Left Field Cinema

Why does Scream examine the likes of Halloween, or Friday the 13th? Why not take a closer look at The Exorcist, The Silence of the Lambs, or Se7en, which although referenced within the film, are not deconstructed to the same extent as the others? The answer is simply that, Halloween and Friday the 13th fit into the sub genre of horror, known as the slasher genre. Slasher films being the easiest to equate to morality tales, with the already discussed ‘rules’, it is an obvious, and structurally rigid genre, the other films examined do not have the same type of mimicable elements, or plot lines. The structure of most slasher films is so simple that it is very easy to use the plot line over and over again in a similar fashion, because there is no worrying about plagiarism.

Halloween is a prime example, teens who have sex or even prominent sexual desires, or drink or take drugs all perish, and the only survivors, are the virgins who did not take any intoxicants. Although later in the first sequel, the antagonist, Michael Myers (played by Will Sandin and Tony Moran) is revealed to be tracking down his own family members, in the first film his murders predominantly follow the pattern of killing random victims. More prominently than drugs and drink, sex plays possibly the most crucial part in the motivation to kill. Chibnall and Petley state in their 2002 book British Horror Cinema, that:

“At once desiring…enough to engage in illicit acts of voyeurism and hating them for their perceived promiscuity.” (Chibnall, and Petley, 120, 2002)

Friday the 13th likewise finds its antagonist Mrs Voorhees, and then later Jason Voorhees (Betsy Palmer and Ari Lehman), killing sexually unrepressed teenagers. Benshoff states in the 1997 book Monsters in the Closet:

“…Many 1980’s horror films, especially the Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and Friday the Thirteenth series. Overwhelmingly these films draw explicit parallels between sexuality and frightening violence.”

Myers and Voorhees also have no direct connection to most of their victims, to the point where the protagonist, (usually the only surviving character in any installments of the franchise) more often than not will not return for the next sequel. This reinforces the point of how irrelevant the protagonists are within the slasher genre. The antagonists are the most important characters in horror films, more than any other genre they are the titular characters. In Halloween and Friday the 13th the antagonists represent the moral majority or at least the conservative attitude towards the perceived moral depravity enjoyed primarily by the young. Wells states in the 2002 book The Horror Genre:

“Arguably, here the monster may also be read as a moral force, excessively punishing the young for immoral and amoral acts.”

The fact that the monsters in these films never die, and keep returning for the sequels simply helps to reaffirm the argument. However it can also be argued that the monster does not represent the conservative attitude as he or she is still the villain of the piece and this leaves it open to interpretation that the victims were not doing anything wrong. It makes more sense if the monster directly represents the negative consequences of their liberated actions. For example: Sex equals STD’s or pregnancy. Drugs and alcohol equals lung cancer, liver damage, or an overdose. All of these can result in death, which for the majority of the time is exactly what the monster delivers. It makes more sense because the conservative attitude is that this is what will happen, without being accountable for mass murder which is considered unacceptable by most moral majority groups, unless the killings are considered executions which would adhere to right wing attitudes. However the killer does not stop there, she or he usually continues after the virgin and is only stopped by wit, cunning, and guile, not by concession.

The monster representing the direct consequences of the perceived immoral, or amoral actions of his or her victims also makes sense when compared to the morality tales which these are seen to be the modern equivalent of. For example, in the story of The Three Little Pigs the consequence of being lazy and not building a house properly is to have it destroyed. The wolf represents the consequences to the laziness; he does not represent the adult telling the child the story. The adult is represented by the storyteller, the third objective person, who simply sates what happened. In Halloween and Friday the 13th the storyteller is the creative force behind the film, be that the producer, director, or writer, or all three. That creative force represents the attitude affronted by the film.

An interesting point about these films is the absence of older, maturer characters. Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasance) from the Halloween series, being a notable exception who represents a wiser man, with the knowledge of what Myers can do, and the tenacity to stop him at least temporarily. Both Halloween and Halloween II (1981) conclude with Dr Loomis preventing Myers killing anymore people by shooting him in the first, and igniting a room filled with flammable gases in the second. Dr Loomis is the only one mature, and wise enough to prevent death by educating the victims as to the danger, this is almost akin to the adult taking the cigarettes off the young child, and informing them how they can cause lung cancer. Of course there are always young people who will ignore the advice, and they inevitably die.

In the Friday the 13th series, the maturer characters are not as important within the narrative. For example in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985), the older characters of Matthew Leonard (played by Richard Young) and George (played by Vernon Washington) survive until the final act, but when they are killed, it is done unlike any of the other deaths in the film, they are killed off screen, and then their corpses are later discovered. This can be argued simply as a devise to create shock, but as the two characters are two of the oldest people to die in the film, it would be quite a coincidence. It can also be interpreted that they are killed off screen simply because they are not guilty of any of the sins that the killer is punishing for, so to not show their deaths is to imply that perhaps they are innocent bystanders. If the message of these films is intended for young people, then this would reaffirm that notion by making the victims primarily youthful, any older victims are understated in their demise and simply perish as narrative catalysts.

