Men, Women, and Chainsaws

In researching for this blog, my main resource was the fantastic book by Carol J. Clover, "Men, Women, and Chainsaws:Gender in the Modern Horror Film". In this study of film theory and feminism, Clover addresses issues from voyeurism to sadism intrinsic in modern horror movies.
One of her most interesting points to me was the idea that most of these killers have gender identity isues or are faced with some sort of sexual trauma. Like Leatherface and Hitchhiker from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" both being inbred, sexually confused and inexperienced freaks who kill instead of fuck. Or Mike Myers from "Halloween" whose first killing experience was after he saw his sister have sex in their house. Even in "Sream" the two murderous teens seem to be sexually confused and outcast. And according to Clover, "the most recent incarnation of Norman Bates is "Silence of the Lambs'" Buffalo Bill, a mother-fixated would-be transexual who, having been denied a sex change operation, is sewing his own women-suit out of women's skins.".
What do all of these movies teach us about sexuality then. As a women I feel like most horror/slasher films are pretty sex-negative. If you are a sexually experienced young women, you die, and if you're sexually naive or inexperienced, you take out your frustration by kiling. And if you are at all questioning your gender identity, you are a murderer.

Gore-porn, the Slasher Movie of My Youth

Let's say that the cardinal example of the slasher film is Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" made in 1960. It was the first horror movie to really utilize all of the most essential tropes; a beautiful and sexually active woman protgonist, a killer from a troubled family, the scene is somewhere unknown, away from home, the attack is personal (without a gun), and the murder i seen from the victim's point of view.

I have always seen horror movies from this sort of vantage point, using "Psycho" as a guide for good horror.
The horror movies that I watched growing up and today seem to really play up the sex and violence aspects, and the relation between horror and porn. Low budget horror film has been around since the 50's and 60's with B-list directors like Ed Wood and Roger Corman making light sexploitation movies for the drive-in teen boy crowd. In the 80's there was a wave of low-budget, underground horror films, which became known as "video nasties" and were crusaded against by the English and American governments. These films were more closely related to porn than most mainstream horror of the day, from there production level, to their marketing campaigns (in trashy magazines) and their distribution. I think this type of underground cinema really changed the way modern horror movies look and feel.
1. There is a lot more sex in these movies.

Like the sexy girl above from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" who is molested by the demented family of killers, women are often sexually abused, or mistreated, but are never really 'raped', because that would be crossing the boundary. Also, most of the omen in these movies are shown to be quite promiscuous, and in many cases their fooling around leads to their untimely death.
2. The graphic scenes are more realistic.

Like the scene above from "Final Destination", graphic violence has become increasingly more violent and gorey. With slasher flicks becoming more popular and higher box office grossers, they get larger budgets, resulting in the art director being able to experiment with gore a lot more than in the past. Also, there is a much larger work pool for special effects people now, it is not as specialized as it used to be and prosthetics are less expensive. We live in a time and country of brutal violence; there is extreme violence happening all around us from crime to war. We crave weirder and harsher violence in movies as a way to combat our own fears towards these real life issues.
Because of these problems, along with many others, horror movies have both become more popular among teenagersa and specific niches, while also being harshly critcized by ratings and government agencies. As a person who was deeply afraid of and tormented by these types of movies as a youth, I am just now trying to deal with my fear and address all of thesse issues inherent in horror. However, I don't think most teen boys going to see these movies really examine these issues, and that's where the problem lie.

Fearful Flowers

I just read a review of the new horror film "The Ruins" which seems to be one of a few "vicious vegetation" horror movies. This film is interesting because it utilized very few CGI effects and the head of FX, as well as the director both opted for "real" effects using prosthetics and make-up primarily.

In the scene above, there were 10 different sets of legs, which had been brutally attacked by the killer plants. The legs were all made out of silicone and were originally cast from the actor, like all the other fake bodies in the movie. In this scene, other actors need to saw off this man's legs and cauterize them using a hot frying pan. This presented a problem for the FX director, "We were thinking, ‘How are we going to cauterize silicone and make it look like real flesh?’ So I sprayed cooking oil all over the silicone, heated up a piece of steel as hot as I could and applied it to the leg—and it looked like real meat cooking. It smelled like it too, because of the oil.". This type of creativity and care for making realistic props is nice to see in a world overridden with digital effects.
This scene reminded me of a favorite of mine from "Evil Dead" in which the evil woods reak havoc on people in a a cabin, until th eevil force eventually turns them all into zombies or 'evil dead'.

This is a super low-budget scene, where it is implied that the evil trees rape this woman.

Special Effects in the Films of Cronenberg

David Cronenberg is a master of body related special effects and has utilized them perfectly in his films. Cronenberg's specialty is body-horror, whcih plays on people's fear of infection or morphing bodies, all of which lends itself perfectly to special effects. Movies like "Videodrome", "The Fly", "Naked Lunch", and "A History of Violence" all feature pretty gruesome body transformations.

The scene above is from "Videodrome" which featured a stomach turned tape player that could gobble up anything from guns to hands. This movie won an Oscar for make-up, for these groundbreeaking effects. This type of effect causes a reaction in all viewers because it deals with something so unknown, our insides, and the unstoppable transformation of them, which is a fear all humans could relate to.

