Horror Lexicon #9: The Organizing Principle

I wrote about this genre convention extensively in my reference book Horror Films of the 1980's (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.