Horror Lexicon 19: The Sting in the Tail/Tale

In his landmark book of genre film analysis, James Bond in the Cinema (1981), the great John Brosnan often wrote about "the sting in the tail," that moment near the end of a James Bond film, when the surviving villain gets the jump on 007, and there's one last thrill before end credits roll. Think of Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd spoiling a perfectly nice ocean cruise at the end of Diamonds Are Forever (1970), for instance, or Nick Nack doing same in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).

In the horror lexicon, the sting in the tail/tale is that devilish scorpion strike at the very end of the movie, the turn or twist of the tale towards the unexpected in the final, valedictory moment. In the horror genre, the sting in the tail/tale is designed to forge a final, spiky crescendo, one that audiences will remember as they file out of the auditorium. Sometimes the sting in the tail/tale causes a laugh; sometimes a shriek.

The sting in the tail/tale comes in many shapes and sizes. Often the final "sting" is a development you don't expect, something that ratchets up the terror, and changes the very nature of the narrative, even setting up the grounds for a sequel.  

The sting in the tail/tale at the end of AVP (2004) is the birth of the Pred-Alien, for example. The sting in the tail/tale at the end of Wes Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), is the shocking death of Nancy Thompson's Mom, as Nancy is helplessly driven away in The Freddy Mobile.  

In other cases, the sting in the tail/tale is a moment of high drama and terror ultimately revealed to be a dream sequence (through the auspices of the "Stay Awake" shot.)  

Films including Carrie (1976), Dressed to Kill (1980) and Prince of Darkness (1987) all resolve with stings in the tail/tale that get the blood pumping, but are revealed to be phantasms of the mind, not reality.  

A great play on this aspect of the convention occurs in Phantasm II.  Mike (James LeGros) insists to a terrified Liz (Paula Irvine) that the terror around them is all a dream. Then the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) appears and punctures that particular balloon.  "No...it's not!" He croaks.  Fade to Black...

Sometimes, a sting in the tail/tale reveals that a "beloved" character didn't really die (Fright Night [1985]), and sometimes, the sting resolves a lingering question in the narrative. The great, final sting of John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) is a direct answer to Father Malone's (Hal Holbrook) interrogative about why the vengeful Blake didn't seek revenge upon him.  

Off with his head!  

One of the great sting-in-the-tail/tale endings of film history is seen in another Carpenter film, Halloween (1978). To me, this is one of the most elegant and beautiful stings in film history.  After we see that Michael Myers is still alive, Carpenter cuts to a montage of empty rooms and dark houses...places where Michael Myers already has been during the course of the film. We don't see him, but the montage is accompanied by the sounds of his heavy breathing.   

This sort of "where's Michael" final sting is so much more effective and inventive than a last jump wherein Michael re-appears, and gets shot in the head. Instead, Carpenter sort of "universalizes" the terror of Michael.  He could be anywhere now, the montage suggests.

Even in the back seat of your car...

Another sting in the tail/tale ending I admire tremendously arises in Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1983).  Here, Ash defeats the Deadites and limps out of his cabin in the woods, only to be pursued -- one last time -- by a horrible, unseen force.  

The orchestration of this P.O.V. attack is remarkable, and audacious.We race (on the camera, apparently...) through the woods, through the very cabin interior, over a fallen door, right into Ash's screaming, protesting face.    

This ending is not only terrifying, it's a reminder of the film's bravura "pummeling-the-audience" aesthetic.

Most often in horror films, the sting-in-the-tail/tale ending is as simple as a killer you believed was dead, popping up for one, final scare before being put down (Scream [1996], The Resident [2011]). Hollow Man (2000) takes the trope to extremes. The invisible -- and psychotic -- Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) comes back from beatings, electrocutions, freezing and other environmental extremes for one final "surprise" (not really) scare in an elevator shaft, before his lover, Linda (Elisabeth Shue) dispatches him into a pit of flames.

The sting-in-the-tail/tale, in various forms, has appeared in films including (but not limited to...): Carrie (1976), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Dressed to Kill (1980), Humanoids from the Deep (1980), Friday the 13th Part II (1983), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Fright Night (1985), Critters (1986), Psycho 3 (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987), Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (1988), Hide and Go Shriek (1988), Phantasm 2 (1988), Leviathan (1989), Scream (1996), and AVP (2004). 

Horror Lexicon 19: Vice Precedes Slice-and-Dice

If you watch slasher films made in the 1980s (or the 1990s, for that matter) with any regularity, you understand one vitally important fact: vice precedes slice-and-dice.

In other words, the (usually) teenage dramatis personae of slasher horrors must indulge in some form of wild or inappropriate behavior before the Masked Killer offs them. In broad strokes, this means they must either smoke weed, booze it up, or engage in pre-marital sex.

It's ironic that two of the most powerful political forces in America teamed up during the 1980's to slam and denigrate slasher films as a form: feminists and religious conservatives.  Ironic because, in many significant respects, slasher films actually reflect well both set of ideological values (although admittedly in bloody, disgusting fashion).

In most slasher films, for instance, the sole survivor, not-to-mention destroyer of evil-doers is a woman, the so-called "Final Girl," and a character of strong insight and resourcefulness.  Name one other genre in which an independent, clever woman overcomes all the odds, and defeats the villain through her own skill and smarts.

On the second front, the teens punished by the Masked Killer (the supernatural hand of nature, or God, as it were...) in slasher films are those who -- in defiance of traditional moral values but in accordance with a more permissive society -- knowingly indulge in bad behavior. These movies represent a carefully coded, but conservative response to the "do what feels right" 1960's.

Sure, have premarital sex and smoke weed all you want...but there will be repercussions.

Regardless, slasher films depict a draconian universe with very simple rules.  

The are:

You play, you pay.  

You smoke, snort or fuck, and, well, you're out of luck.  

Jason, Michael and the like always kill first those teens who have stepped outside the confines of decency as established by the culture. These "monsters" serve as morality's avenging angels, and Jason's presence, at least, universally coincides with a storm (a sign that Mother Nature or God Himself is angry with the teens for their immoral acts).  Similarly, in Phantasm (1979), the Tall Man lures men to their deaths by becoming a sexually-inviting "Lady in Lavender."  Once the men have been distracted by their desire for sex, she/he easily kills them.

Is it just luck or happenstance that the wicked die and the virtuous survive?  No.  Not at all.  If you're smoking weed or having sex, you're somewhat less likely to notice/pay attention when the power goes out, when the front door is left unlocked, or when a killer wearing a hockey mask is hiding under your bed, I suppose. If you're paying attention to your vices and you're appetites, you're far less likely to be keeping an eye on your long term survival.

Some later films, including I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) take the Vice-Precedes-Slice-and-Dice leitmotif to a new plateau. The vice depicted in that film was selfishness.  The lead teen characters lied about killing a man in a car accident, and failed to take responsibility for their actions.  Accordingly, a bogeyman was created to punish them for their rampant immorality.

Films that have featured the Vice Precedes Slice-and-Dice paradigm include (but are not limited to):  Halloween (1978), Phantasm (1979), Friday the 13th (1980), Dressed to Kill (1980), He Knows You're Alone (1981), Prom Night (1980), Terror Train (1980), Happy Birthday to Me (1981), Graduation Day (1981), Friday the 13th Part II (1981), Hell Night (1982), Humongous (1982), The Final Terror (1983), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Black Room (1984), Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter (1984), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Friday the 13^th (2009).

Finally, any discussion of this particular horror movie trope must include a notable example of its inversion. The satirical slasher film Cherry Falls (2000), involves a murderer who is killing the town's virgins. Accordingly, all the young people of the town organize a giant party wherein they can relieve themselves of their virginity, thus removing themselves from the potential victim pool. In this case, vice prevents slice-and-dice!

Horror Lexicon #18: A Child's Bedroom

Beginning perhaps in the late 1970's, many horror filmmakers began charting a new domain important to the horror film: the suburban child's bedroom.  

In films and TV-movies such as Salem's Lot (1979), The Funhouse (1981), Creepshow (1982), Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), The Stuff (1985), Invaders from Mars (1986), Neon Maniacs (1987), The Lost Boys (1987) and The Monster Squad (1987), movie brat nostalgia, product placement, and production-design combined to create a perfect storm in terms of this familiar setting.

Suddenly, a teenage or pre-adolescent child's bedroom carried a whole new resonance. This domain now reflected the director's (and audience's?) love of movie monster/horror movie history, as we can see prominently in the works of Tobe Hooper, Joe Dante or George Romero.  Because these directors love monsters and horror movies so much, they champion them in their films, showcasing how the genre possesses moral (and survival) value.

In Hooper's Salem's Lot, a love of magic and monsters is important, because that's the "training" by which you detect the real vampire in your midst.  When  Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin) is visited in his bedroom by friends transformed into menacing vampires, he knows what they are and that he is in danger.  The reason why he survives, explicitly, is his love of horror, and that love is reflected in the production design of his bedroom.

Similarly, in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) utilizes his love of monsters and even his talent making monster masks to put (a temporary) end to the monster Jason.  In this situation, once more, the love of horror is the factor that saves and protects lives.

In Romero's Creepshow, a little boy reads a comic-book (that his father does not approve of), in his bedroom, and he ultimately gets revenge on his Dad for being so cruel.

There's a point to all this. For the movie brat generation, parents did not always understand or approve of a love of the horror genre.  In fact, kids who liked horror were teased and mocked not just by parents, but by classmates too.   So this isn't merely homage to E.C. Comics or Aurora Models. It goes deeper than that.  By featuring these bedrooms in these films -- bedrooms filled with monster posters or models -- the directors are making a point that horror is in fact normal, and possesses value. The unjust or villainous are punished here, and those who "know" horror also realize how to survive because of their "training" in the genre.

The production-design dictating the shape of a child's bedroom is important for another reason too:   The media's understanding and application of advertising techniques.

Specifically, toys from popular movies or television series (such as Star Wars) began appearing in prominent genre films in the 1980's; ones that, like Star Wars, guaranteed big, devoted audiences.  Return of the Jedi (1983) bed covers appeared in The Stuff, and Star Wars figures and spaceships appeared in Poltergeist (along with Milton Bradley's Big Trak).  

Accordingly, fans of horror films and non-horror films such as E.T. became, like me, life-long collectors of toys, models, trading cards and other movie/tv-related goodies. I must wonder if, in part, this is specifically so because of these films, and the product-placement that appeared in them so frequently.

When I first watched Poltergeist or Gremlins, I knew what I wanted my bedroom (and now my home office...) to look like.  This idea was recently resurrected in J.J. Abrams' Super 8 (2011), which also charted a late 1970's/early 1980's bedroom, replete with models, toys, posters and board games.  These pop culture items are not just period details, they generate nostalgia.  I played with those trading cards!  I had that model kit, and so forth...

More satirically, the notion of product placement run amok was commented upon in Tom Holland's extraordinary horror film Child's Play (1988), which saw a little boy menaced by the very Good Guys toys he loved. Here, your favorite franchise -- down to the sugary Good Guys cereal, I suppose -- could kill ya!

In terms of narrative or thematic utility, the bedroom of a child is a pretty important location in a horror film.  When we go to sleep, we are all vulnerable.  Poltergeist, Child's Play and Gremlins all play on this conceit, whether with clown dolls, evil Good Guy dolls, or monster eggs.

When we sleep, we can't defend ourselves, and so "This Boy's Bedroom" is the very place where children feel most ill at ease.  They are alone.  Their parents are away.  The room is dark.  When the bedroom is invaded, terror  blossoms.   The bedroom is the gateway to dreams -- and nightmares -- so it makes perfect sense that many horror films feature scenes set in this domain.  The bedroom is the last conscious sanctuary we have before monsters can enter our (unconscious) minds and threaten us.  Hoopers' Invaders from Mars (1986) makes a lot of this fact, and the film's horror plays out, specifically, in the (mental) span between bedtime and morning.

Sometimes, the child's bedroom and the fears found there are all about the stories or fairy tales we tell children. In films such as Darkness Falls (2004) and Boogeyman (2005), mythical monsters such as the Tooth Fairy of The Boogeyman manifest in the place that children sleep.

The Child's Bedroom is the place where we face the monster, the place where we surround ourselves with the tools for defeating the monster, the realm that showcases nostalgia for youth and the "monsters" we grew up with, and even, finally, a venue for selling us very expensive toys.  It's hard to make a horror movie featuring kids without at least scene set in this important, and multi-faceted setting.

Horror Lexicon #17: Useless (Police) Authority

In real life, I have great respect for the police force, and for the men and women who patrol our streets, and protect and serve our communities. But the same cannot always be stated for horror movie policemen, who tend to represent what I term "useless authority."  

One of the core approaches of the horror genre involves making people feel alone and therefore vulnerable.  In the horror lexicon, the police force represents society, and society's attempt to enforce the law to keep people safe.  Therefore, in horror movies, the police are often dangerously ineffectual so that greater terror can be generated, and feelings of vulnerability can be enhanced.

Going back as far as The Blob in 1958, the police always seemed slow on the uptake. There, a gelatinous invader from another planet oozed its way through the population of a small American town, and the local police could only pin the blame on teenager Steve McQueen and his buddies.

One cop, in particular, held a grudge against teenagers because his wife had been killed by a teen driver, and so concocted all kinds of reasons why McQueen must by lying, or culpable. The result was that by the time the town police marshaled a response to the Blob, many folks had already unnecessarily died.  In the end, it was up to McQueen's character, also named Steve, to save the day with some quick thinking regarding fire extinguishers.  In fact, he had to create a civil disturbance (by getting his teenage friends to honk their car horns...) to even get the police force's attention.

Over the years and decades, the face of useless (police) authority didn't much change. In Gremlins (1984), for instance, the police were also slow to respond to Billy Peltzer's (Zach Galligans) warnings about the dangerous Mogwai. Finally, even when faced with the monsters themselves, the police were unable to mount a meaningful defense against the critters. 

Policemen in horror films also regularly fail to recognize the dangers posed by vampires (Fright Night), serial killers (Halloween, Friday the 13th Part VI) and other monsters. The idea underlining each of these examples is that the bad guy cannot be neutralized by the law. That's the Final Girl's job, right?

Sometimes horror movies play wickedly with the tropes of the police and useless authority. In Wrong Turn (2003), for instance, a trooper shows up just in time for the climax, and audience hopes are raised that he will save the day. But the in-bred hill-billies quickly kill him in cold blood, dashing those hopes.  So much for law enforcement...

In other films, such as Cabin Fever (2002) and the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), the police not only fail to prove helpful, but are actually complicit in the evil that seems to be running amok in their districts. Once more, the notion is that you must trust yourself, not the safeguards of society, if you hope to survive a horror film.

Many horror films of the police procedural variety have featured heroic policemen, it is true, including Se7en (1995), The Bone Collector (1999), and Resurrection (1999).Semi-heroic policemen (Dewey in the Scream films) also appear regularly, but in the slasher films in particular, you must reasonably expect that help is most decidedly not on the way.

My favorite hapless, useless policemen in the slasher milieu has to be Deputy Charlie (Troy Evans) in Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers. Charlie has been tasked with protecting young Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) in the Myers House. Sheriff Meeker and Dr. Loomis are using the child as bait, hoping that Michael will return to the original scene of the crime to go after his niece.  In a nice, well-shot scene, Deputy Charlie speaks encouragingly and lovingly to Jamie, telling her to stay strong.  He's there to protect her.  What could go wrong?  What a nice guy...

But when Michael Myers shows up at the door, Charlie proves utterly hapless with a gun. With Michael bursting in, Charlie gets Jamie to safety (which is something, anyway...) but can't get a clean hit on the guy. We actually see all the bullets go astray against the door-frame.  The explicit message: Charlie can't even shoot straight. Jeez, we already know how hard it is to kill Michael when you actually hit him, but this guy is way out of his league.  Dirty Harry he ain't.

Accordingly, Michael offs poor deputy Charlie in short order...and the last we see of him he's swinging from the second floor of the Myers house on a rope.

If Charlie is my favorite example of useless authority, the most infuriating ones must come from Last House on the Left (1972). In that violent but socially valuable Wes Craven classic, two policemen played by Martin Kove and Marshall Anker actually run out of gas on the way to the Collingwood house, where lives are in jeopardy.  After walking on a country road for a longtime, they must hitch a ride on a  slow-moving chicken truck...

By the time the police finally do arrive, some lives have been ended (brutally) and other lives have been permanently shattered. The police in this film absolutely boil my blood because of their incompetence, and  indeed that's part of director Craven's point  He builds-up an escalating sense of blood-lust in the film and then defuses it all at the end with the worthwhile realization that violence solves nothing.  The road leads to nowhere.  The castle stays the same...

But gee whiz, the accumulated message of all this useless authority is this: If you're living in a horror movie, you better not wait for the cavalry to ride in. Instead of relying on law enforcement, save yourself!

Horror Lexicon 16: The TV Set, or Welcome to Prime Time!

Modern horror films boast a unique and not all together comfortable relationship with television.

For a generation of movie brat directors like Spielberg, Dante, Carpenter, or Hooper, the television represents, on a basic level, the avenue through which clips of favorite old movies make it into a new generation's works of art. 

In films such as Halloween (1978), Halloween 2 (1981), Gremlins (1984), and Gremlins 2 (1990), for instance, "old" or "classic films" appear in the body of the new work, thus serving as an important reference point to the action. The appearance of these beloved Hollywood gems could be a simple way of paying tribute to the "greats." 

Or, on a more meaningful level, the productions that appear on the television sets in these horror films could boast a more complicated, inter-textual relationship with the new work.

For example,  in Halloween, little Lindsay watches a horror film marathon that consists of such classic gems as Howard Hawks' The Thing (1951) and Forbidden Planet (1956).  

Both of these classic films, in some significant manner, relate directly back to the theme of Halloween. In the case of The Thing, a scientist tries in vain to understand the malevolent alien creature, only to realize (with fatal results...) that it is an implacable, nearly unstoppable monster. Similarly, in Halloween, Michael Myers cannot be diagnosed by science, but instead must be dealt with as a force of super-nature.  He's the Shape, or the Bogeyman. Like the alien, he's a "thing." 

Forbidden Planet, of course, concerns "Monsters from the Id" (the human subconscious), and there's a line of critical thought that Michael, in Halloween, represents a manifestation of Laurie's Id. When she wishes for a man to have all to herself (as she sings), Michael appears in the foreground of the frame almost simultaneously.  Soon he is killing everyone that Laurie knows, setting up a relationship of bizarre exclusivity between them, just as the song portends: "just the two of us."  

In both instances, the nature of the film featured on the TV in the horror marathon relates to what seems to be occurring on-screen.  This idea is even extended (as a wicked joke) in the 1981 theatrical sequel. After impossibly surviving six point-blank bullet shots, Michael continues to walk...and kill. On the hospital television screens: George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). The message is that Michael is literally the living dead at this point.

In both Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2 (1990), director Joe Dante uses films playing on TV such as Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) not as reflections of the movie's themes, but as in-text influences on Gizmo's growth as a warrior against the other Gremlins. Gizmo watches TV (to his owner's chagrin), and begins to imitate the heroic behavior he sees championed by the likes of Clark Gable or Sylvester Stallone. In this case, movie history affects the shape of the narrative, creating "teachable moments."

Importantly, Dante also highlights moments from the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) in Gremlins to telegraph the important action of his story. Very soon, Kingston Falls (like the film's Santa Mira) becomes the fulcrum of an invasion by monstrous creatures.

The specific footage seen in Gremlins is from Body Snatchers' climax, during which Dr. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) warns passersby on a highway (in vain) that the aliens are already here; that the threat has commenced. Coming where it does in the story of Gremlins, his warning is just as important to unaware Kingston Falls. The Gremlins have arrived (and the rules governing their behavior have been broken.)

Many of the same horror movie directors have utilized the television as a portal of evil, one that sits right near the family hearth, in the American living room.  

This was the underlying premise of Hooper's Poltergeist, which saw "The TV People" (really ghosts) invade our reality. In one very funny moment, Mom Freeling (JoBeth Williams) implores her daughter Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke) not to look at the static on the television set. She flips the channel to a station playing a violent war movie instead.

This disturbing cinematic imagery, ostensibly, won't damage Carol Anne's "sight" as much as the static.

Poltergest's brilliant last shot sees the imperiled Freeling family kick a "dormant" TV set out of their hotel room, and then a long, slow camera retraction away from the offending appliance. The implication being that the family would be safe only so long as it eschewed...tv watching.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) involves television on an even more fundamental, critical level. Here, a malevolent inventor, Cochrane (Dan O'Herlihy), plans to send a signal across America's television sets that, when transmitted, will kill a wide swath of innocent children as a Halloween "prank."

Once more, TV is an avenue for absolute horror and destruction, a social critique, perhaps of the very form.  Does TV destroy children's minds, literally?

In 1988, director John Carpenter went even further in They Live.  He began to see widespread "brain death" in America and he attributed it, in part, to the pervasive nature of television in our society.  

