I wrote about this genre convention extensively in my reference book Horror Films of the 1980s (2007; McFarland) but if you seek to create a horror film in the slasher milieu, your first step must be to determine an organizing principle.
The organizing principle is a facet beyond mere setting or location. It provides a horror film with a series of connected leitmotifs, and therefore a sense of unity. In other words, the organizing principle is a film's central idea, transmitted or expressed across creative factors such as setting, motive, and even characterization.
I utilized this example in the book, but it illuminates what I mean when I discuss the organizing principle. Imagine that a producer seeks to create a knife-kill film titled The Librarian.
The organizing principle is therefore a character of a certain vocation, as the title indicates. That vocation lands that character in a specific place (a public library), and determines exploitable elements in the story: a card-catalog, a drop-off box, a study room, the long, dark aisles filled with books, and so on.
A decapitated head might be discovered in the drop-off box at a climactic moment, the key to the killer's identity might be discovered in the card catalog, and the last-act chase of the final girl (a grad student) could occur in a labyrinth of book rows. The crime causing the murders could be a defaced library book, or a book that was returned late.
See how the library provides more than one element of the film's creative gestalt? It grants you a lead character (a book-smart college student, let's say), a villain (a psycho librarian), and a story (a crime in the past causing a murder spree in the present). It might even provide specific weapons (like a heavy book, for instance, wielded at a crucial juncture).
So the organizing principle is the very thing the slasher film hangs its (blood-soaked) hooks upon. It is the key to motivation, setting, slasher and more.
Let's consider a real historical example, Terror Train (1980) in terms of the organizing principle. In this film, the organizing principle is not the train, as one might suspect, but rather magic, or illusion.
Master-magician David Copperfield appears in the film as a red herring (a distraction in terms of determining the identity of the killer), and a magic show occurs on the train at one point. Finally, the revelation of the killer's identity depends on illusion-versus-reality. Do you trust your eyes, or are they tricking you?
In virtually every slasher production you can name, the organizing principle determines virtually every ingredient the movie will require to succeed; a whole world of connections upon which to hang the narrative. This is so important, I submit, because the slasher format is episodic by nature. The narrative in most of these films consists of a series of stitched-together, almost complete-unto-themselves short films in which a victim is stalked and murdered. When one victim dies, you rinse and repeat...and move to the next set-piece until, finally, the killer is destroyed. The organizing principle unifies all these episodes and gives them consistency of setting, location, motivation and victim.
Below is a chart slightly modified from the one I used in Horror Films of the 1980's. It illustrates the organizing principle's usefulness in making coherent all the creative elements of a slasher movie. I added two 1990's examples to the chart to show how, even after the 1980's, the organizing principle was utilized to make the format work.
Movie Title
|
Organizing
Principle
|
Setting
|
Crime
in the Past
|
Victim
Pool
|
Friday the 13th
|
Summer camp
|
Camp, cabins,
lake, woods
|
drowning;
negligence
|
Camp counselors.
|
He Knows You’re
alone
|
Weddings
|
Dress shop, bride’s
home, chapel
|
Bride jilts fiancé.
|
The wedding
party, dress tailor…
|
Night School
|
College
|
Classrooms, dean’s
home
|
Infidelity
|
Students, dean of
college, professors.
|
Prom Night
|
Prom night
|
High school
|
Accident caused
by classmates as children
|
Prom goers who as
children participated in accident.
|
The Dorm that
Dripped Blood
|
College campus
|
College campus
(cafeterias, dorms, basement, etc.)
|
Unpopularity with
fellow students
|
College students
|
Final Exam
|
Exam Week
|
College campus,
et.
|
NA
|
College students
|
Friday the 13th
Part II
|
Summer Camp
|
Camp, cabins,
lake, woods
|
Murder of Mrs.
Voorhees
|
Camp counselors
|
Graduation Day
|
Track Team
|
Track field, high
school, locker room, prom
|
Death of a young
track student
|
Track coach,
track team members
|
Happy Birthday to
Me
|
Birthday parties
|
College, birthday
party
|
Family break-up
on birthday
|
Birthday party
invitees
|
The Prowler
|
Jilted Lover
|
School dance
|
Dear John Letter
|
Young lovers at a
dance
|
The Burning
|
Summer camp
|
Camp, cabins,
lake, woods, island
|
An accidental
burning
|
Campers, counselors
|
Slumber Party
Massacre
|
Slumber party
|
High school,
slumber party location, the house next door
|
NA
|
Slumber party
attendees
|
Curtains
|
Theatre/acting
|
A casting retreat
weekend
|
Losing an
important role
|
Young ingénues;
older actress, director
|
Sleepaway Camp
|
Summer camp
|
Camp, cabins,
lake, woods
|
Twisted sex role
|
Camp employees,
campers
|
The Initiation
|
Sororities
|
Sorority house,
campus
|
Witnessing of
burning and infidelity
|
Pledges, sorority
girls, frat boys
|
Silent Night,
Deadly Night
|
Christmas
|
Toy store at
Christmas, Christmas eve
|
Santa Claus kills
parents
|
Naughty teens.
|
Terror at
Tenkiller
|
Summer vacation
at a lake
|
Cabin, lake,
local diner
|
NA
|
Vacationers
|
Scream
|
Horror movies
|
Video store, high
school, movie party
|
Marital infidelity
|
Movie-loving
teenagers
|
I Know What You
Did Last Summer
|
Fishing community
|
Fishing boat,
fishery, local store, fishing holiday pageant
|
Murder
|
Teens of the
fishing community trying to make good and leave hometown.
|
This is interesting, John, and it's amusing to see them all together in one chart like this! One Millennium devotee to another, I have to ask: Do you suppose there is a single organizing principle that unifies "Thirteen Years Later"? If so, could that organizing principle be, er, slasher films dictated by organizing principles? (How metatextual!)
ReplyDeleteHi Brian,
DeleteIt is kind of funny to see the building blocks of the slasher film exposed in a chart such as this, isn't it?
You're right about Millennium's "Thirteen Years Later, the organizing principle is slasher film organizing principles. Meta-textual is right!
Great comment,
best,
John