Look, I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but there are rules you must abide by if you want to survive a 90s slasher movie.
Number one: You have to be a brunette on a successful television show. Alternatively, you can be the star of teen rom-coms. If you're not smooching on Rachael Leigh Cook or one-fifth a party of five your odds are slim.
Number two: You have to be aware that you're actually in a horror movie. And you have to be all clever and smug about it. Say things like, "What would Jamie Lee Curtis do?" or "Freddy Krueger? I don't even Freddy know her!" For bonus points you can drop a, "Well at least we're not in a stupid horror movie!"
Number three: Don't turn your back on the killer. Even though the killer is 100% human and probably your best friend, donning a stupid mask will turn them into unhinged monologue-ing loons with flimsy motives that involve your past and who have super strength and possibly the ability to teleport. On the other hand, the killer's weakness is definitely bullets.
Number four: If you're the movie nerd who knows too much about horror movies, you will not survive the sequel.
Oh, fuck. I hope I'm not in a sequel. Am I in a sequel? Cause there's a whole new set of rules for that.
HERE LIES THE MODERN SLASHER
IT WAS KINDA OKAY, I GUESS
1978 - 1995
The year is 1995 and after over 15 years of the slasher film and its franchises forging a distinct era of horror, the genre is circling the drain. Sequels are saturating the market, running once beloved horror icons into the ground. Not only had the shark been jumped but it had been shot, stabbed, burned, sent to Hell and gone to space. The years 1994 and 1995 saw sequels to Leprechaun, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Phantasm, Candyman and dozens more lesser known derivatives. For the entirety of the 80s, the teen body count flick could be produced cheaply, quickly and be almost guaranteed to turn some profit. Now, all of these were floundering at the box office or going direct to video (remember those?)
Everything changed when legendary horror director Wes Craven teamed up with writer Kevin Williamson on a movie that would lovingly be described as clever, post-modern, meta and self-aware. Within five years those would be dirty words.
The Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail. Destroyed and devoured were the cliches we’d all come to know. Over the top gore effects, sex and breasts, seemingly supernatural killers — all buried alongside the graves of Freddy and Jason who had, at that point, been canonically killed off “for good.” By the Willenium, horror would become sanitized and sexless. That’s not to say the 80s should be hailed as the golden age of horror. There’s some seriously wretched shit mixed in with the classics. But what was to come was only horror in its loosest description — people die, girls scream, etc. It was the right time and the right reaction, not just breaking the fourth wall but attacking it with all the snarky force it could muster. The reaction in the next decade would be violent. Japanese horror would intensify the scares, torture porn would bring levels of gore not seen since the exploitation films and Italian Giallo of the seventies.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen these movies. My grandfather started showing me horror at age four, thinking it funny to scare the absolute shit out of me with IT, Children of the Corn and The Exorcist. For a 13 year old, these movies felt like they were made just for me. And, of course, they were. Clean horror, R-rated in name only, filled with recognizable faces and an air of lightness never seen before. Plus, a gutted but clothed woman isn’t nearly as offensive to The American Mother as a single bare breast. Finally, horror that was kid tested and mother, well, not approved, but I was certainly able to rent Scream for an eighth grade sleepover with few objections.
But what it is or what it may be lacking in opposition to its previous generation’s ilk is not reason enough for an entire batch of movies to be immediately discredited. Tits and gore do not make a horror movie. The best horror comes from an exploration of the psyche, not from aesthetics. I’m excited to revisit the scary movies of my youth. Most new movements are a direct rejection of a previous status quo. For the love of horror alone, that’s worth exploring, warts and all.
So let’s take a ride back to the days of TRL, Clinton jokes and frosted tips. Let’s grab some Jiffy Pop and a few tapes from the local Blockbuster. Your pick. What’s your favorite scary movie?
I'll be taking a loose style with these because after the third movie that's basically the same thing but palette swapped, it gets a little hard to write serious reviews. Plus how can you expect me to take Urban Legend: Final Cut seriously. Like, at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment