It Follows

David Robert Mitchell, 2013, USA

The thing that is winning about ‘It Follows’, considering its peers, is that it’s evident from the start that the aesthetic will be an antidote to the James Wan “jump-scare” or the Eli Roth “gross’em out!”vision of horror. Some of the promotion monopolises the most obvious horror image of an attractive young woman tied and sobbing and terrified in a wheelchair, which makes it look like we’re in for another variation of the so-called torture-porn sub-genre. But this moment is over early in the film and provides exposition and no escalating degradation of this woman. This is not that film.

Director David Robert Mitchell goes for a more art-house aesthetic, which in this case means a deliberate pace and that each shot feels designed and Mike Gioulakis’ cinematography give it all glossy fashion-mag sheen - and the promotion also stresses this, some looking like retro-car ads. The first corpse we see is like an extreme fashion shoot that might appear on I hurt I Am In Fashion. But in this case, this isn’t meant as a criticism. It means the incidental shots become just as memorable as, if not even more so than the traditional genre shots. By importing each shot with visual importance also goes a fair way to creating dread (is this shot important? will the threat manifest here –and from where?). One can see the influence of John Carpenter easily. Speaking of which, Disasterpiece’s music does an agreeable job of that retro-80s synth-score even if by now that trick is old hat.*

Yet it is this calculation that Chuck Bowen feels stops the film from truly being free from its influences and he has a point: there is a sense of a film always pointing at what it is doing and what it is not doing, lacking the visceral ingredient that allows the audience to determine for themselves its virtues. It is reaching for greatness, but self-consciously so. Perhaps this is the hurdle to walking away with the unequivocal feeling that this is one of the greats.

However, there is so much to appreciate here, so much that Mitchell gets right. The deliberate pacing, for example, allows for rendering of the bored, languid spells that all close friendships share. The characters aren’t allowed to trumpet themselves abruptly as types because their milieu is too indifferent to that. It’s not that they aren’t as attractive as some ‘Final Destination’ troupe but the tone underplays: it doesn’t rely on petty arguments for characterisation. In fact, these potential victims feel refreshingly vulnerable and unsure in their decision-making. The finale pool scene confrontation will never top that of ‘Let The Right One In’ (what can?) but it is a sturdy contender where our protagonists think they are being clever in their plan to reveal and destroy their stalker but find they have only supplied it with weapons.

‘It Follows’ derives its themes from that staple of the horror genre, fear of youths having sex. To this end, when Jay (Maika Monroe) has sex and acquires the threat, afterwards it feels coded in the language and visual signifies of a rape. When the local kid spies on Jay, its lack of youth-comedy hi-jinx context just leaves it a little creepy and disturbing. The supernatural threat takes the form of a sexually transmitted disease: once you have it, you’re in danger of death; the line between sex and mortality is clear. Has a film ever worked so hard to truly take the fun out of sex (without shock tactics and rape-threats, I mean)? In this sense it’s more like Todd Solondz’s ‘Happiness’ than ‘Friday the 13^th’. But it’s far more respectful than that, forgoing cheap titillation and a sleazy underbelly that the premise might suggest. So it doesn’t need to commit to an it’s not really over ending because it’s about the fear of pending death, just walking towards you.

The question that our survivors seem left with is: Did our fucking stall death, which is always creeping up on us? And in that sense, it gets close to the heart of a whole genre.

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* I’m aware that most people’s influence on this is Cliff Martinez’s score for  Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Drive’, but my first exposure to this trend in film score’s was Rob’s sublime score for Franck Kaulfoun’s ‘Maniac’ (2012). That first blast of synths was exhilarating and unforgettable. Of course, it has now become a standard trope.

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13

John Carpenter, 1976, USA


The story of John Carpenter, as any fan knows, is that he used to deliver stripped down, witty, genre-savvy thrillers and horrors, accompanied by spare and dated but wonderful synth-scores. I believe "Dark Star" (1974) to be one of the best science-fiction comedies ever made. I think "Halloween" (1978) has some the best direction ever, and I can watch it endlessly for composition and suburban mood only. Inbetween, Carpenter made "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976), which is pretty much his zombie homage as re-imagining of "Rio Bravo". It reminds me of Walter Hill before Walter hill kicked in. But that early work especially...