A common trait amongst the slasher genre is to have a least one sequel, and in some cases many more. Halloween for example, currently has seven sequels plus a remake, Friday the 13th has nine, plus a cross over sequel with The Nightmare on Elm Street series. With a few notable exceptions, (Halloween III: The Season of the Witch [1982], in which the franchise made a radical departure from the previous two films and featured a completely separate story) the sequels always feature the same antagonist returning to continue the slaughter they have begun. What this possibly represents is the continuing nature of the problems the monsters or killers believe they are solving; the sins that they are stopping are unstoppable. It is too large a problem for it to be eternally prevented by one slaughter; it has to continue until every sinner is dead. Or if the alternative metaphor is followed, then as long as people have sex, or ingest drugs of some kind, there will always be people who die as a result. In which case the antagonists of these films return, or are resurrected because humanity will not learn about the consequences. Wells states again:

“Jason merely engages in relentless attack. However, the real cynicism lies in the fact that there is no particular answer or response to the problem of the monster. Jason is anonymous and randomly brutal… there are no values, standards, ideas or traditions with which to challenge them. The world is rife with futility.”

Myers and Voorhees are unstoppable, however in other horror films the antagonists can be stopped. The Silence of the Lambs has a sequel, and two prequels, and a remake of one of the prequels. Yet the antagonists in these films do not return, they are different and have different reasons for killing. The antagonist in Manhunter (1986) and Red Dragon (2002) for example is conscious of his disfigurement and also has problems with his mother, the antagonist in Hannibal wishes revenge for his mutilation. This is not so with the slasher horror, most of the sequels are almost exact replicas of their source, with maybe one or two minor alterations. They do not change because the problems they are addressing do not change.

There is of course an alternative argument, which is all too obvious and is removed from the realm of metaphor, that the sequels are made simply because the formula is very successful and makes money. Sequels of Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) were made with absolute abandonment in the 1980’s because the formulas were so successful. Wes Craven, a prolific horror film director made this observation about The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise:

“They wanted Freddy Krueger [the antagonist] to be as much amusing as he was scary, and a little more accessible. This is a word they use in Hollywood to mean a little less threatening… It was like making cheeseburgers. You get the formula for something that satisfies the appetite, and then you make it over and over again and make a business out of it.”

This is not only a valid theory for sequels, but also the entire notion of what the films need to be successful. The unnecessary nudity in the films can be applied to the sex equals death moral reinforcement theory, but it can also be applied to the view that nudity sells films. From a producer’s point of view, violence and nudity are as crucial elements to selling a horror movie, as spectacle and successful stars would be to selling an action film. Nigel Kneale made this comment on writing a slasher film:

“I said ‘Don’t you want some kind of suspense at the beginning? A zero point to build?’ ‘Oh no’ they said. ‘You must start tearing heads off. We’ve got to keep faith with the kids.’ What they actually mean is how important it is to extract all the money out of campus kids within the space of two weeks.”

This is why so many slasher films, feature large casts of actors, and under developed protagonists, because they need higher body counts and it takes a large amount of time to introduce fifteen or more characters, and then killing them, so much time that the protagonist often does not feature in over half the film.

In general, the target audience for slasher horror movies are not film analysts nor people looking for intellectual stimulation. Not only this, but the intention in making, for example, Friday the 13th Part VIII Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), was probably not to make a commentary on excessive sexual desires in the youth of the USA, however it can still be interpreted in that way. The intention is more likely to be, as with most motion picture sequels, to make more money.

The sinners that the killers pursue in slasher films and their almost motiveless, relentless attacks are too general to be interpreted with any degree of accuracy. If a film analyst looked hard enough, they could probably interpret Masters of the Universe (1987) the feature film version of a children’s cartoon in which a maniacal dictator seizes control over a peaceful world and then attempts to expand his empire to other worlds, as a commentary on the Ronald Reagan administration, but that does not mean it is an accurate interpretation. Even with the horror films that are considered a higher class such as The Exorcist, the interpretations are often debunked, as the director William Friedkin demonstrates:

“I don’t think the mood of the times had anything whatsoever to do with the success of The Exorcist… in fact, I’m not aware of any far-reaching social problems that The Exorcist dealt with. That usually comes later - when people have run out of things to say about the film… I have read some really wonderful theories about The Exorcist. They’re absolutely great, they’re brilliant - they’re nothing to do with anything we intended. One guy wrote a piece saying that what the film was really about was a kind of homosexual wet dream about the two priests both being lovers, and having to destroy the female, in this case the little girl… It has nothing whatever to do with what I intended.”

Only films with a clear metaphor can be interpreted in such ways with out massive dispute. Candyman, for example, has an obvious metaphor as Wells states:

“The Candyman is actually the ghost of a murdered black slave, Daniel Robitaille, and his return prompts revenge upon white, civilised society. Clearly a metaphor about racist culture and the prevailing legacy of slavery…”

It is not only an obvious metaphor; it also stands up to most scrutiny that it can be subjected to. Halloween and Friday the 13th have no metaphor as clear or as specific as this one to subscribe to, and so any which are applied to either film can easily be disputed as demonstrated earlier.

The fact that Scream can so easily mock the ‘rules’ of a horror movie is a testament to how formulaic and overused they are, no parody can exist with out an excessive amount of source material. This is possibly why the ‘rules’ exist, not because they are intentionally set down and followed, but because the same film has been made so many times that a set of rules can be extrapolated from the texts. If this is so then it brings the films under a lot of criticism to the point of castigation, as Jancovich states in the 1996 book Rational Fears:

“[Robin] Wood criticises the slasher films which follow Halloween because, he claims… they do not give a social explanation for their killers. They simply present them as evil and other, rather than the product of American society itself. In this way, it is argued they don’t imply a critique of American society and its institutions, and hence do not require society to change the ways in which it is organised.”

If there is no motive for the killer and there is no reason for his or her unstoppable attacks then the films are truly vacuous with no real comment to make. However, every interpretation of every film, as long as there is evidence within the text, is entirely valid, even if the creators of the film dispute the interpretation, once it has been put into the public realm it is out of their hands.

M.Dawson