Where has all the suspense gone?

While watching the remake of When A Stranger Calls, I started thinking about the lack of suspense in recent horror films. Though the movie was a watered down PG-13 remake of a terrific film, the movie still generated a decent amount of suspense. Despite some poorly directed action sequences, I actually enjoyed the 2006 version quite a bit. Yes, the original is well-known for a certain twist and the remake's trailer gave this away, despite the fact that the movie hinges heavily on that twist and it occurs towards the end of the film. Even though I knew the surprise that was coming, I was impressed with the taught line of suspense strung throughout the movie's 87 minute runtime. The clever use of set pieces and red herrings transformed what could have been painfully boring into enjoyable.

After you're done cursing me for not finding the When A Stranger Calls to be completely unwatchable, you can calm down and focus on this food for thought: Where has all the suspense gone? I had this refreshing feeling while watching the movie and I couldn't figure out why. What could be refreshing about a safely executed unoriginal Hollywood film? It was the suspense. I've missed it in recent horror movies. The more I thought about this, the more I realized how sorely modern cinema is missing out on the wonderful tool of suspense.

I'm reminded of the classic example of surprise versus suspense once illustrated by Alfred Hitchcock. Imagine a family eating dinner peacefully. A bomb explodes. Surprise! Now, let's take the same scene and add suspense to it. You see the family eating dinner, but you also notice that there's a bomb underneath the dining room table. Will they notice the bomb before it explodes? Will someone come to their rescue? That's suspense, keeping the audience guessing and wondering what will happen next.

Most recent horror films seem to operate primarily on surprise, utilizing a shock and gore campaign. While there's definitely a place for the well executed surprise and definitely a place for films that lean more on surprise than suspense, I can't help but miss all the suspense from yesteryear. It's no secret that the original  Halloween is my favorite film and a large part of why I love that movie so much is the suspense. In comparison, we have Rob Zombie's Halloween, which hardly contains any suspense. It's all bombs going off in your face. The 1978 film creates suspense through steadicam POV shots, lingering edits, and Dean Cundey's atmospheric cinematography. When Laurie Strode slowly explores the neighbor's house, anyone watching is on pins and needles. In contrast, Zombies Halloween shocks the audience with raw violence and disturbing imagery. Michael's lurking presence is just not felt in the same way. 

I've been thinking about this and trying to come up with recent horror films that rely more on suspense than surprise. The House of the Devil, Frozen, Antibodies, and Devil are a few superb examples that come to mind. At first, I thought of Inside and Them, but then thought about it some more...they really rely more on surprise than suspense to scare the audience. 

What are some recent horror movies that you guys feel were suspenseful? Why is surprise being utilized way more than suspense? Comments anyone?

Going Green: Sustainability and Ecology in Troll 2

“Are you crazy, boy?” the Drugstore Owner asks, “We're vegetarians here in Nilbog.” The rhetorical question posed by the Nilbog resident summarizes the subtle irony of Troll 2’s green message. Presenting the omnivorous (if carnivorous is too strong) Waits family as the protagonists and juxtaposing them against the seemingly “crazy” vegetarians of Nilbog, director Claudio Fragasso forces us to pose the aforementioned quote upon ourselves—“Are we crazy?” In a land where mechanized methods of meat production and continual environmental degradation dominate human behavior, it is homosapiens (not goblins) that live in decadent madness as they feast upon the earth’s resources. Fragasso’s foil of human versus goblin illustrates the irony of human interference in natural ecosystems. Troll 2’s critical messages for a world on the brink of eco-disaster have only become more urgently relevant since its 1990 release.

The myth of human dominance is subverted by the presence of goblin creatures in Fragasso’s film. The homosapien-oriented assertions that the earth’s resources are subservient to human life and that indeed, the human is that from which all green life came are challenged by Nilbog. In this old-fashioned land, Goblins once roamed the earth before the human creature. Surely they gamboled among lush forests, as their sustainable lifestyles supported such ecosystems. However, human destruction was imminent and it was not long before their way of life was threatened. The goblins obviously represent a metaphor for the endangered species—a creature forced to the edge of extinction; now coerced into tiny communities where assimilation and coexistence are no longer options. Just as humans encroached upon the untamed wilderness, the Wait family invades the quiet town of Nilbog, expecting their ungreen standards of consumption to be met. Can we blame the wolf for its hostility against human encroachment? Certainly not. However, this blame is thrust fully upon the goblins of Nilbog via the accusations of the Waits family, primarily Joshua. Fragasso expertly portrays this incongruity with satire, demonizing the goblins through the perspective of Joshua only to point out the absurdity of human ignorance. The exaggerated tone of Troll 2 is perhaps most prominent when Joshua places his hands upon the Creedence’s Stonehenge, urging his family to do the same because “only good” can defeat the goblins. The filmmakers’ sardonic message is expertly communicated through Joshua’s over-the-top performance. Certainly, it is not the humans that are good here because they are the encroachers after all.