Here, aliens beamed a hypnotic signal through the nation's TV sets, one that would lull people into a trance so they would not notice when Yuppie aliens began lapping up all the resources, all the wealth, and resources. TV was viewed, literally, in They Live as the opiate of the masses. And the "sound bytes" of politicians -- hopelessly vapid platitudes -- were part of the "lulling" effect.

In some fashion, Wes Craven's Shocker (1989) built upon Poltergeist's example, and introduced a serial killer, Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi) who could enter and exit from the "TV world" into different victims' homes.  

The film's final, stunning, tour-de-force chase through cable television programming gave new meaning to the term "channel surfing."  An example of Craven's brilliant eye for "rubber reality," Shocker was perhaps the ultimate in the horror film's commentary on the dangers of television.

In the 1990's, references back and forth between filmmakers became sort of "in jokes" in many horror films. Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven featured a clip of Halloween in Scream (1996), and in 1998, the Halloween franchise returned the favor by including a clip from Scream 2 (1997).Talk about cross-pollination. But TV made it possible.

In the American remake of Ringu, called The Ring (2002), the film's monster, Samara, emerged from the television -- again a portal for evil and destruction.  

Here, the filmmakers comment on the idea in the War on Terror Age that the suffering of millions can be transmitted to the innocent, and even the innocent are impacted negatively through the mere act of watching.

Probably my favorite television-oriented moment in modern horror, however, comes in the sequel A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors (1987). There, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) actually emerges from the television set and kills a fame-seeking girl, Jennifer (Penelope Sudrow) by jamming her head into the set.  

"Welcome to prime time, bitch," he says, and in some way, both his diabolical bon mot and particular mode of violence seems to presage the coming of reality television, in which TV introduces and then quickly disposes of the likes of Richard Hatch, Omarosa, or Justin Guarini.  They all had their "big break" on the boob tube, and then got spit out.

Horror movies and television have intersected in a number of other films beyond those explored above, including Cronenberg's  incredible Videodrome (1983) -- about the total biological blending of man and home video entertainment, Cohen's satirical The Stuff (1985), Demons 2 (1986), Child's Play (1988),  The Seventh Sign (1989) and Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) also saw the television set playing a crucial role in the horror genre.

Horror Lexicon 15: Cell Phone Reception

Horror movies have always adapted with changing times.  

That's how they stay scary to contemporary audiences, by adjusting to modern fears over the decades. 

But horror movies must also adapt to changing technology.  In the 1970's and 1980's, horror films had no need to worry about the ready availability of cell phones, or i-Phones. 

All that changed, however, with the turn of the century.

In the late nineties, and 2000's, crafty horror movie-makers had to contend with the new reality that basically, we always have phones on our person, no matter where we go, or what time of day or night it is.  

In the past, horror movie villains simply needed to cut power to a house, or cut the land-line to render a would-be-victim vulnerable and isolated. But by the year 2000, that trick simply wouldn't cut the mustard anymore  Some filmmakers dodged the problem by setting their films in previous decades, which dovetailed nicely with the remake movement of the 2000's.

Other filmmakers were forced to come up with new reason why imperiled people simply couldn't simply dial 911 on their cell phones when threatened. In efforts such as Jeepers Creepers (2001), and The Strangers (2008), unwitting would-be-victims had simply not charged their cell-phones, meaning they were good for nothing.

In other films of this new age, there was simply no coverage meaning that the phone, though powered, could not connect to the intended destination. Films such as The Ruins (2008), and Wrong Turn (2007) depended on this trope.  

At other times in modern horror films, a world-altering disaster interferes with cellphone reception. Skynet blocks cell-phoe connection in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), and the Martians and monsters ostensibly do likewise in War of the Worlds (2005) and Cloverfield (2008), respectively.

Sometimes, in a horror movie, a cell-phone works just fine, but is out of reach (Saw [2004]). And on some occasions, the cell phone is, itself, the portal of terror (Scream 3 [2000], Pulse [2006], One Missed Call [2008]).

Failing cell phones are seen in so many horror films of new century, including in What Lies Beneath (2000), Cabin Fever (2002), Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003), The Hitcher (2007), REC (2008), Day of the Dead (2008), and Friday the 13^th (2009) to name just a few titles.

Horror Lexicon 14: Mob Justice!

One of the most common -- and long-standing -- tropes of the horror film is mob justice. This genre convention might be described as the idea that local people, when faced with fear and anxiety, may seek to take the law into their own hands to remove any monster, being, or personality they determine is a threat to their safety and survival. 

The problem is that a mob is susceptible to group-think, the concept that, in a group or mob, many people suppress their individual sense of morality, or responsibility for decisions. So the mob in these horror movies often acts, and acts violently...and without any sense of wisdom or proportion.

Going way back to 1931's Frankenstein, a key visualization of "mob justice" is forged: the villagers with lit torches, marching against an individual they deem guilty of a crime. As late as 1995, and John Carpenter's Village of the Damned, the horror movie has provided viewers with related imagery of frightened people, confronting "the other" with torches.  Humans murder, and burn, that which they fear, this image reveals.

By 1968, mob justice had become "posse" justice. In an outbreak of the zombie plague in rural Pennsylvania, roving bands of citizens, joined with local law authorities, went out with shotguns and rifles to shoot those they deemed monsters. In at least one incident, they targeted people instead of zombies, murdering Ben, the last human survivor in a farmhouse.  Ben had survived a night of horror, interpersonal conflict, and danger, only to be killed on the dawn of a new day.

