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Episode 47 - Anatomy of a Slasher · Haunted Ozark Theater

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Haunted Ozark Theater, H O T, your hot horror podcast.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we're back.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I'm back.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Cody is taking a little mental health break this week.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to try something a little different.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to just be me talking to y'all.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll see how it goes.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to, as I mentioned previously, dissect the subgenre of slashers.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really bummed that Cody's not able to be here for this because if y'all have been longtime listeners, you know that that's his favorite subgenre.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it just kind of organically came up last episode when we talked about this day in horror history, and it was the release date of Black Christmas.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I mentioned that, in my opinion, Black Christmas is the first ever true slasher.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then I said something off the cuff like maybe we should devote a whole episode to the subgenre of slashers.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then by the end of editing, I decided that I did indeed want to go ahead and do that.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're going to do today.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: But we do have to do this episode's version of this day in horror history.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it is geez, what is today?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the 22nd of October.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I do know that when I looked it up, it is the release date for Halloween 3 season of the Witch.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a very maligned film.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Most people, most of the average filmgoers do not care for this iteration of the Halloween franchise.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most horror heads that I talk to love it.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I fall into that category.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I love this movie.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like if you took the Halloween three part away from the title and simply called it Season of the Witch, I think uh we would look back far more kindly on this movie.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good horror movie, period.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it just is.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: But because it didn't have Michael Myers in it, and because it was carrying the Halloween name, I guess people expected something different.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's really good.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: It really is.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um it stars Tom Atkins, and I had a chance to meet Tom Atkins uh over the summer and talk to him briefly, and not only was he the kindest soul, but also, you know, he said he has fond memories of making the film and um meets a lot of people at the cons and stuff who just agree that it's a good, good movie.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that also lends itself to me setting up next week's episode, which I believe will be a two-parter, and Cody will be back for that.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a breakdown of the entire Halloween franchise.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: We've done the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, we've done the Friday the 13th franchise.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's time to give the Halloween franchise its due.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And next week is Halloween week, so it's timely for uh the holiday.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, I think it'll get broken into two parts because it's gonna be a long one.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So there will be one episode next week prior to Halloween, and then there will be the part two the following week after Halloween.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna sandwich Halloween with two episodes about the Halloween franchise.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about rewatches.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I did not really re-watch anything, but I did binge Crystal Lake.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of Friday the 13th, um Crystal Lake is a prequel series on Peacock, eight episodes, produced by A24, starring Linda Cartellini as Pam Vorhees.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's had a lot of hype, a lot of excitement uh building around it.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna spoil anything because it is a brand new release, it literally has only been out for a handful of days on streaming.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm 50-50 on it.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you about the things that I really enjoyed about it.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Linda Cartellini's performance.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, phenomenal.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: But uh you you come to expect her to be great in everything that she's in, and she's fantastic in this.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I suspect she will be nominated for Emmy for this performance.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really good.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And all the secondary actors, if that's what you want to call them, are also fantastic.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: The kid who plays young Jason is great.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: The kid who plays the sheriff is or the guy who plays the sheriff is great.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's classic characters with new actors like Mr.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Christie and Crazy Ralph.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that was really fun.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: The kills are really, really good, and the gore is off the charts, especially for something that is airing on Peacock of all places.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Great gore, great kills.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: The effects, I think there's one scene or effect where I would go out on a limb and say that was CGI, but it was really well done CGI.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't bad CGI, like they are trying to get us accustomed to.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um beyond that, lots of practical kills and very satisfying, very well executed.