As the denizens of Nilbog gather for a sermon, their spiritual leader reminds them of the ethos of the vegetarian. The sermon recalls the disgust upon consuming bloody chunks of meat, the stinking of the flesh, and the moral depravity of the carnivore. As human viewers, their behavior seems odd, but this is entirely the purpose behind such a scene. Why should it seem odd? Vegetarianism was one of the first rules of Eden. In fact, one may go as far as to suggest Nilbog as Edenic symbolism—a place of natural beauty, where human sin (not goblin sin) leads to devastation. By turning the table and forcing viewers to question their own dietary mores, Fragasso’s empathetic style is quite progressive. The human disgust for the goblin’s vegetarian diet is only matched by the goblin’s disgust for the human’s meat-centralized diet. Alas, the distinction between these diets represents the major theme of Troll 2.  

The human-goblin dichotomy allows modern watchers to easily find an eco-friendly reading of Troll 2. When comparing the meat diet to the plant diet, it is clear that the eating habits of the goblins are far more sustainable than the homosapien’s. Not only is the goblin food nutritionally superior, but it has far less impact on earthly creatures. However, because humans have invaded Nilbog, the point diverges from this theme of impact only slightly. The goblins must convert the humans into plants for their own sustenance. While this clearly has a negative effect on the human animal, it is a poignant attempt to deconstruct the mythos of the food chain hierarchy. Troll 2 displays an egalitarian cycle of life, where plant, human, and goblin may be considered equal. More complexly, the act of human conversion into flora is a metaphor for the human’s return to Eden, as they are quite literally absorbed into the fruits of their God’s earth.

Fusing religious imagery into his green sentiments, Claudio Fragasso criticizes the Christian moral majority with his “progressive” thesis on sustainability. In fact, Fragasso is so forceful with his symbolism that it is no wonder the film has been pushed aside by mainstream America as “too extreme.” Failing to understand the complexities and irony of the story’s point of view, some, on the other hand, incorrectly assert that Troll 2 is a thoughtless film made for a quick buck. Both attacks of Fragasso’s film are mistaken. Perhaps the filmmakers anticipated this response when they wrote Arnold’s famous line, “They’re eating her…and then they’re going to eat me…OH MY GOOOOOD!” The human species has already eaten “her” (the earth) and now they’re going to eat “me” (the filmmaker) for pointing out such careless destruction. We can only hope that someday Troll 2 will be recognized as the preeminent eco-friendly film it deserves to be labeled as.

Horror Bloggers Get Scared

Recently, I was asked to contribute to a Horror Blips article on the Achilles' heals of horror bloggers. We were asked what characters or themes never failed to frightened us. Check out the article below, which also features some of my favorite blogs.

http://horrorblips.dailyradar.com/story/bloggers-reveal-their-true-weaknesses/

Here is the full version of the write-up that I did for the article:

Home invasion films get under my skin. Sometimes it takes the hard-hitting intensity of a movie like Inside to terrify me, but other times the simplest slasher can make me uncomfortable. Perhaps it roots back to my indoctrination into the horror genre with Halloween. I remember trying to sleep after watching John Carpenter’s masterpiece for the first time. My bed was situated against a wall which I faced, leaving my back exposed to the empty room. I kept imagining that Michael Myers was standing behind me, his pallid mask hovering like a ghost in the darkness. However, my fear of the home invasion might be based on something more elementary. I grew up on 10 forested acres in a rural area of Washington State. There was no next-door neighbor. There were no paved roads for a mile. If someone were to prey on my childhood home, it might resemble scenes found in The Strangers or Them.  Whatever the circumstance, it is horrifying to imagine that you are not safe in your own residence. Absolutely no one wants to wake up to the sound of unknown footsteps downstairs or to the sight of a shadowy figure leaning over the bedside.

My fear of the home invasion may also be a matter of national and temporal relations. The history of the American horror film can be traced by the movement of threats from an external/otherworldly place to an internal/next-door approach. Flying saucers, scientific experiments, and foreign beasts evolved into the psychopath behind the white picket fence or the idyllic child with ungodly intentions. The modern American horror movement begins with the exploitation films of the seventies, which informed us that evil was within. The slasher parade of the eighties told us that the masked killer would prey on those who live in sin. The nineties, rendered in self-reflexivity, taught us that our homes were no longer safe and that typical horror conventions would no longer save us.  And here we are in the new millennium: an era that has stretched postmodernism so thin that it relies on nihilism for shock. With this change comes an assault on the human being in the most forceful ways possible. Invading the home, torturing its inhabitants, demolishing concepts of security, toying with mores, and obliterating hope are some of the most frightening tools a filmmaker can harness.

I think filmgoers often forget about the importance of theme, especially in horror films. A loud noise might make me jump and a well-executed chase scene may raise my heartbeat, but the theme, played out through tone and plot, is what I feel when I watch the film and it is what I spend days thinking about. Through whichever means I rationalize my innate fear of home invasion themes, whether it be emotional or intellectual logic, I just know that these movies scare me and I enjoy them.

What is Good Cinematography?

Now, I don't mean to sound like a snob or anything, but sometimes I wonder how people judge cinematography. This post was inspired after reading several blog reviews regarding Halloween 2. While most reviews have been negative towards the film as a whole, many have singled out the cinematography to be a highlight of the film (even in blogs that don't usually comment on technical elements very often). I found this interesting because I felt that this was one of the worst aspects of H2. 

