11:49AM, Feb 12, 2009
The remake of Sean S. Cunningham’s 1980 slasher hit Friday the 13th is a surprisingly late guest to the party.
Arriving ahead of it The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and a prequel), Halloween, Prom Night, Black Christmas, and My Bloody Valentine all having had profit margin friendly second stabs in recent years.
Marcus (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) Nispel is “re-imagining” rather than remaking Friday the 13th by having Jason as the hockey mask wearing, machete wielding murderer, rather than repeating the killer from the original movie.
Arriving ahead of it The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and a prequel), Halloween, Prom Night, Black Christmas, and My Bloody Valentine all having had profit margin friendly second stabs in recent years.
Marcus (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) Nispel is “re-imagining” rather than remaking Friday the 13th by having Jason as the hockey mask wearing, machete wielding murderer, rather than repeating the killer from the original movie.
But, nothing was original about slasher movies – a cycle that rode the wave of money generated by John Carpenter’s 1978 Halloween, rapidly establishing a template to produce a quick, cheap line of nastiness.
Although vilified by the mainstream (Paramount shareholders reportedly grumbled their stock was so high because of the Friday the 13th movies) the slasher movie’s antecedents lie with two widely acknowledged masterpieces - Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom and Hitchcock’s Psycho.
Peeping Tom’s POV camerawork, and the two films’ use of childhood trauma to create their killers feeds directly into the 80s slasher cycle.
Italian thrillers from the 60s and 70s, including Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood (virtually remade as Friday the 13th Part II) also influenced the slasher movie's style, but had a Mediterranean flamboyance absent from most rough n' ready American horror movies.
Bob Clark’s 1974 cult chiller Black Christmas used POV camerawork to disguise the killer’s identity, akin to the Italian directors, and the prowling camera clearly influenced John Carpenter's approach to Halloween.
Halloween made a killing in 1978, becoming the then most successful independently released movie of all time. It also kick-started the slasher cycle, ironically so because Carpenter’s film is an old-fashioned ghost train, boasting plenty of jolts but virtually no gore.
Yet, with its holiday setting, nubile twentysomething cast, indestructible killer, stylish gallery of murders, and slim plot, Halloween set the template other slashe
rs rigorously stuck to.
rs rigorously stuck to.But, it is Friday the 13th that best encapsulates 80s slasher movies: cheap and cheap looking, with attention focussed exclusively on the execution of increasingly graphic effects, at the expense of plot, character and suspense.
The biggest coup was producer/director Sean S. Cunningham persuading Paramount Studios to distribute his film. This turned a tiny horror destined for grindhouse theatres into a nationwide event released on over 1,200 prints and making almost $40m domestically, against a production cost of $500,000.
With this other studios smelt big money, and suddenly slasher movies were tolerated, if not respectable.
Some early examples remain interesting genre entries. Terror Train and Prom Night had atmosphere, character, and Halloween’s Jamie Lee Curtis to recommend them, while The Prowler (aka Rosemary Killer) boasted great, grim FX make-up work from Tom Savini (and was officially banned in the UK as a “video nasty”).
But, while studios loved these healthy returns received from minimum investment, the media furore spearheaded by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave them pause and resulted in many later slashers being defanged before audiences saw them.
The original My Bloody Valentine had nine minutes of footage removed before release, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 had virtually all its gore excised, although remains worth watching for an early appearance from Viggo Mortensen.
Speaking of which, it’s always worth keeping an eye out (figuratively) for early appearances from now established stars, including Kevin Bacon (Friday the 13th), Holly Hunter and Jason Alexander (The Burning), Tom Hanks (He Knows You’re Alone), and George Clooney (Return to Horror High) amongst others.
According to Friday the 13th historian Peter Bracke, 1983 was the killer year for slasher movies, with 60% of the US box office attributable to these movies.
But, a year later the slasher cycle unveiled its masterpiece, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Craven had worked with Sean S. Cunningham on sleazy endurance test The Last House on the Left, so it was fitting that he should join his old filmmaking partner in the slasher movie bloodbath, and trump all previous movies - including Halloween.
After an arduous battle to secure a large enough budget (everyone, including Cunningham, said dreams weren’t scary) Craven gave Horror cinema a villain it could really sink its teeth into.
After an arduous battle to secure a large enough budget (everyone, including Cunningham, said dreams weren’t scary) Craven gave Horror cinema a villain it could really sink its teeth into.
A Nightmare on Elm Street’s child killing monster Freddy Krueger sported a glove with razor blade fingers and a caustic wit and personality, something most other slasher killers were missing.
And although Freddy would become as tiresome as Friday the 13th’s Jason over many sequels (and 2003’s pairing Freddy Vs. Jason), the original Elm Street continues to impress with its believable, likeable kids, genuine sense of terror, and nightmare logic murders.
The slasher boom could only have happened in a decade dominated by excess and sexual anxiety. Reaganomics, AIDS and nuclear paranoia instilled a mood of nihilism and immediate gratification that slasher movies readily serviced, sacrificing plot and dialogue for poster-friendly high bodycounts.
With the 80s over, the slasher cycle finally seem to expire. Until the 90s defined itself as the post-modern decade and reinvented the sub-genre with 1996's Scream, its spot-on media savvy and tense horror creating a genre classic.
But, history repeated itself and although Scream 2 was fun, Scream 3 was DOA, and
who now remembers Urban Legends, Cherry Falls, Valentine, or the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequels?
And although the noughties’ horror remakes have turned profits, this decade's horror epitaph belongs to “torture porn”.
80s excess and 90s optimism have given way to an all encompassing anxiety about illegal wars, terrorism, and the environment, with images on the news worse than anything make-up maestro Tom Savini has dreamt up.
Small wonder then that movies such as Saw, Hostel, Wolf Creek and The Hills Have Eyes luridly focus on characters out of their element and the subsequent bodily destruction.
In the face of such terror, a good old-fashioned slasher movie might be a welcome relief. Or you could look East for some spooky, psychological shivers. But, that's a different (horror) story.
Rob Daniel
In the face of such terror, a good old-fashioned slasher movie might be a welcome relief. Or you could look East for some spooky, psychological shivers. But, that's a different (horror) story.
Rob Daniel