Carpenter starts with a shoot-out that lacks any of the satisfying punch that an opener might rightly want. It's fast brutal and ugly; the parties involved are anonymous, disembodied voices. It starts as it means to go on, in shadows and washed-out hues of blue, with measured pace and menace and the menacing ominous synth riff that frequently falls into white noise. A fresh black cop babysits a station just about to close down; on the streets, silent gangs decide to exact some revenge and kill a little girl, whose father kills the murderer and then takes refuge in the non-functioning station. The gang surrounds the station and stages a kamikaze assault; inside, the cop, the girl and the infamous criminals who just happen to be there find themselves forced to unite to defend themselves.

It's simple and pulpy, peppered with hard-boiled dialogue, humourous asides and offbeat treats - such as the criminals playing "potatoes" to decide who gets to go on an escape mission. The film benefits from excellent performances from its leads, who strike the right balance between the playful and earnest. Darwin Joston as Napoleon Wilson looks like a prototype for "Escape From New York's" Snake Pliskin. Laurie Zimmer excels as the level-headed and capable desk-girl turned soldier, standing up to and alongside the guys without once compromising her femininity. The characterisation and integration of sexual and racial issues is both distinctly Seventies and subverted. As Rumsey Taylor notes:

• The crime gang excepted (which is anonymous and expendable), no primary character in the film embodies his stereotype. The criminals exhibit trust and selflessness, the new policeman (the survivors’ hierarchal authority) is black, and the women are composed, always clothed, and never scream. It is responsible, dynamic characterization. http://notcoming.com/reviews.php?id=9

In this way, the viewer never feels insulted and never quite knows who will do what. There are shocks - the death of the girl - and small moments that surprise our sense of cultured morality. Should we really root for convicted murderers? We certainly take as much relieved, cathartic pleasure as they do when they start popping off the shotguns. The father exacts revenge, but it leaves him catatonic rather than heroic. And when the other desk girl suggests they throw him outside, since he is what the gang wants, and the others stare at her and she says "Don't give me that civilised look!", the conflict between morality and the sacrifices one might make for survival is kicked right out in the open. Hadn't we already thought of that plot option before she voiced it? And what about the potential and underplayed romatic frission between Napoleon and Leigh? She seems like an otherwise sensible woman...

Appropriating and playing with genre types and expectations, "Assault on Precinct 13" is both entertaining and loaded with social commentary, like all the best b-features and pulp fiction. The gangs are rendered with a near supernatural aura... silent and near-invisible, climbing through windows like vampires, acting en masse like zombies. We are far from the fast-talkin', wise-assin' gangsters from a hundred films and shows. Yet, this never once unbalances the realism, pushing into something more allegorical. It's a rare trick for a crime thriller, and neatly accomplished. Even better, Carpenter totally subverts the idea that quiet, orderly streets mean peace and discipline. This are silent communities where the ice cream man keeps a gun at hand and where the empty streets mean you won't get any help.

The Warriors

THE WARRIORS

Walter Hill, 1979, USA

The first thing that you find when starting in on Walter’s Hill’s ‘ultimate’ version of "The Warriors" is that it is far from the incendiary, brutally realistic depiction of gang violence that its original riot-causing reputation might lead you to believe. The (online) sources tell a tale of extra security paid for by the film company to supervise theatre screenings, of outbreaks of gang violence at the cinema. Genuine gangs liked it, but apparently couldn’t stand sitting next to rivals to watch it. But this is hardly gritty, terrifying realism; it is probably not even as provocative as "A Clockwork Orange". What it is is far closer to "Sin City", "Creepshow" and "The Hulk" (Ang Lee) than "Romper Stomper", or "Gomorrah". The film freezes and becomes artwork; the artwork pulls back to reveal comic-book panels of scenes; there are wipes and titles that say "Meanwhile" that carry the narrative along. It is conceived as a comic-book come to life, and it is set in the near future. Sol Yurick’s source novel is apparently truly interested in exploring the desperate environment that creates gangs, but Hill moved onto something more fantastic when the studio would not consent to an all black and Hispanic cast. It is this, he believes, that induced him to make "The Warriors" futuristic which, like "A Clockwork Orange", makes more sense of all the crazy dressing up. The superficial details are not sci-fi, so it feels more like a variant New York reality.