The movie does indeed have a distinct look, but an edgy, frenetic visual design alone doesn't make good cinematography in my book. There are a couple of ways I judge cinematography--some ways are more objective than others. On the most basic level, cinematography is first and foremost about "getting the shot." That means the action needs to be photographed in such a way that what is intended to be seen can be experienced through proper framing and proper exposure. Artistic liberty aside, I think most people will agree that this is pretty fundamental. Next, lighting and composition are generally set up in such a way that it is aesthetically pleasing. This means using the rule of thirds, being mindful of screen direction, backlighting subjects, and avoiding flat lighting, but of course these are only general rules of thumb. 

I'm sure the acting is brilliant, but I can't really tell for sure...

Not every film must be beautiful. And Rob Zombie's films will probably never be filled with glamour shots. However, breaking basic cinematographic "rules" should be done for a reason. And that reason should always be story. Each film has its own story to tell and each scene within that film has a mini-story. The cinematography should always be finding ways to tell that story for each particular moment. Cinematography should punctuate emotions, get us into the character's head, and capture the message in the most effective way possible. 

What's the point of casting a giant if you hardly every shoot him in wides that emphasize his stature?

So does Halloween 2 do that? Well, it's always difficult to judge such a stylized film because it's honestly tough to tell what is a mistake and what is intentional. Zombie's inclination towards a raw, visceral, handheld approach is one piece of the puzzle and Director of Photography Brandon Trost's execution of it is another. In a rudimentary sort of way, not allowing artistic leeway, Halloween 2's cinematography is a complete failure. Tight framing and underexposure make it very difficult to perceive what is happening throughout much of the film. And of course, there are very few shots that are pleasing to the eye. 

Yes, this is the 21st century, and not all films need to be shot like Citizen Kane (and thankfully they are not). However, getting back to the essentials, does Halloween 2's cinematography actually tell the story with the most impact it could? I would say that it does not. One could argue that the film is so chaotic because Laurie's life has been turned upside down, which is completely valid. But, it's hard to justify that after watching Zombie's first Halloween. It's equally as shaky and unfocused, even when nothing was wrong in Laurie's life. For Zombie, there is no visual progression from a normal conversation to scenes of terror. Almost every scene is photographed the same way (aside from the visions), even when completely different stories are being told. 

What is happening in this picture? 

It's like watching the garage chase scene of the original Prom Night on VHS.

Style aside, I still think the majority of action should be framed and exposed so that I can see what is occurring onscreen. So many scenes in Halloween 2 could have been more effective.  If only Brad Douriff's face was lit so that I can see his brilliant performance, if only I could tell what Michael was doing during all that commotion in the strip club, and if only Laurie's emotions were showcased instead of random objects blocking the foreground. 

Cinematography is at the heart of filmmaking. It's a strange blend of technical ability and creative storytelling. I'm open to a wide range of cinematographic styles. From slow and stationary shots found in John Carpenter movies, the color-oriented wide shots of Argento's films, the hard contrast lighting of Hammer horror, to the fast-paced grittiness of recent French flicks, I am a lover of all the ways to photograph a film. Whatever the movie is, I just hope the director and cinematographer opted for a style that best fit the story and best suited each moment. I don't think that is the case with Halloween 1 or 2. To me, it’s just style over story.

Tell me what you guys think, especially if you did enjoy the cinematography of H2. 

Horror and Reason

The famous piece of artwork above, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” is said to explain the origin of the horror genre in art and literature. Lack of rationality and appreciation for science forces humans to create imaginary beasts to fear rather than elements of the material world. Rationality is in opposition to the ontological world of good versus evil.

Early horror films were often focused on struggles between good and evil, with science as the enemy. When humans play God, bad things happen. That scientist created a monster! Genetic experimentation led to this abomination! Space exploration brought back alien creatures! Whether it is the Universal Monster films of the 30’s and 40’s or the Flying Saucer films of 50’s, horror’s focus was on external threats from beast-like entities. Evil was to blame, the forces of good could identify such evil, destroy it, and the moral universe would return to normalcy.

However, the 60’s and 70’s brought a change in thinking. Rationality, modern subjective philosophies, the Vietnam War, and the deconstruction of the American family were underway. Horror was not in another dimension, in foreign countries, or on another planet…it was at home. This began as supernatural horror assaulted American households, with films like Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist. Soon, the mystical or spectacular evil elements were abandoned in place of a new type of horror: the Slasher. These films concentrated on people as the true source of evil. Horror is tangible, realistic, and at your front door. The bad guy is not the blood-sucking monster from Transylvania, but the Sawyer family down the road.

So, I made a reactionary piece to this concept and called it, “The Awakening of Reason Makes a Monster of Man.” Here it is.

Death by Television: Renditions of Technology in Japan and the U.S.

Another one of my intellectual, pompous things, but this is easier to read than the others I think. Comparing Ringu and The Ring. Spoilers throughout.

