!!” On the first day of filming the exorcism sequence, Linda Blair's delivery of her foul-mouthed dialogue so disturbed Max von Sydow that he actually forgot his lines.
The interesting thing about both The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby is the subtext of both films is not really religious or supernatural. Rosemary’s Baby connects to real fears that women have during pregnancy of the possibility that something is wrong with their baby, that they’re losing control of their body, and the situation is one they’re experiencing but have little control over. The movie just adds in Satanic rape and devil worshipers.
The true horror of The Exorcist exists whether one believes in demonic possession, since the crux of the story is really about helplessness and a parent’s fear of having something wrong with a child that no one seems able to fix. In this respect, whether it’s mental illness, cancer, or a demon, the story connects on that emotional level.
► Science-Fiction Horror
No matter how much a scientist, corporation or other form of authority is told their experiment/expedition is dangerous, smart people will ignore all the warnings staring them in the face and proceed to unleash something that should have stayed hidden forever, horrifically mutate themselves and others, or put the existence of every man, woman, and child in danger.
- The Fly (1986)—Canadian film director David Cronenberg is known for using body horror in his movies. And The Fly is a prime example of it. Very loosely based on the George Langelaan's 1957 short story and the 1958 film of the same name, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is trying to work out the kinks of the teleportation device he's been working on in secret, but decides to bring in journalist Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) to document the work. Brundle falls in love with Veronica as he continues his work. However, things take a fateful turn after Brundle decides to test the device on himself and fails to notice that a house fly was inside the teleportation pod too. The transporter becomes a gene splicer and slowly turns Brundle into Brundlefly. Cronenberg's movie has been interpreted as a metaphor for the isolation and feeling of detachment from humanity that aging and terminal disease can have for some. The makeup for the stages of Brundle's conversion was based on the asymmetry of real deformities.
- Alien—The 1979 film by Ridley Scott has been widely hailed and has been hugely influential in both the horror and science fiction genres. Because of that, the original film is notable for having one of the first truly strong female characters, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), that defied many of the stereotypes of women in both genres. Ripley isn't defined by the men around her, or by her relationship to them. Weaver's Ripley is a fully realized character that is dealing with a shitty situation the best she can. The spaceship Nostromo becomes a haunted house where the H.R. Giger designed xenomorph stalks the crew. And the alien itself plays on a fear of rape. Not only does this creature kill you, but it defiles your body and forces you to serve its interests. And as crazy as the reproduction cycle seen in the Alien franchise might seem, it actually does have a basis in the biology of Earth. Yes, Mother Nature can be as scary, if not scarier than a horror film. The xenomorphs have similarities to the parasitoid qualities of wasps, who use other species as hosts for their larvae.
- Aliens—One crack made against Aliens is that it's "action movie" and either created or uses a lot of familiar tropes of that genre. However, that's not exactly fair. Yes, it's an action movie, but James Cameron put a lot of subtext into Aliens. Supposedly, Cameron based the story around being a metaphor for Vietnam. The Aliens have no technology, but are an intelligent group who overcome all the weapons and gadgets of the technologically superior force. Moreover, Aliens builds on the idea of the greed of Weyland-Yutani.' Paul Reiser's Burke represents the worst human traits coalesced into a junior executive. Cameron's Avatar is sort of a mirror copy of Aliens in some ways. In both films, humanity travels to a world far, far away and a corporation is trying to exploit its resources for our own gain. In both, humanity encounters a hostile alien species that we don't really understand and any attempt to control that species results in disaster. And in both, the military/corporate defense forces are ultimately overpowered by the lower-tech alien species. The only difference is that in Aliens the audience is totally on-board with nuking the bastards to Kingdom Come and making the xenomorphs extinct.
From Roger Ebert's review of Alien:
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
► Slasher Horror
In C.S. Lewis' novel The Screwtape Letters, there's a moment where a demon worries that a true victory over the forces of God may be fundamentally impossible. His lament being based on the idea that evil is really a perversion of good. And without good's existence, there can be no perversion and therefore no evil. If you think about it, that same dynamic is at the core of most scary stories. They're usually based around the idea of something disturbing or perverting our preconceptions of how things are supposed to be. And in his book Danse Macabre, Stephen King argues along the same lines that most horror stories are centered around keeping the status quo and a fear of the change, with the change represented by a stranger or "other" force that has invaded the Norman Rockwell-esque family, house, community, etc., and corrupted it in some way. And most people note that the characters who "sin" in some manner will be killed and killed first.
From TV Tropes' Sorting Algorithm Of Mortality:
With these sort of rules, as well as copious amounts of nudity, sex and gore, there's been arguments as to whether the genre itself is sexist and misogynistic. Back in 1980, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel devoted an entire show to "Women in Danger" films. During it, Siskel proposed the theory that these films were a reaction to the gains made by the women's movement, and fulfills a fantasy for some men of seeing a woman cowering and being punished whenever they have sex or do something un-lady like.
On the other hand, some of these films were the first to depict strong female characters that weren't dependent on men to "save" them.
From a 2009 Los Angeles Times article by Mark Olsen on feminism and exploitation films:
"Even in the mid-'70s, the kind of proto-feminist element was being written about," said Kathleen McHugh, director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. "Feminist film scholars were writing about Roger Corman and Stephanie Rothman, locating a feminist impulse in the standard plot, where you have these powerful, self-assertive, one might even use the term 'extremely aggressive' women who are wreaking vengeance against forces, people, men who are trying to keep them down."
Notable examples from the genre:
- A Nightmare on Elm Street—People over the age of 30 are useless. This includes the police, your parents and anyone of any authority. No matter how much evidence you may have that weird shit is happening, your parents will not believe you. In fact, the more you protest, the more they will think you are crazy and take actions that will indirectly help the killer to kill you, like loading you up with sleeping pills. According to Wes Craven, the movie's story was based on articles in the Los Angeles Times about Cambodian refugees who were dying for seemingly no reason in their sleep.
- Friday the 13th—If the counselors at Camp Crystal Lake had just been doing their jobs instead of sneaking off to the woods to have sex, think of all the lives that may have been saved.
- Halloween—This is considered a prime example of the slasher formula. A force, in the form of Michael Myers, has been unleashed. He preys on and toys with his victims. And eventually it comes down to one young girl (Jamie Lee Curtis), left alone as her friends are picked off one by one, to survive.