It has considerable cult cool, generated by a hip soundtrack that is both sinister synths (much like John Carpenter, courtesy of Barry De Vorzon) and funky soul cuts. It is hip from the variety and outrageousness of the gang costumes and tribal identities, courtesy of great work by costume designers Mary Ann Winston and Bobbie Mannix. It is hip from the smooth, unfussy direction and broody atmosphere, from the constant threat of trial-by-violence. Much of "The Warriors" longevity comes, like all good cult films, from its successful creation of an alternate reality with details that speak far beyond the immediate action. All those gangs, costumes and their history can be imagined and expanded upon by the audience. This is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, you can try out Rockstar Games’ 2005 tie-in beat-em-up role-player for "The Warriors", which is full of expanded character backstories - and a far more brutal, amoral and provocative experience than the original film. The gangland is the seemingly barren and endlessly nocturnal city, overwritten with graffiti and alleviated only by blocks of coloured neon reflections stretching down shiny asphalt. It is both flamboyant and noir-ish. Even when the sun comes up, it’s still possible to imagine as a place where shadows house silent gangs ready to take you down. Somewhere else in the city, where the police are presumably less brutal and loathsome, you might envision John Carpenter’s "Assault on Precinct 13" taking place.

Hill almost starts with what ought to be the grand finale, with all the gangs gathering in one place for a gigantic meeting of rivals. This pays great dividends: once The Warriors have been framed for the murder of Cyrus - (Roger Hill) a warlord who is trying to bring all the gangs together to run the city like some big funky "Can you dig it?!" kingpin (the common enemy: police & authority) - we can look forward with curiosity as to which oddball gang they will run into next. There is a similar trick, or possible influence, in Richard’s Price’s novel "The Wanderers" (1974), where on page two there is a list of gangs, all of which have defining characteristics (Wongs, Pharaohs, Del-Bombers, etc.) and all promising some nasty encounters. It is a novel that William Burroughs called "A deeply moving account of confused and spiritually underprivileged youth"*; and although "The Warriors" is not that film nor "Rebel Without A Cause", it doesn’t forget to shade its colourful characters with a little desperation and deprivation. The most celebrated touch is when the encounter between the beat-up Warriors and tagalong gang girl Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) and a group of bright white preppies becomes a silent bid for dignity.

In enemy territory and with the whole city out for their blood, The Warriors try to make their way back to the beaches of Coney Island. This owes everything to the Greek tale of Anabasis, just as so many of the character names allude to all things classical and mythical. The structure is stripped down but carefully paced: after the opening show-piece, it’s the best part of an hour before the first real gang-on-gang punch-out occurs. Aside from confrontational Ajax (James Remar) and bare-chest outfits, The Warriors aren’t macho poseurs or pit-fighting lunkheads: rather, there is plenty of barely repressed anxiety and vulnerability on display, quietly played out between them, which evokes their need of gang identity for survival in a harsh urban wasteland. And then, come the end, Swan (Michael Beck) looks out across his home with unconcealed disdain. Walter Hill even sidesteps a showdown with The Rogues, even though they have raced to Coney Island especially to take down The Warriors. Rather, he allows the drama to round itself off without unnecessary grandstanding. It is a fine demonstration of how satisfying closure can be dramatically achieved without recourse to the standard punch-up felt needed to resolve so many action films.

Sleek, sparse and atmospheric, "The Warriors" has been adopted by the hip-hop community and outwards, and has generated its own long-term cult. An action film that manages to circumnavigate much of the obvious genre pitfalls, but at the same time still offers skinheads, post-Russ Meyer Siren-like lesbian crews, martial arts clans and baseball bat baddies. Moody, smart enough and thoroughly enjoyable.

* This William Burroughs quote taken from the back cover of: Richard Price, "The Wanderers" (Bloomsbury Classic Reads; 2004 edition).

"Halloween": the biopic (World of Remakes #1)

"HALLOWEEN":

THE BIOPIC

1/ Fear of the Remake.

Firstly, the original "Halloween" is scary. As a kid, it terrified me every time I watched it… for years… I have no idea how many times I have seen it, and even now I am happy to leave it on as wallpaper, because the direction alone is a pure treat. There’s a killer on the loose, and that’s all you need to know. You don’t need to know why.