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh whoever was in charge of the kills and making them look good on screen did a fan fantastic job.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Phenomenal.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, here's my issues with it, and again, I'm not gonna spoil anything, but they, since it is a prequel, they decided that they are going to fill in the entire backstory for both Pam and Jason, and Silas to some extent.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you listen to our Friday the 13th episode, you know, we briefly mentioned Silas, who is Jason's dad, um, because he's only briefly mentioned in the entire franchise, but they introduce his character and and give us his backstory as well.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is, my anyway, the problem that I have with it is number one, they remove all the mystery from the character of Jason.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: If we know everything about his life, from the time that he was born until the time that he drowned in Crystal Lake, and even beyond that, up to the 1979 film, original Friday 13th film, there's just no mystery left around his character, and that makes me sad.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we don't, especially in horror, we don't need to have all the answers.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the other thing is, just like it robbed Jason of all his mystery, I feel like it robbed Pam of her motivation.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was plainly stated in the original film, you know, her son drowned in Crystal Lake because the counselors weren't doing their job.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And she waited some years to get her revenge, but she did get that revenge in the original Friday 13th movie, and that was her motivation was revenge for the death of her son and for the neglect of her son.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they kind of retcon that in a way that I feel takes Pam's original motivation completely away.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, I'm 50-50.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed it.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would recommend it.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I would recommend that you watch it and make up your own mind about it.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like I said, the acting is great, the kills are great, the effects are great.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the story choices I I just don't agree with.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, does that mean anything?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just some guy with a podcast.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean much at all.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: But as a horror fan and someone who I would boast a little bit that I have a significant amount of horror knowledge.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it just it just kind of flew in my face, and I I didn't love the decisions.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's that.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's my watch slash rewatch segment.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And now we will get on to the main event, which I have decided to call the anatomy of a slasher.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: See what I did there?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you do, you get it.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I found this fantastic doc on YouTube, and I'm gonna shout it out right now because a lot of my research came from this uh video.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: There is a young lady named Emily Zarki.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Zarka, sorry, Emily Zarka, PhD.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: She has an English lit from ASU, and her especiality is monsters, myths, and legends.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And she has a PBS-sponsored documentary series or program on YouTube called Monstrum.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out, it's really, really good.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And she did a whole episode specifically on slashers, like the history of slashers, and basically exactly what I wanted to convey the anatomy of a good slasher.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was thrilled that right off the bat, she identified October 11th, 1974, the release of Black Christmas as the first ever slasher.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I was already, she won me over instantly because she agreed with me.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just kidding.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so that was the whole impetus behind this episode is last episode this day in horror history was October 11th, the release of Black Christmas.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we got here in the first place.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And she backs me up.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Black Christmas is one of one when it comes to slashers.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: But then she backs up a little bit and she talks about um what she calls proto-slashers, or basically what came before slashers that are responsible for the existence of slashers.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And once again, she shouted out a movie that I have tried to draw attention to on this podcast, 1960s Peeping Tom.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: British uh film.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned that it came about six months before Psycho in British theaters, and the critics just ate it up not in a good way, they ate it alive critically, and it was basically pulled out of the theater in just like four days or something like that for being too graphic, too explicit.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um people just weren't ready for peeping tom.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: But then six months later, Psycho comes out, and Psycho has essentially the same plot or a very similar plot as Peeping Tom, but it's not only not banned from theaters after four days, it it's applauded and uh reveled and lauded, and everybody remembers Psycho as a horror classic, and Peeping Tom just gets forgotten.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but she identifies both of them, but she identified people peeping tom first uh as being proto-slashers, and she says that the one thing that peeping tom and psycho both both really contribute to the coming genre of slashers is the killer POV.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we see a lot of the action in both those movies through the killer's eyes, and throughout her video, she comes up with 10 rules uh with apologies to Randy Meeks.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 10 rules for a slasher.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And rule number one is it's gotta be from the killer's POV, at least part of the film.