Animal attack movies are also notorious for featuring instances of misguided "mob justice."  Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) features a scene with (drunken) Amity locals rushing their boats and going out on the water to go hunt the great white shark.  These locals bring back an innocent victim -- a murdered tiger shark -- and display it in town as a trophy.  

Grizzly (1976) from William Girdler, offered a similar scene, though set in a national park. A group of hunters -- ignoring the prominent "No Hunting" sign -- descend on the woods to find and murder the bear attacking campers. One of the hunters experiences a close call with the bear, and no doubt thinks twice about his actions.

The trope of mob justice has even found its way into slasher and rubber reality films, as well. In Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), a group of Haddonfield rednecks and drunks learn in a bar (while drinking and watching TV) that Michael Myers has returned to their town on Halloween nigh, twenty years after his last attack.. Instead of letting the police handle such a difficult situation, these drunkards and loud-mouths go out into the night and start hunting their quarry. They end up killing an innocent man, Ted Hollister, instead of the Shape.

In a very real way, the origin of Freddy Krueger is about mob justice, even if the mob-justice doesn't occur on-screen in Wes Craven's original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).  When child-murderer Freddy escapes justice on a technicality, a mob of parents get together, trap him in his boiler room, and burn him alive.  It is that act of mob justice, ironically, that allows Freddy to seek his revenge from beyond the grave.

Looking at these examples, one sees a mob kill our hero (Night of the Living Dead), murder an innocent man (Halloween IV), spawn a deeper evil (A Nightmare on Elm Street), harm nature (Jaws), and also hurt a being, or "monster" the audience sympathizes with (Frankenstein).  

Therefore, the lesson of this trope in the horror lexicon is simply this: beware the mob.  The mob is more dangerous than any so-called monster, out there, hiding in the woods. 

And mob "justice?"  There's no such thing.

Horror Lexicon #13: The Video Camera

One of my favorite lines in all of horror cinema comes from The Blair Witch Project (1999).  Josh (Joshua Leonard) gazes through a video camera view-finder at Heather (Heather Donohue) and trenchantly notes that the picture isn’t “quite reality.” 

He’s right, of course.  And that’s part of the reasons we love movies so much.  For ninety minutes or two hours, the camera becomes our eyes, and what we see through that camera isn’t quite reality.  It’s heightened reality.  It’s manipulated reality.  It’s shaped and edited reality.

Given how crucially important film grammar is in constructing an effective horror film, in crafting a sense of escalating unease and terror, it’s only natural, perhaps, that the camera itself has become an important player and topic of debate within the texts of many popular horror films. 

Thanks in part to technological improvements, the portable home video camera became affordable and lightweight in the mid-1980's.  Accordingly, a revolution in home movies began, and very shortly, this trend “trickled down” into horror movie narratives.  Videographers or amateur movie makers started out by appearing in the “victim pool” of mid-1980's horror films (April Fool’s Day [1986], Friday the 13^th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan [1989]), but more than that the camera soon became a player itself in the longstanding social argument about the value of horror as a genre.

Consider Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1989), and the notorious scene in which Otis (Tom Towles) and Henry (Michael Rooker) go out “hunting” and kill a randomly-selected suburban family.  They record the horrific murder and rape spree on their camcorder and later -- while drinking a few beers -- kick back and watch their blood-thirsty escapades.  Otis even rewinds the tape, thoroughly entertained:  “I want to see it again.” 

The issue here is quite simply this: do we, as human beings, actually revel in the suffering of other people?  Does the video camera actually transform another person’s suffering into our entertainment?  This isn’t just a horror movie question, either.  This is a real life question.  Consider how often the grotesque footage of Saddam Hussein’s dead, bloody sons was replayed on cable television.  Or think how often the terror of the 9/11 attacks on the WTC were rerun in the days following the horrific event.  Do we, by watching recorded events, become complicit in a news event?  That’s certainly the territory of such films as Ringu (1998) and The Ring (2002).

A similar was developed in Flatliners (1990). There, a yuppie doctor-in-training, Joe Hurley (William Baldwin) secretly filmed all of his sexual conquests, and then watched and relived them later.  He had taken a liberty with his “lovers” and would have to pay for that moral trespass. His actions had consequences.  The video camera could be used to commit a crime, an invasion of personal space and privacy.

In the aforementioned Blair Witch Project (1999), the video-camera, as Josh notes, functions as a shield, distancing the viewer from unpleasant reality.  Josh notes that the camera offers a “filtered reality” in which one can “pretend everything isn’t quite the way it is.”  

In other words, the act of perceiving reality through a camera lens distances oneself from the objects and situations perceived.  In a non-horror setting, this was actually the subtext for the final episode of the popular sitcom Seinfeld in 1998.  Jerry and his friends watched a crime being conducted (a car-jacking) through a video camera, but did not intervene to actually stop the crime as it was occurring.  The apparently-passive act of gazing through the camera enabled George, Elaine, Kramer and Jerry to see themselves as being somehow apart from reality, and apart from community, even from the law itself.  There was no need to help the victim of a crime.  They were merely…watching, as they would a TV show.

With the heyday of found footage films upon us (including [REC], Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, Apollo 18 and the like) we as viewers are asked again and again to reckon with the role of the camera in our lives, and in horrific scenarios. 