“Because so many of us were confusing television experience with direct experience of the world, we were not noticing that experience itself was being unified to the single behavior of watching television,” fears Jerry Mander in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television—a somber analysis of modern American culture (Mander, 26). Originally published in 1978, his work has only become more relevant after almost 30 years, especially for texts of the horror genre that specialize in the relationship between culture and media. While the specifics of Mander’s Four Arguments are hardly workable for readings of techno-thrillers, a holistic approach to his ideas suits the discussion of the American take on Japanese technology-driven horror. Here, I wish to focus on Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998) and its U.S. counterpart, Gore Verbinski’s The Ring (2002). While Ringu can be read as a reaction to technology replacing tradition and possibly as a post-war Left film, the American version is imbedded with so much technology that it seems to be confused as to whether the tools of modern society are something to be praised or feared.

Japanese cinema, in particular the horror genre, emphasizes the mystical (often ghostly) presence of the past and its relevance to the world of the here-and-now. Much of this can be interpreted as a response to “[t]he transformation of Japanese society,”… “which rhetorically signified a break from ‘tradition’ and ‘the past’” (Tateishi, 295). In the context of the Japanese horror genre, the past has usually been repressed or hidden from memory only to rise again in a supernatural form, warning us not to forget history and tradition. For the Japanese Left cinema that reemerged after World War II, representations of history revolve around the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These films read “the past as horror, as layers that are only slumbering under the present” (Kapur, 83). They stand as a “biting and passionate criticism of the existing world,” begging for a reevaluation of the past in order to influence modern circumstances (Kapur, 94). Thus, two contrasting readings of the modern Japanese horror film can be applied—one positively reinforces the past as something that should be remembered and even cherished in order to avoid horror; the other reading is a negative reminder that the past still impacts the present and cannot be ignored due to its intrinsic horror.

Ringu operates around the “mediation and technologisation of ghostly forces” that literally threaten the characters with death unless the past is discovered and passed on (Hills, 166). In this case, the horrible past is represented by Sadako, a young girl with lethal psychic powers. Sadako, whose body decomposes in a well, is not a mere physical entity in Ringu; her presence is embodied by a videotape that will curse its viewers. Upon watching the video, the telephone rings, signaling that the individual has seven days before he or she dies. When reading a simple plot summary, one might assume the film rejects the invasion of technology in Japanese society; yet, the film also uses technology as a medium for allowing the past to occupy the present. “[T]he notion of horror associated with a ghost from the past is further nuanced by the use of technology as a conduit into the here-and-now.” (Tateishi, 298). Because technology permeates modern life so vigorously, the most effective method of communication with the present is through the technology that defines post-industrial society.

Ringu’s depiction of the past is both monstrous and human, constructing a bridge between the traditional Japanese horror film and the Left film. History may be horrific, but it also requires investigation. Sadako’s disfigured body and murderous impulses are juxtaposed with revelations of her character as a victim of misunderstanding and of an unsettling death. In what at first appears to be the conclusion of Ringu, Reiko cradles the festering corpse of Sadako, unconcerned with the girls’ supernatural powers and disturbing appearance. In this example, history is represented as a “process of unmitigated horror from the perspective of its losers” (Kapur, 93). Sadako can be considered the “loser” of history, as she was shunned and murdered by her own family for possessing a mystical gift. This treatment requires the characters of Ringu to actively pursue history even through technology, not to hide from it; “the work of art is ultimately to make the audience want to change the world, not escape it” (Kapur, 85). The hideous results of technologies, such as nuclear bombs for the Left cinema, must be recognized as truth rather than feared or forgotten. By the end of Ringu, Reiko faces a cold reality: the past must be unleashed no matter the consequence and technology is the superior method of transmitting the message. This attitude is captured poignantly with the image of Reiko clinging to her VCR, willing to share the horror with others in order to save her son from certain death.

The American rendition of Ringu stumbles between warnings of a technological enemy and a technological friend, using sensational imagery to evoke undirected anxiety. Unlike the Japanese film, The Ring is saturated with technology; televisions, broadcasting equipment, desktop computers, laptops, digital cameras, video monitors, and cell phones litter the movie. Some of these modern gadgets are manipulated by the ghost of Samara (Sadako) to induce death, while others are utilized as tools of uncovering the past and aiding the struggle to solve the mystery of the videotape. Like Ringu, the technology of copying the videotape rescues Rachel and her son, but it is not regarded as a bitter-sweet victory as in the Japanese film. Aidan quietly asks Rachel what will happen to the person they show the tape to; his grave question goes unanswered as the film cuts to black and rolls credits. Using Jerry Mander as a basis for reading The Ring, it is easier to understand the unexplained consequences of the film, as well as the mixed relationship Americans have with media. “Faced with real darkness, we become frightened, overreact, like a child whose parents have always left the light on. In the generations since Edison, we have become creatures of light alone” (Mander, 57-58). Mander refers to the constant glow of something electronic; and The Ring’s aesthetics are highly engaged with this illuminated technology. Its bluish-green color pallet, which is very different from Ringu’s warm colors, signifies a reality that doesn’t exist beyond the bluish-green burn of the television screen. As the cool colors imply, there is something disconcerting and deeply disturbing about this American culture that hardly registers its technological consumption as existent.