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So she identifies Peeping Tom and Psycho as a proto-slasher, and she also identifies them as uh minting the first rule in Slashers, killer POV.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: A couple more movies that came out in the late 60s, early 70s before Black Christmas.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, A Bay of Blood, which I believe is a Mario Baba film.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great Giallo.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And another film called Torso, which, if you're not familiar with Torso, it is definitely an early slasher-esque film.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But torso is like the first example of the killer wearing a mask.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: He actually wears this crazy white mask over his whole head.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um she credits this as being, you know, one of the things that Halloween and later on Friday 13th take and run with it is uh the killer being hidden behind a mask.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's pretty cool.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh she also notes that both a Bay of Blood and Torso, the victims for the first time are young females.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now I know in Peeping Tom and Psycho, there there are young females who get killed, but there are other people who get killed too.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And in Bay of Blood and Torso, it's like all the all the victims are young females.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so obviously, that is a hallmark of slashers.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times it's teenage girls getting killed.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that it was a huge problem for the critics.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they called uh slashers, especially the early slashers, they called them misogynistic and they called the filmmakers women haters, and they said that going to see these movies was terrible for feminism and terrible for the male brain to take these things in, and then these things are gonna, you know, express themselves later on in life in our mistreatment towards women.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think everybody for the most part now uh understands all those things to be false.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: But another movie that came out in 1974, which I don't necessarily consider to be a slasher, but it's certainly important in the development of slashers, and it's certainly one of the greatest horror movies of all time, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um Emily Zarka makes a comment that Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes that rule number one, which is the camera uh being from the killer's point of view, and flips it on its head.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh already, you know, we've just established this first rule in the prior decade, and we're already flipping it and subverting it.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Texas Chainsaw has numerous camera shots from the victim's point of view, if y'all will remember.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: You don't look through the leatherface mask until other movies in the franchise, but in that first movie, there's a several scenes uh from the victim's point of view.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that's interesting.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then speaking of victims, that brings us to rule number two, um, which Emily Zarka has identified as the victims need to be isolated, they need to be somewhere out away from help.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Texas Chainsaw certainly does that, puts them in uh the Sawyer home out in the middle of nowhere.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's nowhere to run, uh, even if you could get away.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this ends up being something that happens in most slashers.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um they may not always be way out in the middle of the country, but they're typically someplace that they can't escape.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: They get locked in, or you know, by circumstance or happenstance, they just can't escape the immediate area where they are, and the killer uses that to his or her advantage.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so why is the isolation thing so scary, and why is it such a recurring thing in slashers?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um she suggests uh because movies like Psycho and Texas Chainsaw borrow from the crimes of Ed Gean, um, she suggests that when Ed Gean was caught and his whole story was made public on the news for the first time, it made America afraid of the heartland.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: This middle part of America where most of Americans live and most of life happens in America was suddenly a strange and scary place where you might get murdered.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And not just murdered, but mutilated.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's it suddenly became a scary place.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that crept its way into slasher movies uh by running with the trope of the victim's gotta be isolated somehow.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Rule number three: the killer is human, and we've talked about this.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: This was what makes Psycho such an important film.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Prior to 1960, the killers were monsters, they were Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man, a werewolf.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: They were radioactive giants like King Kong or Godzilla, they were aliens like the blob or invasions of the body snatchers or the day the earth stood still, or they were again some kind of radiation freak like a giant giant ants and giant rabbits and you know, just all kinds of monsters.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: But in psycho, it was a man.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in most slashers, if not all slashers, the killer at least starts out as a human.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're not some kind of monster that is bigger, faster, stronger than you.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: They are human, but they are twisted, demented, sick, um, driven by some madness that we don't fully understand.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it makes them seem superhuman, but really they're flesh and blood, just like us, and that makes it scarier somehow.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's scarier to think, again, going back to the heart.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thing.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's scary to you to think that the person who might kill you is just living right next door and is just a normal guy, not a werewolf who's gonna, you know, bust in at the next full moon and tear you to shreds.