Come the Twenty-First century and many previously scorned low-budget horrors had be reclaimed as cinematic classics, or at least worthy. And there seemed a greater and more cynical spate of old favourites being remade. Or "re-imagined". This isn’t anything new, and Horror has always been a highly, ahem, cannibalistic and incestuous genre. That and shamelessly derivative, of course. But to be a horror fan is, unlike proper critics, to find the gold in the trashy, and not to criticise the trash for not being shiny enough. Inevitably, a remake of "Halloween" was declared, and they said Rob Zombie was going to remake it. Well Zombie had earned a lot of fandom with his earlier features - "House of a 1,000 Corpses" and "The Devil’s Rejects". They showed promise, but lacked discipline and erred on what I’ll call the "heavy metal" vision of horror. He was known for white trash sleaze. Then we heard Zombie was going to give Michael Myers a proper childhood back-story. A white-trash back-story. It didn’t sound promising. It sounded like blasphemy. A small corner reserving judgement because they believed in Zombie; the rest of us did that thing of snorting our derision at Hollywood defiling the greats.

My first reaction was fascination. I groaned at the un-sophistication of the opening set-up. Repulsive stepfather cussing everyone in sight and if he wasn’t an abuser, that‘s probably only because he didn‘t have enough screen-time to get around to it. Mother-stripper. Michael Myers sister making weak gags about his masturbating. Baby wailing in this maelstrom. On the other hand, we had young Michael starting the morning by cleaning up having murdered another pet, and during the bad white trash breakfast dialogue asking for a replacement furry victim. The shaky-cam began to reveal itself as cinematic, not just Hollywood YouTube. We had standard school bullies who, naturally, brought with them a load of smut-talk concerning Michael’s mother. And then there was the first killing… the bully gets it and it’s horrible. Truly horrible. Something chilling sets in. After the family murders, Malcolm McDowell dominates Act II, which is concerned with Michael’s institutional treatment. Act III, and Michael is a gigantic slab of heavy metal meat, on the rampage in all washed-out ugly colours. There’s a station rest room with a black guy offering a Tarantino-esque segment. There are a lot of bloody bear breasts, firmly staking this as exploitational and unprogressive, maybe even cynical. It’s too long. I was waiting for it to end shoddily, but it doesn’t: the end is straightforward, nothing fancy. And yet.

It finished and it stayed with me. I saw it again. The dialogue was still weak, and yet I found I had remembered, and still recall it mostly as a silent movie. The camerawork is impressive still, utilising a variation on the handheld prowl cam brilliantly used by Carpenter; it shakes around the scenes and glances around the killing, often falling still on framing as consummate as the original. Here, rather than stalking and prowling, it’s like a voyeur-bug, or a detached part of Myer’s psyche watching himself. The early killings are compelling and eschew fast-cutting shock-editing for a more elongated sense of dread. The resonance is of matter-of-fact brutality, rather than cheap thrills. The view shakes around the murder of the stepfather, then it pauses as the blood floods from the bottom of the frame, off screen. As the household slaughter unfolds, Michael takes a moment to look outside at the fake horrors, all those trick-or-treaters. The final rampage has none of the thrills and clutch of suspense of the original, but it does give Michael a moment of utter pleading and confusion when he falls to his knees before his non-comprehending sister; and it does have a finely executed and extended metaphor of the old Myers house being torn apart by Michael from the inside.

As trite as the expression "re-imagining" is (smacking of denial as to the actual nature of the carrion-like "remake" beast eating from the good name of the original), Zombie’s "Halloween" almost validates the term. Zombie has filtered Carpenter’s original through his own agenda, and ultimately that is as it should be. The alternative is the kind of serviceable but unremarkable horror remake in the vein of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". I didn’t care that "Halloween" was too long (I rarely do). I chuckled at Malcolm McDowell showing everyone else how to actually dispense a line. I was convinced by Daeg Faerch’s angel/devil delivery: one minute momma’s boy, next silently creating corpses around the house. I wallowed in the sleaze, the flipside of Carpenter’s clean suburbia (decades later and suburbia had devolved into "Gummo" and "Suburbia"). Damn if the very choices mostly dreaded - extended and coloured-in Myers origins - became that which elevated Zombie’s version and gave a parallel vision of the original. It’s more grungy than heavy-metal. With a more focused basis - using Carpenter’s original rather than Zombie’s own idea - Zombie arguably revealed more disciplined and mature aesthetic compared to, say, the "Natural Born Killers" style of throw-every-at-the-wall-hope-it-hits-on-a-statement of his earlier efforts. It was more "Martin" and "Henry" than "Friday the 13th" and "Black Christmas". There was meaning in this remake.