Post-industrial tools have become attached to American identity, but somewhere beneath the surface, there is a growing fear that technology will and must come to an end. Secretly, Americans wish to “rediscover facets of experience that [they have] permitted to lie dormant” (Mander, 357). As Rachel uncovers the dormant body of Samara, who had previously only been viewed through artificial mediums, a glorious release occurs—perhaps even an epiphany—that alters her understanding of the videotape curse. Technological anxiety is replaced by the clarity of human-to-human contact. “What is lost because we can no longer flip a switch for instant ‘entertainment’ will be more than offset by human contact, enlivened minds and resurgence of personal investigation and activation” (Mander, 356). While this scene plays similarly in the Japanese film, an analysis with Mander only seems appropriate in the American context. For Mander, American society must prepare itself for a life without the television. He leads us to a single question: what happens when the pre-technological world escapes through the television and technology no longer matters? The Ring hardly scrapes the surface of that question, but the film provides competing themes regarding technology that match the American mindset, even if they are convoluted.

While both the American and Japanese versions provide complex readings of history and technology, neither film produces a concise method for interpreting their role in modernization and post-industrial society. Ringu presents a more coherent vision of the two, encouraging thoughtful discourse regarding tradition, practicality, and historical confrontation using the fruits of technology. The Ring’s befuddled expression of technology challenges Americans’ techno-consumption, as unrecognized, internal struggles to escape the grasp of technology are confronted with a desired dependency on technology. Both films do spawn a necessity for reconciliation. For Japan, this comes in the form of a reunion with the past in order to understand it via modernism. For the U.S., this is a return to nature before the pre-technological state. Whether the films actually manifest these messages or not is debatable, but each finds a place in the horror genre, as it is the most suitable arena to unravel repressed fears and unspeakable horrors.

Works Cited

Hills, Matt. “Ringing the Changes: Cult Distinction and Cultural Differences in US Fans Readings of Japanese Horror Cinema,” in Jay McRoy (Ed). Japanese Horror Cinema. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. pp. 161-174.
Kapur, Jyotsna. “The Return of History as Horror: Onibaba and the Atomic Bomb.” Horror International. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005.
Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. New York: Quill, 1978.
Ring, The. Dir. Gore Verbinski. Perf. Naomi Watts. 2002. DVD. Dreamworks, 2002.
Ringu. Dir. Hideo Nakata. Perf. Nanako Matsushima. 1998. DVD. Dreamworks, 2003.
Tateishi, Ramie. “The Japanese Horror Film Series: Ring and Eko Eko Azarak.” Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe. Steven Jay Schneider. (Ed.) Surrey: Fab Press, 2003, pp. 295-304.

High and Low: Terror at the Opera as Art-Horror

A long, but interesting look at Terror at the Opera, or better known simply as Dario Argento's Opera. Fans of Argento should take a look, as I explore the film in the same way a critic would analyze Citizen Kane.

Moviegoers have always sought an alternative to the Hollywood film. The emergence of home video has further cemented a subculture of paracinema fans, allowing patrons to indulge in their interests for art films, horror, and pornography—all genres that are known to defy the common conventions of cinema. Joan Hawkins explores this counterculture in Cutting Edge by applying serious academic analysis to the texts of paracinema and by blurring the distinctions between high and low culture. In this essay, I will relate Hawkins’ notion of paracinema as reactionary works to Dario Argento’s Terror at the Opera (1987). His film will be of particular importance when considering it as a reaction against Hollywood’s representation of gender, sexuality, and the inviolability of the body. Simultaneously, Argento’s work provides for further complexity in regards to the role spectatorship plays in onscreen violence. The idea of viewing pleasure is assaulted in Opera, leading one to push Argento’s work beyond a mere reaction to the hegemonic characteristics of mainstream cinema and towards intelligent commentary on the internal sadism of both low and high culture consumers.

The essential feature of paracinema, as defined by Hawkins, is affect: “the ability of a film to thrill, frighten, gross out, arouse, or otherwise directly engage the spectator’s body” (Hawkins, 4). In such films there is an obsession with the body, whether it be a body overwhelmed by orgasm, a body horrified by uncontrollable fear, or a body struggling with emotional heartache. Films that utilize affect are roped into the low culture category, as movies that can’t coincide with level-headed, moral-thinking people. It is for the same reason mainstream audiences degrade paracinema that fans of low-brow films are drawn to them; the appeal lies in the “desire…to see something different’, something unlike contemporary Hollywood cinema” (Hawkins, 7). Hawkins outlines the competing interests in cinema as confrontational—the groups are “polarized into mainstream and ‘alternative’ or ‘fringe’ audiences” (Hawkins, 22). While one group is chastised by the dominant culture, the other is criticized in the text of paracinema. However, Hawkins demonstrates the malleability of high and low art, as they often sit side by side on the shelves of specialized video stores. Fans of schlock also prove to be fans of experimental or art films; and subscribers to paracinema display rather erudite means of deciphering the different texts. “Viewing/reading the films themselves—even the trashiest films—demands a set of sophisticated strategies that…are remarkably similar to the strategies employed by the cultural elite” (Hawkins, 15).