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we got the killer's POV, we got the victims being isolated, we have the killer being human.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings us right up to what is not necessarily the first slasher, but probably the most well-known slasher, arguably the best slasher, and certainly the first one to put all of these ingredients together and lay down the blueprint for slashers, and that's John Carpenter's Halloween, 1978.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is the slasher.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to show somebody not just a horror movie, but specifically a slasher, and say, This is the blueprint, you're gonna show them John Carpenter's Halloween.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was notable for those reasons, but it was also notable because it made a lot of money at the box office.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was a commercial success, and probably for the first time in cinema history, it was actually well received by the critics.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was critically acclaimed, and um everybody agreed that this is an important and good piece of art.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, but along with making tons of money, comes all the studios demanding that their writers, directors, producers start pumping out the next Halloween so that they can get their next big payday.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So then we have the 80s, and we have a whole slew of uh brand new slasher movies, and lots of money gets made.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have a whole decade of just if you love slashers, the 80s were the time to be alive, I'll tell you that much.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um so then Halloween Michael Myers is after Lori.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: She is clearly his target, but he leaves in his wake a lot of bodies, a lot of dead bodies.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that becomes kind of rule number four.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just um guy kills girl or guy kills guy, it's a killing spree.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: There has to be a killing spree.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Multiple murders, um, and that was kind of what Halloween brought to the table, and that's kind of like I said, the blueprint that all slashers going forward seems to follow.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's just a pile of bodies when the movie is over.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: The killing spree has to be present in the slasher.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Also, uh, rule number five: the killer stalks uh his victims.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Michael has multiple chances to kill Lori, to kill Tommy, even, and some of Lori's friends, but he doesn't take every opportunity.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: He stalks, he builds dread, he studies, he plans, he manipulates and coerces, and that's scary.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's maybe even scarier than the killing itself.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like we all know that one day we're gonna die, and we've all to some extent made our peace with that, and so we're not terribly afraid of the day that we know is coming, however, we're all very afraid that someone could be watching us, could be following us, could be stinking us out, could be studying us and uh accounting for our every move in order to create some kind of plan to hinder our next move.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty pretty scary.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that's a rule number five, according to Emily Zarka.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: The killer will most often stalk his or her victims.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that is, like I said, that's a terrifying angle, terrifying aspect of the slasher.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: The next rule is kind of expands on the idea that the um victims are gonna be young females.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: In especially in uh Friday the 13th, we end up with just kind of a homogeneous group of young adults, boys and girls, but they're still typically teenagers or very young adults, they're typically free from adult supervision, um, and what that allows them to do is a be isolated, which is uh a call back to rule number two.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: It causes them to or gives them the opportunity rather to party, to drink, to do drugs, to have sex, and that puts a target on their back, typically.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's usually those uh archetypes who are the first to go.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and in that sense, uh slashers have a moral compass.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you are the Lori Strodes, if you are innocent and a good student, and you're not partying, you're not smoking, you're not drinking, you're not sleeping around, the odds of you surviving are are a lot higher.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's interesting that slashers, for all of their criticism, actually deliver a moral compass probably more poignantly, more clearly, more succinctly, than a lot of other movies that claim to be virtuous.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um back to the adults not being around.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: If the adults are typically around, they're ineffective.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Think about Nightmare on Elm Street.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um Nancy's mom is either doesn't believe her or she's drunk or um just she doesn't help, basically, is what it boils down to.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um but in Friday 13th, back to that one, especially in part three, we get uh the main characters, or at least the victim characters, the homogenous group of young adults that I mentioned.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: We start to see them sorted into archetypes and not just bad archetypes.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: We mentioned the bad archetypes, the ones who party, drink, and have sex.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, they're gonna get knocked off sooner rather than later.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: But we start to see uh Emily Zarca identifies six archetypes that seem to emerge in with Friday 13th, especially like I said, part three, and then seem to follow the slashers down through the rest of the 80s.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you got the stoner, you got the jester, you got the jock, you got the flirt, you got the bully, and you got the bookworm.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the bookworm, uh like Lori Strode, tends to be the final girl, I would say.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um the final girl is more often than not gonna be the bookworm rather than the flirt or the stoner or the jester.