2/ The Ups and Downs of Michael Myers

In ‘Film Comment Magazine’ (March/April 2008), Nathan Lee lays out the proper way to watch Zombie’s "Halloween": not as a teen-titillating slasher, but as a biopic. Indeed, it sports all the obvious, clunky dialogue typical of biopics of even Oscar-fraternising repute such as "Walk the Line". It follows a linear childhood-to-adulthood timeline, but it also inverts the biopic genre. Whereas many biographies follow the Lazarus and martyrdom templates, Zombie offers up Myer’s life story as an unstoppable, scarcely explicable fall from barely held grace. There are two endings to "Halloween", one where Myers achieves some glint of redemption in sparing his sister, and the other in a faintly ambiguous showdown where she kills him. This latter is the version I saw theatrically, and the one I base my comments upon. The former offers some respite, some speck of humanity for Myers; the latter doesn’t, as he pursues his sister through the wreck of their childhood home only for her to pull a Final Girl turn-around. But even with the more positive ending, this isn’t a story of redemption like many biographies, but of complete psychological collapse. (For your comparison: "There Will Be Blood".)

Zombie is at pains to trace the line between internal and external psychological climates that drive Michael to his first kills - and a second viewing reveals the earliest murders as unforgettable and shocking as Carpenter’s original. Then to the failings and inability of institutions to help, indeed, they compound Myers’ psychosis. When the prison guards go on a despicable spree to abuse their inmates, it’s trashy enough, but also reminiscent of similar scenes in Lynch’s "The Elephant Man". But here, Myers is not salvaged by the kindness of civil society, but crushed in its wheels in a world where everything seems to be devolving, and the niceness of suburbia seems to barely compensate. The institutions, as represented by Malcolm McDowell’s psychologist, seem to be making stabs at humanitarianism, even towards someone like Michael Myers; but their smugness, self-congratulatory manner and inability to prevent their charge’s complete psychological collapse allow Myers the total monster to fester until he sees his chance to unleash himself. It is probably this middle section that bores those that come for the tits-and-blood that Zombie can’t help but wallow in and which, at first glance, appears to be his main conclusion to all that has gone before. But this second act shows the extent of Zombie’s ambition and dedication that he pushes the boundaries of the slasher form, by stopping the whole show to make sure we see the final environmental reasons for the evolution of this monster. Arguably, watching Michael’s psychological retreat from the world is just as distressing as his early murders. And also, Zombie is not interested in evolving Myers into a Myth. Myers is a pure meat-and-potatoes monster.

As a biopic, Zombie’s "Halloween" offers qualities that Carpenter’s peerless original did not: despair, pathos and a genuine slice of tragedy. It is not a delicate piece, but it is considered in its rendering and chilling in its detachment, a detachment that hides a surprisingly curious and humanitarian core. Why is Myers? it asks. The camera not only spies, it pries. It asks without pretensions to knowing. Although rampaging is all it ultimately concludes, this is only because "Halloween" knows we have no answers. For these reasons, it is a worthy remake, a genuine re-imagining, and, I expect over time, it will be revealed as a minor classic on its own merits.

HALLOWEEN

"Halloween":

Suburbia, Sex, Slashers

1: The Mystery of Michael Myers

It goes without saying that ‘faceless’, expressionless, silent killers terrify due to their apparent emotionless and impenetrable veneer. To this deliberate end, Michael Myers of John Carpenter’s "Halloween" has the gimmick of the mask - famously, a William Shatner mask. We see Myers’ face only twice: as a child, and as an adult in the frenzy of killing - and in the latter example he desperately pulls the mask back over his face. Once the mask becomes his true visage, he moves from Myers to the boogeyman, or The Shape, elevating to mythical and iconic status, before our eyes, within the film and across its fan-base. No definitive explanation is given as to why Michael murders his sister, and this too is deliberate ~ unlike "Nightmares in a Damaged Brain", it is not the confused witnessing of the sexual act that triggers him, the primal scene. Is it his suspicion of his sister’s sexual nature that activates him, perhaps? Prepubescent, incestuous jealousy? We assume it’s the deviant teenage sex, as we always do, but we really have little evidence. Or did he always intended to kill from the moment he approaches the house? Obviously this lack of motivation is essential to Myers: it matters not why he kills, only that he does, He’s the boogeyman.