But where The Blair Witch Project asks us to assemble a sense of order out of grainy pixelized images that didn’t make sense in a conventional fashion and didn’t reveal anything about the looming threat (the Blair Witch), these later examples of the form strive more for certainty than uncertainty.  The Demon in Paranormal Activity (2009), for example, presents for a full-frame close-up at the end of the film, just so the audience gets its money’s worth out of a “creature feature.”  This (dumb...) ending belies the fact that more people own cameras now than at any time in human history, and nobody has ever, anywhere, recorded footage of a demon.    Films like Paranormal Activity don’t use the camera to reveal how our eyes can lie, only to assure that audience expectations are met.

The camera can also be a social good in the horror film.  It can be a tool of investigation and observation (The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Poltergeist), but more often the point of many horror films is that you can’t really hide from terror behind the eye-piece.  The camera may be a filter, but, in the final analysis, it’s a filter that doesn’t protect you.  Beyond the camera lens, life is happening in all its unpredictable, horrific, and sometimes wondrous forms.

The greatest terror associated with the video camera is that it could be all that survives a terrible event, a witness to death, and to your very end.  Years later, your footage might be found...

The video camera and videographer appear in (but are not limited to) such films as: Dead of Winter (1985), April Fool’s Day (1986), Slaughter High (1986), Cellar Dweller (1988), Friday the 13^th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), A Nightmare on Elm Street IV: The Dream Master (1989), Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1989), Flatliners (1990), Mr. Frost (1990), Puppet Master 2 (1991), Basket Case 3: Progeny (1992), Prom Night IV: Deliver us From Evil (1992), Man’s Best Friend (1993) Brainscan (1994), Scream (1996), Anaconda (1997), Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Scream 2 (1997), Ringu (1998), The Blair Witch Project (1999), The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999), The Descent (2006),  [REC] (2007) Diary of the Dead (2007), Cloverfield (2008), Paranormal Activity 3 (2011), Apollo 18 (2011).

Horror Lexicon 12: The Bio-Hazard Suit

Once upon a time, the wardrobe of the horror genre consisted of diaphanous white gowns and black vampire capes.  

But by the 1970's, traditional Gothic wear was out-of-fashion, and high-tech horror chic was in.  

In films such as Robert Wise’s The Andromeda Strain (1971), environmental, hazmat or “bio-containment suits” were often the only thing that could protect heroic scientists from a new and insidious form of monster: the virus or “germ.”

And yet, during the same era, in harrowing films such as George A. Romero’s The Crazies (1973), the hazmat suit also became a short-hand for terror itself.  There, American soldiers occupied Evans City, PA, in bio-hazard suits, and declared martial law during the military’s attempt to contain a biological weapon code-named “Trixie.” 

These American soldiers carried flame throwers and guns, and saw the innocent families and denizens of the town as something akin to expendable cattle.  Therefore, the protective suits – on one hand a protection from danger – also became a barrier to communication, an impediment to human and humane behavior on the part of those who wore them.  Behind those suit masks, we couldn’t see how the soldiers felt, or if they were agonizing over their difficult choices.  We could only see how (horribly) they acted in the face of fear.

In short, that’s the yin-and-yang of the hazmat suit in horror films.  This wardrobe can work as a defense if a hero wears it, but represents a form of alienation or fear if worn by callous-seeming others or villains.  

Some films, such as Outbreak (1995) play with the conventions of the hazmat suit by featuring scenes wherein the protective suits rip and tear, and our heroes are exposed to a bug and therefore mortally endangered.  At another moment in the film, a scientist (Dustin Hoffman) is so convinced that he has discovered the cure for hemorrhagic fever that he (foolishly, in my opinion...) removes his helmet in the presence of the infected.  Fortunately for him, his gamble pays off.

The late 1980's and early 1990's represents the era of what I term "the Horror Genome Project," wherein many genre films featured “science gone amok” story lines.  These new age Frankenstein tales concerned irresponsible scientists who experimented with life – with the very building blocks of life – and created only…terror.  The remake of The Blob (1988) concerned this idea, as did such efforts as Mimic (1998).  In these settings, the hazmat suit was the scientist’s garb of choice.  We know that “clothes make the man” (or woman), so therefore the hazmat suit became a  de rigueur fashion touch in stories of scientists confronting their own creations, as well as seemingly alien or unknown terrors; Phantoms (1998) for instance.

In Steven Spielberg’s science fiction films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. (1982), the hazmat suits are utilized by the master director as fearsome indicators of powers that audiences can’t understand.  The suits and helmets themselves obstruct transparency, hiding either conspiratorial government deceit, or “grown-ups” who obscure their “heart-lights” beneath layers of inhuman, inexpressive protection. 

The bio-hazard suit is featured in (but not limited) to appearances in films such as:

The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Crazies (1973), Close Encounters (1977), E.T. (1982), The Blob (1988), Alien ³ (1992), Carnosaur (1993), Return of the Living Dead III (1993), The Puppet Masters (1994), Mimic (1998), Phantoms (1998), Sphere (1998), The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998), [REC] (2007), Carriers (2009), and The Crazies (2010).

Horror Lexicon #11: The Coup de grâce

The Coup de grâce is defined in general terms as the "death blow."  