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh back to Halloween, or no, sorry, staying with Friday the 13th.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we got Pam Vorhees, who, as I mentioned, uh the killer was usually a male, um, and the victim was usually a young female.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Pam subverts that rule by being the first female killer of note that we see on screen.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she doesn't wear a mask like in torso, but her mask is her gender.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't see her coming because she's a girl and she's a mom and she has a reason for being there.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so when she is revealed as the killer, um it's shocking and it's a it's a subversion, and it's great, it makes for great cinema.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that brings us to rule number seven, the mask.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you know we're big fans of masks here on Honda's Art Theater, especially Cody.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but slashers, they gotta have a killer and a mask more often than not, and the mask has gotta be cool.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: They have to have a good, a good look.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as the 80s go on, slashers just grow and grow and grow in popularity.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, part of that is fueled by the almighty dollar.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: The studios are getting rich quick off of the slashers coming out one after the other.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing is the 80s was kind of the golden age of middle class.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the middle class had more money and more buying power, I think, in the 80s than probably ever before or since.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that trickled down to their kids who were teenagers, and those kids wanted to go see their peers getting carved up by a masked killer.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: So they were spending their money at the theater to see these slashers, uh, one after the other.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't matter, good or bad, if it was a Friday night and there was a new slasher out.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: They were in line to see it and they were in line to fork over their money, and that kept this train rolling for a whole decade.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: But as they go on, the sensors do start coming down on the slashers, and they get not less violent, but I guess the blood and gore gets uh they find they find creative ways to, I guess, work around the blood and gore and get the sensors off their back.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that comes out of that is that there are some surprisingly good and heartfelt uh coming-of-age subplots in a lot of 80s slashers.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of folks like myself who saw these movies back in the theater in the 80s, and we learned life lessons, believe it or not, when we went and saw these movies.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it was partially because the censors uh said, you know, back off the blood and gore a little bit and give us a little more substance.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the filmmakers, to their their credit, they answered that call.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um the 70s, a lot of the antagonists were driven by some kind of mental health issue because throughout the 60s and 70s, uh psychology was advancing, developing, and we were becoming aware of mental health as being uh a national problem.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: And these days I would call it a national crisis.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the killers at the time kind of reflected that.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the 80s, we had this whole satanic panic, if you're old enough to remember.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everybody was afraid that they were going to maybe go to a Friday night movie and not come back because they're gonna get kidnapped by a satanic cult and taken to some kind of ritual sacrifice that was gonna summon the devil or summon a demon or something.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: That obviously all didn't pan out either.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: But just like the mental health issues kind of painted the villains in the 70s, um, the satanic panic starts to color the 80s antagonists with supernatural themes, supernatural elements.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we end up with Freddie Kruegers and we end up with pinheads, and even uh Michael Myers is maybe powered by the commitment of some cultists who are working behind the scenes.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And Jason dies and is brought back to life all of Frankenstein by a lightning bolt.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And now we have the quote unquote zombie Jason running around uh wreaking havoc.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the supernatural really starts to come in, you know, in the mid-80s as a response to satanic panic.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's get on to the next rule, and that's rule number eight.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: The killer has to have an edged weapon.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: The killers, I mean, you can't slash someone with a gun.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And shooting someone with a gun is not super satisfying as far as giving us the visual of the blood and guts that we crave if we're fans of the genre.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's gotta be a machete, an axe, uh a chainsaw, it's gotta be knives, it's gotta be knives on the end of the fingers of a glove.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's gotta be an edged weapon, it's gotta be sharp, it's gotta carve up people, it's gotta let blood out.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And um that's a rule, pretty hard and fast rule for a slasher.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, you can't slash someone unless you have a slashing weapon in your hand, and that's important in this sub-genre.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: So the next rule is the final girl, and we've we talked about, we've danced around it here a little bit.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: She's the Lori Strode, she's the bookworm, she is the opposite of the antagonist.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: If the antagonist is a guy with murder on his mind, the final girl is a female with um just growing up and having a successful life on her mind.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: And those two things crash into each other, and they are diametrically opposed.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: So something's gotta give.