Myers enters his own home like an intruder, by means of a definitive use of point-of-view hand-held camera, gliding and searching an unremarkable suburban home. And the camera goes out of focus at one point so we cannot identify the hand reaching for a knife, withholding the killer’s identity until the prologue’s shock revelation. (In fact, this is [producer] Debra Hill’s hand, which creates a far more mundane reason for this out-of-focus moment: to disguise the fact that it was not a child’s not for the sake of surprise revelation, but for purely practicality.) It is a seminal horror film opening: smooth, brilliantly executed, wry, chilling, thrilling and promising all the unspeakable terrors to come.

Far less politically charged than the new living dead, Texan cannibals and last houses on the left, "Halloween" nevertheless subversively laid bare the fragility of the post-Baby Boom suburban opulence. The old monster-on-the loose scenario was updated and rampant in your conservatively inclined leafy town, subtext relatively intact. Myers might just as well be a man in a rubber suit, so alien and inhuman is he. Just because you have a nice house, it won’t stop him, and he doesn’t roar and run so that you call the military in either. Nonetheless, Myers is a force of nature: that unleashed Id, dispatching sexually active young adults; a smalltown horror that doesn’t know to stay dead, finally transcending himself into a supernatural, mythical entity.

There is little realism to Myers: his sole redeeming feature is that he was once a child, but this is barely substantial: it is simply the first shock and twist. Even as a child, when his Halloween mask is first taken from his face by his parents, the face is equally blank and unreadable. His childness - I.e., his vulnerability and innocence - it’s an assumption he discards presumably as soon as he can. He suffers none of the detailed psychological disturbances of "Nightmares in a Damaged Brain"; he does not possess any knowing smirks like the variably human Damien Antichrist of "The Omen" series. There is no filling-in of Myers’ childhood; no distraught but insightful interviews with the parents; no concept that rehabilitation will redeem him, or that he even qualifies for it. Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is almost there simply to run around refuting Myers’ ability to be human, to declare the blank concerning ‘The Blank’. Loomis is not so far from Kevin McCarthy at the end of "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers", trying to warn the impenetrable traffic of an alien invasion, bringing about the end of humanity. There is no attempt to endow Michael Myers with any sympathy or reasoning, and therefore he ends up forever the inhumane murderous child. Damaged children and mutant offspring have always been essential to the genre, as much as child abuse has created a large proportion of TV "tragedy" drama. Robin Wood has rightly identified childhood itself as a state of "Otherness"[1]. Myers is s parental, cultural and social nightmare. What is he the result of? Idealised but ineffectual Baby Boomer parents? The net result of repression in a Christian-Conservative-Capitalist society? The manifestation of virgin-babysitter Laurie’s fear of sexual punishment and the predatory male? Or is he just, you know, plain bad?

[1] The other states of Otherness is to be: other people; woman; the proletariat; other cultures; ethnic; alternative ideologies/politcal systems; sexually ‘deviant’ - & children. ~ Robin Wood, "An Introduction to the American Horror Film", in Movies and Method: volume II, ed. Bill Nicholls, (University of California Press, London, 1985) pg.199-200.

2: The Friends of Michael Myers

Sidestepping the slasher’s origins in giallo (like a disreputable pal to American thrillers, what with all that European explicitness), in its American horror context "Halloween" was released the same year [1978] as "Damien – Omen II" and "The Fury"; 1977 had offered "Audrey Rose", "The Exorcist II: the Heretic" and "The Island of Doctor Moreau". All these were mainstream expressions of the horror genre, all possessing monstrous offspring. Their subtexts were filtered through a middle-class, neo-Gothic setting and traditional Christian and conservative ethic, working on a vision that at once embraced and then rejected modernity in all its opulence, as well as contemporary science for solutions to spiritual questions and advancements. By contrast, the alternative low-budget scene offered the likes of "The Hills Have Eyes", "Night of the Living Dead" and "I Spit on Your Grave" alongside "Halloween". Unsurprisingly the big-budget horrors reaffirmed your basic status quo of Good and/vs. Evil, whereas the independents, in an post-Vietnam era, just weren’t so sure.