The films of Dario Argento, though initially considered “Spaghetti Splatter,” have evolved to convey rather progressive readings toward gender roles and sexuality. This change in reception may be a result of the poor quality of VHS tapes versus the remastered, reworked DVD titles to hit the shelves in recent years, as supposed by Raiford Guins in “Blood and Black Gloves on Shiny Discs: New Media, Old Tastes, and the Remediation of Italian Horror Films in the United States.” Argento is well-known for literally masking the gender of the killer until the end of the film; this is done through masks, gloves, nondescript clothing, and a raspy voice with an asexual pitch. Adam Knee interprets, “Argento’s films consistently foreground ambiguities of gender and sexuality and repeatedly suggest the instability of power relations” in “Gender, Genre, Argento” (Knee, 215).

Terror at the Opera is no different; it too provides an androgynous killer with gloves, a mask, and a neutral voice. In Opera, the threat is most closely associated with the sexual perversion of the sadomasochistic male. The film’s heroine, Betty, is repeatedly touched by the murderer and utilized as a source of arousal (i.e., her viewing of the murders is a mode of eroticism for the killer). The film’s conclusion ultimately reveals the identity of the killer to indeed be a male; in fact, it is Santini, the police inspector who expresses his enjoyment in watching Betty sing. However, further revelations complicate traditional conceptions of gender and sexuality, as Betty’s mother is discovered to be the instigator of past murders. Her mother encouraged Santini (her lover) to kill for her own sexual satisfaction, as she watched him slaughter beautiful women. Here, both gender roles and sexual gratification are investigated beyond the scope of the Hollywood norm. The power shifts not only between perpetrator and spectator but also between male and female. Santini refers to himself as a slave to Betty’s mother’s desires, so much so that he now seeks a new master via Betty. As Leon Hunt puts it, “Betty is educated into the role of the cold, cruel mother of the masochistic scenario” (Hunt, 334). Opera challenges the status quo’s conceptions of the male/female sexual relationship, making it a reactionary film arguing against the hegemony of social mores.

Argento offends the sanctity of the body in Opera, utilizing affect to highlight its appeal towards audiences of paracinema. A focus is placed on the concept of penetration, both sexual and lethal. Betty’s inability to perform in bed is contrasted with the killer’s able performance, as a lack of penetration in one scene is juxtaposed to the gruesome penetration of a knife through a man’s mouth via close-up. Knee articulates, “no sooner does the female performer fail to perform (be passive, penetrated female) for her boyfriend than she is made to view the killer’s performance (in that her eyes are forced open, penetrated,) which consists of the forcible penetration (graphically detailed, lest one miss the particular resonance) of her boyfriends body with a knifeblade” (Knee, 217). When reading this scene, the body can be read as an object deriving pleasure only through forcible penetration because the complacent female simply won’t satisfy without force. On the other hand, it can also be read as an opposition to the aforementioned reading—a reaction to the dominant alpha male of Hollywood films, such as the John Wayne figure that beats the sense back into women or uses violence to coerce the woman into sex. The bodies of Opera are exposed, ready to be converted into a bloody pulp for the realization of the psychopath’s fantasies, as well the audience’s pleasures.

“The Italian horror films as art-object can also double as a reactionary-object” (Guins, 29). While the normatizing images of gender, sexuality, and body are challenged by Argento’s Terror at the Opera, the film also displays an acute perception of spectatorship that lifts the film to the distinction of art-horror. Questions of horror spectatorship are important when considering the text of Opera, as the film’s complexity grows as one looks deep into Argento’s work. In “A (Sadistic) Night at the Opera,” Leon Hunt characterizes the film as one that is “devoted almost exclusively to issues of visibility, spectatorship, and horror” (Hunt, 333). The opening image of the film is the eye of a raven; it is a dwelling shot as well and one that returns later in the film. From the beginning of the movie, we are forced to reflect on our own gaze. Argento utilizes eyeball violence and themes of spectatorship to involve the audience in the onscreen horror. Betty’s eyes are forced open, risking injury from the needles taped beneath her eyelids. The bullet from a gun passes through the eye of Betty’s friend in a scene where “the weapon is made subservient to the film’s aesthetic organization around the injury-to-the-eye motifs” (Hunt, 330). Nearing the conclusion, the killer’s eye is removed by bloodthirsty, avenging ravens. Hawkins points out the concept of aesthetic distance; Opera seems to invade that respected space by not only projecting images that make us wince but by continually reminding us that we are indeed observers of something horrific. Argento violates the viewer; whether this is intended as a judgment of the human condition or as gore for the sake of gross-out is up for debate. Yet, the text raises inquiries into violence and media whether or not it was intended by the filmmaker.

Opera also points fingers towards the culturally elite upper class. The film mocks the wealthy patrons of operas, as they readily enjoy the violence onstage but gasp in horror at the sight of wild ravens soaring through the theatre. Italy is especially known for its bloody operas. Argento may be asking why his films are shunned for their explicit violence by the high art crowd while the intellectual snobs enjoy the gore of a more sophisticated outlet such as operas. “[H]igh culture—even when it engages the body in the same way that low genres do—supposedly evokes a different kind of spectatorial pleasure and response than the one evoked by low genres” (Hawkins, 6). High and low culture may not be so different, but somehow the aura of elitism sticks to certain categories of art. When Hawkins describes the reactions of the viewer of paracinema—“[t]he spectator cringes, becomes tense, screams, weeps, becomes aroused”—she is not necessarily arguing that these qualities don’t also suit high culture entertainment (Hawkins, 5). Rather, these characteristics are supposedly enjoyed in a more enlightened manner. Argento’s Opera surveys several methods of viewing pleasure—all still focus on the body in sexual, horrific, or melodramatic sensations.