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Either the older male killer is going to end her chance to grow up and have a successful adulthood, or she is gonna use her smarts and her determination and her ingenuity and her dedication to overcome the killer and survive, and that is the final girl.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're often two sides of the same coin in that way.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they both are dedicated and determined to see out their goal, and it's like whose will is gonna win out, whose will is stronger.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um this also plays off both sides of second wave feminism, which was a big deal in the 70s and kind of again just organically made its way into the fabric of the slasher.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: So then we get to what Emily Zarka called calls postmodern slashers or neo slashers.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: This comes out in the 90s.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: The 80s had their had their fun, and then the early 90s um slashers were were dead.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: They were people were sick of them, people were sick of sequels, people were sick of the same old, same old being retreaded and sold to us again and again and again, and people had had enough and they stopped going out and the money dried up, and so they quit making them for four years, I'd say.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: There was about a four-year stretch in the early 90s where just slashers just weren't a thing, really.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: But then Wes Craven, who was responsible for the night around Elm Street films, which are you know a fantastic example of 80 slashers, he comes to the rescue uh and he decides to do something totally different with his proto or post-modern slasher or neo-slasher.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he stays with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, but you know, where we had uh some subversion going on early in the genre with, you know, the killer is supposed to be a guy and it turns out to be a girl, or the killer is supposed to be uh hiding behind a mask, but she's hiding behind her femininity.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um Wes Craven thinks about this and says, I'm gonna take all the rules that we're kind of talking about here.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take all of the hallmarks of the slasher, I'm gonna flip them all in their heads, subvert the entire subgenre.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he comes out with New Nightmare, which if you haven't seen it, I would argue that's probably the second or third best of all the Nightmare on Elm Street films.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's really meta, it's really different for the time, and it was really his trial run for what he did two years later with Scream.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Scream was the the ultimate achievement in um you know meta fiction, meta horror, um taking the slasher and turning on to ear.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: But he started testing the waters with New Nightmare.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: So those two probably the first two postmodern slashers that you know eventually evolve into what we have today with like Art the Clown and even some of the later entries in the screen franchise, what she calls neo slashers.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the final rule is number 10, and we talked about it a little bit when we were talking about the the weapon, has to have a sharp edge.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: The kills have to be gory, they just have to feature blood and guts, and they have to make us squirm a little bit, they need to shock us, and they got increased increasingly creative, which is a fun thing for us horror nerds to geek out about because there's only so many ways you can cut up a person on screen.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there was a constant effort to find new and exciting ways to cut people up on screen, and so the creative kill and the gory, bloody kill becomes an important, important, important final rule on the list, rule number 10.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: The kills gotta be great, they gotta be.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard us talk about this before.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: If the movie kind of sucks, or if the acting kind of sucks, but the kills are great, we'll watch it again and again and again.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: We'll keep coming back to it.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's high on the list for us horror fans.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: We want to see some really good creative kills.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then as she's wrapping up her video, Emily Zarka, she kind of makes a rule.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Quote unquote number eleven, which um the final girl increasingly relies on community to heal after these tragic events, especially if the girl uh is gonna recur, if she's gonna be in the sequels, like a Nancy in Elm Street.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh she surrounds herself with people, or she becomes the helper that helps the next victims.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the community becomes an important tool and an important aspect of the final girl.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then that plays into the community that exists here in the real world that we all belong to, if we're fans of horror.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you've ever gone to a con or if you've ever just got into a conversation with the guy sitting next to you at the theater on a Friday night when you're there to see the latest horror movie, um community is a huge thing.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: And being a part of the horror community is just a fantastic experience and a really worthwhile endeavor.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so just plug for all you horror fans out there.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this podcast is an effort to be a part of that community, to engage that community, and to contribute to that community.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's always been one of our goals here on Honodos Arc Theater.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is uh we're not just here to talk horror, we're here to engage in community.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that comes from these films that is laid out for us by example in these films, and we just took it and ran with it.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: So in closing, just a few notes that um I came up with.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, we did an episode a while back, the benefits of watching horror.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just want to kind of revisit some of those real quick.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, a good slasher is a cautionary tale, a good slasher provides catharsis, a good slasher is sensational, kind of like we just talked about with the with the kills, they need to be sensational.