George Romero and Tobe Hooper had already clearly pointed out how horror had a natural affinity for documentary technique and aesthetic. Despite being low-budget and ostensibly modest, Carpenter’s "Halloween" helped point to how the new wave of horror could carry a modest but slick sheen too. Free from the demands of mainstream production, finding it increasing easier to at least get hold of a camera, the low-budget filmmakers were able to carve new paths through taboos, and their influences were permanent. Damien’s smirk in "The Omen" signifies the audience’s complicity in the enjoyment of such high-concept, absurd demonic shenanigans; but "Halloween’s" killer offspring is far too close to home, confirming our fears for our children left unsupervised there, confirming our worst fears about their promiscuity, about the realism of prowlers and murderers. Despite Myer’s supernatural evolution, it is his corroboration of our paranoia and worst fears that consolidates his mythic qualities. That’s no big secret, but nevertheless, despite its homage to the fun of fear, therein lies the poignancy of Carpenter’s film.

It is easy to see how Aurum concludes that "by sidestepping social or moral comment, [Halloween] offers a foolproof blueprint for bloody violence," [2] but Halloween offers very little blood and by-passes easy moralising in order to create a symbol of a very real and deep fear for a fresh-packed suburban generation. Myers is a moral void, ergo inhuman, ergo a killer. When he kills his sister, he watches himself stabbing her; later he will use the same gaze to study his victim as they hang dying upon the wall. It is as if he cannot understand or believe what he has done, his fascination very much like a child pouring acid upon a slug or smashing bottles. Y’know: just to see. And further to this, Carpenter, and his unsurpassed use of prowling Panavision camera toys with us and our nerves in the same way. And again it links the serial killer deeply with voyeurism, and therein cinema itself. What does it mean to watch someone being killed, even cinematically? In this way, Myers is the very passive-aggressive audience that simultaneously celebrates the fear he provokes in them. This alertness to voyeurism was always present in killer films, (e.g. "The Spiral Staircase") but Myers was a somewhat quieter and decidedly modern rendition of your Hitchcock killers or Peeping Toms. Pretty soon, serial killers were going to be a sub-genre all of their own.

Legend has it that from "Psycho" and "Halloween", a brand new batch of novelty murders were born. If "Psycho" was the sly entertainer, "Halloween" was the overachieving runt and "Peeping Tom" the despised black sheep, academically pointing to the phobias and perversions of his peers. "Psycho" leads to "Silence of the Lambs". "Halloween" led immediately to "Friday the 13th", whereupon the lineage immediately stunts itself, and to too many derivatives to speak of; latterly revived somewhat by post-modernism and post-MTV ‘cool’ of "Scream". "Peeping Tom" led to… "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", "Man Bits Dog" and "Funny Games", perhaps. Arguably it was going to be David Fincher's "Se7en" that distilled all these into one fin de siecle package, and then Fincher's "Zodiac" that denied all the showbiz of the genre by treating it purely as police procedural and puzzle. The urban-legend-come-super-naturally true would give the world Freddy Kruger (a despicable but safely fantastic horror) and Candyman (ditto)… And so on. Nevertheless "Halloween" remains a truly entertaining and influential piece, a recognised classic and, due to its staking a claim on a seasonal holiday, classic and eternal.

[2] Halloween review, the Aurum Encyclopedia of Horror, pg. 329.

 

 

3: Myers is a Bad Date

It is impossible to avoid reflecting upon serial killer flicks without mentioning Carol J. Clover’s concept of ‘The Final Girl’: a masculinised heroine who survives or destroys the serial killer [3]; she is a homoerotic stand-in for the male audience, and thereby denies feminist reading. But it seems short-sighted to assume that any violent female reaction to a male threat immediately endows her with unquestionably masculine traits [4], or even that her use of a knife immediately endows her with a substitute phallus ~ sometimes a weapon is just a weapon (it depends upon representation, context, etc.). ‘The Final Girl’ also more-or-less sidesteps the erotic appeal of the female in distress to the male audience. The female body is threatened and damaged in the scenario, it is stabbed and slashed and revealed, pierced and bloodied; often taking the form of a stab-and-strip show. The Final Girl is not the only surrogate upon which the male gaze can project his own vulnerability and fears, apparently ‘feminine’ qualities. There are those also played out through male surrogates, the erotic appeal of the female left intact: these apprehensions are played out in an archetype which might be termed the Male Protector.