The scene above is from "The Fly" (1986), a movie starring Jeff Goldblum as a scientist working on an experiment gona awry that slowly turns him into a fly. This movie dealt alot with people's fear of new science, like cloning and gene stamping, which was just becoming understood. The special effects needed to make this movie were mainly just prosthetics, make-up and clever costuming; for example, in the scene above, "Goldblum wore foam rubber appliances on his head, neck, arms, feet, and abdomen. Various pieces of foam were put under his clothes to suggest a misshapen form underneath. He also wore another wig with sparse hair, and custom-made dentures to show Brundle's crooked teeth". Later in the development of the fly, Goldblum had to wear a full body suit, dentures, and make-up that took six hours to apply, and he eventually became a puppet. One of the reasons this movie is so creepy is because of the uncanny valley aspect of 'Brundlefly', being part human part fly, something unknown and feared.
Overall Croneberg's view on special effects really allows him to utilize them like any other tool in th ecreation of a subversive and intriguing movie, "For me, special effects are just another tool to have in your toolbox. You use it if you need it. But you don’t insist that you use the screwdriver when the hammer is really what you need. I don’t think of effects as being any more special than costume, lighting, camera angles, choice of lens, editing, and all those normal cinematic devices".

Torture and Modern American Gore

One single scene from a recent Quentin Taranino movie required over 100 gallons of fake blood. People love to see blood and gore both in movies and on tv and are now requiring from more and more astract situations. Torture is really in right now, with movies like "Hostel" and "Saw" being blockbusters and tv shows like "24", which all prominently feature torture-heavy gore and threats of terrorism. In the 50's and 60's there were a lot of horror movies made about fears of nuclear war and the unknown aspects of science, like "The Blob" and "The Incredible Shrinkning Man". Movies, especially horror films, have always relied on the public's fear for subject matter, since this will obviously draw in audiences. Post 9/11, Americans have been taught to fear outsiders and foreigners, we are even trying to build a fence around one of our borders, and also to constantly be wary of terroist attacks. We are bombarded with graphic images from the war in Iraq, of televised beheadings and torture. Our own military has comitted horrible acts of torture and seem to be getting away with more and more everyday.

The American public craves these movies, these brutal images of their own fears as a way to address and understand them. Most peopla will never be tortured by someone or will torture someone, but can experience the butality of that by watching a movie like "Hostel". They can live out the experience through someone else's pain and suffering and then put off thinking about the real torture happening in our world everyday.
The problem and difference with these films is how they portay the players in the torture "game". In "Saw" the killer is venerated for teaching all of these "bad" people a lesson, and in both "Saw" and "Hostel", the victims are all vilified because of some vice, like the American travellers in "Hostel" being party animals. The actual gore in these movies is unrelenting, and disgusting, it is hyper-realistic, probeably even worse than real-life. There is an abundance of special effects, props, and fake blood used for torture scenes, and a main reason for the heafty budgets of these modern horror movies. Compare a movie like "Hostel" to "Halloween", which cost about $300,000 to make and barely had any special effects. They are completely different and have different effects on the viewer, one being more about visceral fears and the other closer to body-horror.

Sarting With the End: The "Final Girl"

According to wikipedia, the final girl is "... a horror film trope that specifically refers to the last person (usually a woman or girl) alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story". Almost every horror film that I can think of, from "Nightmare on Elm Street" to "Scream", feature a final girl, usually as the protagonist of the movie. I will use a few differnet examples of horror films that utilize the final girl in order to point out traits of the trope as well as problems with it.

Halloween(1978)

Jamie Lee Curtis who starred in "Halloween" as Laurie Strode was the first and one of the most famous final girls in horror history. Her character pretty much set the standard for all other final girls, as well as basic plot rules for th slasher sub-genre.
First and foremost, Laurie was a virgin and abstained from the vices that all of her friends were doing in the movie, like drinking and smoking pot. These are almost always characteristics of the final girl, she is chaste and morally elite. The final girl also always seems to be smarter or more intuitive than her female costars, who are usually all killed. In fact, it is usually the final girls' own curiosity that propels the plot forward, with her usually being the final and only person to confront the killer. In the case of Laurie, she tries three times to kill Mike Myers stabbing him, with a knitting needle, clotheshanger, and finally a knife. Director John Carpenter says, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy.". This statement counters many people's view that the trope of the final girl is usually mysogynistic and also a statement against the free-love generation of the 70's.

Alien(1979)

Sigourney Weaver's character, Ellen Ripley, in "Alien", which came out only one year after "Halloween", took the final girl in the oposite direction. Ripley is the take-charge, intelligent, and sexy commander of the spaceship Nostromo, who, after all of her crewmates are killed by the alien onboard, is left alone to save the ship and destroy the alien. "Alien" was a pioneer in the sub-genre of body-horror, with Weaver being one of the first futuristic heroines. This movie and Weaver's character seemed to be woman positive since she is so strong and independent, however, it does also exploit Weaver by featuring an entire scene of her running around in her undies.