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: And a good slasher is educational.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you put yourself in these scenarios and you imagine ways to get out, you problem solve, you mentally prepare yourself for the unlikely event that you find yourself in these situations in real life.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's thrilling, but it's a great brain exercise, and it's a great thing that we all do as horror fans to keep ourselves mentally healthy.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of the opposite of what they were worried about back in the 70s.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: They thought we were gonna turn into misogynistic animals, but really we've turned into some of the most well-adjusted people because we're constantly going through these brain exercises.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, has made the killer the star of the show.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Very rarely are the victims the star.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Very rarely are the victims the ones we care about.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't believe me, go to Spirit Halloween and look at the biggest sections in the store and the top-selling costumes in the store.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's Michael Myers, it's Jason, it's Leatherface, it's Art the Clown, it's Ghostface.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are the top-selling costumes, and I'm telling you this as a horror fan and as someone who has a part-time job at Spirit.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the killer is the star.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: The killer is the draw, the killer is the main attraction, and the who is important, the why not so important, but back to the sensational kills, the how is important.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: How does this all play out?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: How do these homogenous young people get killed?
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really what drives the narrative and what drives us back to these movies again and again and again.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: We want to see the star of the show and we want to see him or her do his or her thing.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: We want to see how they did their thing.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but back to the educational aspect.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, not only do we go through these mental exercises when we watch these movies, but we are kind of confronted with some brutal truths about ourselves.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have to accept that we enjoy seeing these things.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what does that say about us?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean about who we are as people?
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that we have to wrestle with.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's a good thing.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it's very obvious to any human who's alive that we all have a dark side, and I think trying to ignore that dark side or push that dark side down uh is dangerous and unhealthy.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think acknowledging it and wrestling with it and ultimately overcoming and accepting it is how we win.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just a great thing.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um of the great things about horror and about being a horror fan.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh last but not least, I want to retroactively take a look at a movie that I recently came across that predates Psycho by 17 years.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: So 1943, this movie came out, and it's got a lot of slasher elements in it, even though it's as old as it is.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's called The Leopard Man.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: If y'all haven't seen it, check it out.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: You should be able to find it on YouTube or on streaming.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: The Leopard Man.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: It takes place in New Mexico in the early 40s.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: A nightclub owner has a leopard in his nightclub as a draw, I guess, to get more customers, and the leopard escapes.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a crazy guy in town who thinks to himself, I can start killing people, and they're gonna blame it on the leopard, and I'm gonna get away with it.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, it doesn't quite work out the way that he hoped, but he does go on a little bit of killing spree in New Mexico in hopes that the leopard will get blamed.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's very, it was very unique, very different, especially for the time.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as I recently watched that film, uh and you know, I was researching slashers and studying slashers, getting ready to record this episode.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, man, there is a lot of slasher goodness in this movie, and this is one that I hadn't heard of before, and that I've definitely never heard anyone else say, Hey, how about giving the leopard man some credit for being one of the earliest slashers?
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: So check that out if you are looking for something to watch.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: But that's gonna do it.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're here at the end of our time, and I talked without anybody to bounce my thoughts off of for a good 50 minutes, 51, 52 minutes.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess that's something.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope y'all weren't bored to death.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um that being said, Cody should be back next week, and we are going to talk about the Halloween franchise.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna talk about all the movies, including the original mainline films, including the Rob Zombie remakes, and including the David Gordon Green trilogy that just wrapped up a couple years ago.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a lot of movies, it's it's over a dozen.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's pushing like 14 or 15 in total.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I'm anticipating it being a two parter.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's gonna be a good time, and it's gonna be just in time for the holiday that we all know and love called Halloween.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks as always for listening, and we'll catch up with y'all next week.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.