In many horrors, the desire for the male to protect the female is stimulated and challenged, and almost always they fail. Defending one’s loved ones is deeply fixed in the traditional male gender role, and slasher flicks - unlike action films - spell out how fathers, husbands and boyfriends can/will fail as the Male Protector. The threat is often another, stronger, homicidal male who wants to deny other males their sex-lives and to punish the females for theirs. Films like "Halloween" renders the male fear of being unable to save and safeguard the female body and feminine objects of lust and affection from superior male predators. This arousal and failure of the Male Protector, who is often dispatched early, symbolises all kinds of impotency. Other times the dynamic might change and become more complex when the threat facing the Male Protector is a mother ~ "Psycho", "Friday the 13th", "Deep Red", etc. In "Black Christmas", the final twist rests upon the Male Protector’s failure to recognise the female threat. These latter films also show the perceived homoeroticism of The Final Girl as failing to address female violence.

The slasher film also services rape-revenge fantasies for women. The surviving and central/final girl may not actually be violated, but her fear and the threat of it alone is enough to validate extreme self defence. After all, she must dispatch the killer in a gratuitous, graphic and inventive manner to satisfy revenge for having been stalked and humiliated. Oh, and the slaughter of her pals. Evidently, this also co-insides with the need for a show-stopping, sweaty, exhausted end to the cinematic experience, and we are often left celebrating female endurance and resourcefulness. Faceless or excessive male sexuality, often seen as violent, warrants extermination, or at least a good castration. In Abel Ferrara’s "Ms. 45: Angel of Death", the mere ability of men to breathe heavily upon the disturbed woman Thana is enough to earn their deaths (and she goes one better than wearing virginal white: she dresses as a nun!). Laurie in "Halloween" avoids symbolic rape, but she must pay back Michael Myers for what he has done to her friends, as if they were but rehearsals for her potential fate. This is why she must witness her friend’s corpses, in a moment of amassed horrific revelation and plot assemblage. Through these films, female protagonists are allowed the power to survive and eliminate the sexual abuses suffered by all sisterhood, past and present.

[4] Another key qualification of the masculine "Final Girl" that Clover states is their given unisex name: Laurie in Halloween, Marti in Hell Night, but this is obviously highly limited and easily dismissed once past a handful of final girl candidates.

4: Michael Myers is a Monster

William Schoell finds Halloween endowed with tedium, repetitious music, a rip-off of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (they are, of course, two quite different beasts, but…). He says: "Bloodless and pedestrian, Halloween just sits there when it should be doing something," despite its "nice premise." [5] Alternatively, "Halloween" anticipates the mythologizing of the modern serial murderer; the repetition of the score may be seen as a motif for the killer’s relentlessness [6]; its bloodlessness may reflect only a "comparative tastefulness" [7]. He is correct on the mythologizing and the score, but also misses the film’s reliance upon build-up, menace and suspense rather than cheap gory pay-offs, as used by its many imitators. Further, it is often the lesser known Bob Clark film "Black Christmas" (1975) that is often credited with forerunning the youth-orientated slasher genre, and is a far more identifiable forerunner for "Halloween" than "Texas Chainsaw", if only in atmosphere and use of a national ‘holiday’. Or, as Kim Newman puts it, "'Halloween' was about as original as an Italian Western remake of a samurai epic" [8].

Nevertheless Myers was a culmination of his killing predecessors, and for better or worse pointed the way ahead. The originality of "Halloween" is obvious: in near-definitive and timeless use of its widescreen Panavision streetscapes and of subjective camera; in its non-Gothic unmannered acting reminiscent more of Seventies neo-realist thrillers (all the camp is neatly distilled into Pleasance‘s Loomis); in bringing giallo traits to American killer flicks; in the thick but modernised shadows and sudden shocks; in truly giving the girls centre stage and a fighting chance for a feminised age; in bringing the slaughter to suburbia. Both in technical execution and entertainment value, it rewards study and repeated viewing. It remains seminal as a purveyor and portrayal of contemporary fears.

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NOTE: This article is a shorter version of a work-in-progress chapter for my intended book on horror/thriller cinema, "The Gory Id: essays on killer films".

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[5] Schoell, Stay Out of the Shower: the shocker film phenomenon, (Robinson Publishing, London, 1988) pg. 133.
[6] Carpenter has often said how the film did not frighten preview audiences at all until the score was added.
[7] Schoell, pg. 134.
[8] Kim Newman, Nightmare Movies, (Harmony Books, New York, 1988) pg. 144.