In horror movies, the Coup de grâce is that terrifying and disgusting moment that often caps off the whole movie.  Call it a high note to go out on, a crescendo of violence.

The Coup de grâce most frequently involves an egregiously bloody or over-the-top moment that makes the audience shriek in disbelief and revulsion.  It could be a sting-in-the-tail/tale, or it could be the moment that precipitates the climactic chase of the final girl.  Or it could be the (colorful and violent) death of the antagonist (Friday the 13th [1980]).

We just knew something terrible was going to happen...but we never anticipated the human head in the fish tank (He Knows Your Alone [1981])!  

And we certainly never expected the villain to actually explode and soil the carpet (and the walls, and the ceiling, and the bed sheets, and etc....) in Brian De Palma's The Fury (1978).

The point of the Coup de grâce is to escalate terror to the next level, and makes audiences aware, at least subtly, that all bets are off. Anything could happen.  To anyone.  

The Coup de grâce often takes the form of a decapitation, perhaps because losing one's head is so terrifying a prospect. Consider that the head can survive for a moment after decapitation, long enough recognize what is occurring to it (and the body...).

That's just...incredibly disturbing.  

The Coup de grâce moment, then, is the instance of highest revulsion, nausea and fear, and it often provokes gasps and even laughter because of its outrageous, dramatic nature.

No slasher movie is truly complete without a really great Coup de grâce.

Horror Lexicon 10: The Crime in the Past

The past is never dead, William Faulkner writes. And the author is certainly correct when in it comes to horror movies and their lexicon.  

In many modern cinematic horrors, particularly those of the slasher milieu, a terrible event in the past is the very thing that so dramatically shapes the present, and the future. Accordingly this “crime in the past,” is often dramatized in a scene I term “the deadly preamble,” an ultra-violent, motivating incident for a terrifying crime spree in the film’s body proper.

As I wrote in Horror Films of the 1980's (2007), horror movies utilize the crime in the past (or “the transgression”) and the deadly preamble for two reasons, primarily.  

The first concerns narrative: the trope provides a specific character motivation for the murders featured in the film, a wrong that must be righted.

Secondly, the deadly preamble starts the film off with a literal bang, with a colorful, violent, and scary murder scene that primes the audience for an hour-and-a-half of terror and violence.

In many significant ways, the 1980's represent the golden age for the “crime in the past”/”Deadly Preamble” productions.  

Two camp counselors are murdered by an unseen assailant in 1958 at “Camp Blood” in Friday the 13^th (1980).  

A jilted soldier arrives home from World War II to find his girlfriend dancing with another boy.  He rectifies that insult with a pitchfork, in The Prowler (1981). 

In Prom Night (1980), we see a practical joke at an abandoned school go horribly, murderous wrong for a group of school children.  

And in Pieces (1983), we go back to 1942 to witness a disturbed young boy wield an axe against his mother when she refuses to let him finish assembling a (sexually-explicit) jigsaw puzzle.   

Terror Train (1980) begins with another sexual humiliation.

One of the most notorious, artful and (best…) examples of the Deadly Preamble occurs in John Carpenter’s incredibly influential Halloween (1978).  We see young Michael’s brutal murder of his sexually-active sister, Judith, on Halloween night, 1963, the event that precipitates Myers’ bloody return some fifteen years later, in 1978, during the body of the film. The nature of this crime is so brutal and unexpected, that as punctuation, Carpenter’s camera retracts, up, up and away, in horror as it ends.

In some interesting cases, the crime in the past isn’t dramatized in a violent pre-title sequence or deadly preamble. Sometimes it is revealed through exposition (like the creepy campfire story that opens The Fog [1980] for instance.)  In other cases, such as Poltergeist (1982), the crime in the past is not revealed until nearly the end of the movie, as an explanation for all the haunting in Questa Verde. 

More recently, a crime in the past -- or several crimes in the past, to be precise -- dominates the legend of the Blair Witch in The Blair Witch Project (1999).

Sometimes the crime in the past is one that affects the film’s protagonist and the villain simultaneously (Cape Fear [1991]) and sometimes the crime in the past is actually the “tragedy” in the past, as we see in Interloper films such as Single White Female (1992), The Temp (1993) or Mother’s Boys (1994).

But the crime in the past is especially useful in those slasher films that feature masked killers, or killers of otherwise unknown identity.  The crime in the past often involves an innocent child and a trauma, and when the murders start – years later — that child is an adult, and therefore unrecognizable to audiences. 

We must ask ourselves: what was the impact of the transgression on that child?  Who is responsible, or who is to be held responsible?  And why are the specific victims being asked to pay, in most cases, with their lives?

In this century, the Saw films have played rather dramatically with the “crime in the past” trope.  Jigsaw, the killer, sees himself as a decider of justice, making immoral people pay for their past indiscretions and trespasses. Jigsaw himself suffered an injustice at one point, but on a whole, he punishes people for their flawed characters, and not only what they did to him, or to his life, specifically. 

The crime in the past is featured in films including (but not limited to): Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Friday the 13^th (1980), He Knows You’re Alone (1980), Prom Night (1980), Terror Train (1980), My Bloody Valentine (1981), The Prowler (1981), The Burning (1982), Funeral Home (1982), Humongous (1982), Madman (1982), Cape Fear (1991), Single White Female (1992), The Temp (1992), Dario Argento’s Trauma (1994), The Blair Witch Project (1999), and virtually all the Saw films.