Whether received as low or high art, Argento’s Opera provides for readings that deconstruct the generic conventions of Hollywood cinema. “[H]e establishes a framework within which mainstream assumptions may be thrown into doubt” (Knee, 224). By utilizing gender and sexuality in ways that redefine the power structure between male and female, Argento reworks cinema’s depiction of the relationship. Postulations involving sex are questioned, as the audience of Argento’s films have to treat both men and women as equally capable suspects and victims. Opera additionally attacks the sanctity of the body, demanding attention to the correlation between sexuality and violence. Most importantly, Argento causes us to reconsider “the relationship between the gaze of the woman in the text, the gaze of the spectator, and the violence committed against both” (Hunt, 325). Opera informs us that onscreen violence and sadism are factors that transcend high and low culture.


Works Cited

Guins, Raiford. “Blood and Black Gloved on Shiny Discs: New Media, Old Tastes, and the Remediation of Italian Horror Films in the US.” Horror International. Eds. Tony Williams and Steven Schneider. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005.
Hawkins, Joan. “Sleaze-Mania, Euro-trash, and High Art: The Place of European Art Films in American Low Culture,” Cutting Edge, pp. 3-32.
Hunt, Leon. “A (Sadistic) Night at the Opera: Notes on the Italian horror film.” The Horror Reader. Ken Gelder (Ed.) London: Routledge, 2000.
Knee, Adam. “Gender, Genre, Argento.” The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Barry Keith Grant (Ed.) Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996, pp. 213-230.
Opera. Dir. Dario Argento. Perf. Cristina Marsillach. 1987. DVD. Anchor Bay, 2001.

The Revenge of the Other: Exploitation Cinema of the Seventies

For those of you that enjoy film studies banter. This is about the transformation of the modern American Horror Film during the Seventies, in terms of "Otherness." Sorry for any intellectualism.

In an era dominated by racial tension, economic stratification, and the dissolution of the family, American horror films of the Seventies represented an anxiety toward societal norms and preexisting mores and thus, they confronted these dilemmas by literally changing the face of the Other. Genre anxiety has given rise to the shifting of the Other from a foreign source of horror to an internal source of identity. Communities, whether they are racial, ethnic, or cultural ones, are joined via exploitation cinema in their ability to build a rapport with the Monster because they view themselves as possessing similar qualities of Otherness. In this essay, I will analyze the appeal of low-brow cinema to the so-called outsiders and minorities. First, we will look at the transformation of conceptualizations of the Other, as Robin Wood outlines in “An Introduction to the American Horror Film” and how her analysis applies to the young fans of exploitation horror. Next, I will relate blaxploitation to Wood’s text and its connection to the black community’s notion of identity in a period dominated by racism.

“[I]t is the horror film that responds in the most clear-cut and direct way, because central to it is the actual dramatization of the dual concept, the repressed/the other, in the figure of the monster,” writes Robin Wood (171). Wood’s interpretation of the horror film evolves around the idea of the Other—a repressed element of society that is perceived as a threat external to the culture. This concept has long been tied to psychoanalysis and identified with repressed ideas concerning sexuality. While the Other is something to be feared by society, particularly the bourgeoisie; it is also a source of attraction, as humans are drawn to exotic, rebellious ideas that may be discouraged by the moral majority. “The ‘ideal’…is as close as possible to an automaton in whom both sexual and intellectual energy have been reduced to a minimum,” as we are instructed to constrain ourselves to monogamous, heterosexual relationships and encouraged not to question this standard of behavior (Wood, 169). Because the repressed fear and desire Otherness at the same time, the horror film becomes an ideal outlet for these conflicting feelings—we can get close to the Monster without actually becoming one.

Wood traces the history of the Other in American horror films, as it transforms from a foreign threat to an internal one. Horror films of the Thirties seemed to proclaim that “horror exists, but is un-American”—as unnamed islands and other continents became the playground of the Other’s immorality (Wood, 183). Two decades later, science fiction horror invaded the cinemas, as the Other was labeled as otherworldly. The parallels between sci-fi invasion scenarios and Cold War paranoia are rather obvious, as Americans on and off screen were looking to the sky for doomsday. What distinguishes these films from contemporary American horror is the proximity of the Other—it not only becomes American but it becomes an element of our own mind/body. In particular, the concept of the picturesque American family is torn down by horror of the Seventies.

American horror adopted exploitation as its new manner of presenting the Other, leading to a popular following of distinct social groups rather than mainstream audiences. Films that gained a bizarre fan base were often shunned by conservative Americans, further widening the social gap between the youth and their parents. Wood illuminates, “[t]he horror film has consistently been one of the most popular and, at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood genres” (173). In George Lipsitz’ piece “Genre Anxiety and Racial Representation in 1970’s Cinema,” genre anxiety is defined as “the intrusion of social tremors into cinematic representations in such a way as to render traditional genre icons unsatisfying and incomplete” (216). Exploitation films of the Seventies coincide with this idea, as typical representations of the American family were inconsistent with the reality many teenagers were experiencing. Divorce, war, and sexual freedom were redefining the American experience for younger generations, while this change was ignored by society at large, especially through Hollywood portrayals of the family. Representative of this era and this reformed attitude toward the Other are Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Last House on the Left. All three of these movies challenged the status quo and demanded a reanalysis of what it means to be an American family, as well as what it means to be the Other. Due to its confrontational style, exploitation cinema upsets the Hollywood conventions of the horror film, allowing the marginalized members of society to identify themselves with not only fans of the genre but with the Other itself.

In Massacre, the “travellers [sic] represent normality, and the slaughterhouse family represents the threatening Monster” (Bould 99). Yet, these two families are distinctly juxtaposed to highlight the universality of a will to survive and a need for consumption. In other words, economic and social conditions developed by American choices breed the Monster and thus, the Other is nourished by our own selfish desires. Mark Bould’s work entitled “Apocalypse Here and Now: Making Sense of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” considers the voyage of the teenage group to be an example of “the ugliness and savage heart of the American Dream” (103). Bogged down by a lack of energy (gasoline), the teenagers are ensnared by their own dependency on raw goods. Similarly, the slaughterhouse family converts them into raw material for consumption and ultimately livelihood.

Wes Craven’s first two films shocked audiences with their candid viciousness, but also demonstrated the fragility of American ideals and genre conventions. Like Massacre, Last House also compares two families: a clan of hippy psychos and a happily married couple and their beautiful teenage daughter. The brutality of the killers is clear from the beginning of the film; however, the brutality of the family is slowly teased out as they are confronted with the tragedy of their daughter’s rape and death. After surviving The Last House on the Left, viewers question whether the film was placed in the “horror” genre for the murder of the teenage girls or rather for the methodical torture the avenging parents unleash. Craven snatches Otherness from the typical “bad guys” and places it into the hands of the typical “good guys”—the ideal family.

The Hills Have Eyes is yet another example of a family dichotomy: the rugged, deformed family living in the desert hills and the “normal,” church-going family of the mobile home. Also similar to Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes emphasizes survival and self-destruction. The group of mutants has survived through military testing and extreme conditions, resulting in deformations that render them unable to associate with forms of normalcy. Left to fend for themselves in the hills, they are forced to feed off of road kill—in this case, the all-American family who supports the society that created the mutants’ Otherness. In a time when the United States Military’s legitimacy was in question, The Hills Have Eyes displays genre anxiety by attempting “to create engagement and investment among audiences by inserting contemporary social concerns into a familiar genre,” as worded by Lipsitz in reference to Blacula (218).

Perhaps the most readily identifiable source of genre anxiety and the evolution of the Other is blaxploitation cinema, in particular Blacula, the most popular of the original blaxploitation films. Lipsitz reads the text as a “spasm of genre anxiety”—displaying “the conflict between the conservative continuity reinforced by the persistence of generic forms and the ceaseless pattern of social change that makes almost all generic representations seem inadequate and obsolete” (218). The thread that binds all exploitation horror is the idea of identity—filmic representation of the Other becomes the place to seek identification. Harry M. Benshoff’s piece “Blaxploitation Horror Films: Generic Reappropriation or Reinscription?” explores “ethnicity and race as culturally and socially constructed” entities that build identity with the Other. Frantz Fanon, popular writer on the psychology of colonization and race, insists that the identity of a black man is not defined by himself; rather, the identity is etched in the hate of others. As Fanon declares in Black Skin, White Mask, using Alfred Adler’s psychological approach, “[t]he Negro is comparison”(211). Blaxploitation films are often structured around conflict between white and black—separating the races and their generic forms of cinema only by comparison. The title of Blacula itself implies comparison, as it is undeniably linked to the very European and very white Dracula. Without the popularity of Count Dracula, the character of Blacula would not be as strong of a symbol for the literal and metaphorical enslavement of African Americans (i.e. “[t]he black man’s plight as a victim of white vampirism) (Benshoff, 35). It is because “the count takes away the prince’s African name and gives him a European one very much like his own, transforming Prince Mamuwalde into ‘Blacula’” that we are sympathetic to the film’s Monster rather than its many stock white characters (Lipsitz, 218).

The Other is not only a figure for black men to identify with in Blacula, it also legitimizes the social circumstances of the black community as a reaction to white oppression. For the Other is now a victim; it is not just an internal source of horror but a sympathetic one. “[T]he audience is expected to cheer” on Blacula’s deconstruction of the modern white society that differs very little from the societies of the 17th and 18th centuries participating in the slave trade. This process of social translation of Otherness is referred to in Albert Memmi’s work The Colonizer and the Colonized, in which he describes how the Colonized become the Colonizers they feared. As a consequence of applying the Otherness to the black man, he shall avenge himself and destroy the real Monster: “the racist agents of normality”; but he will then prove himself to be the monstrous Other that white men feared (Benshoff, 37). Blacula’s “aggression in present-day African-America is tied to the destructive legacy of the slave trade” and therefore, he cannot be blamed for the Monster he has become (Medovoi, 7). Blaxploitation provided a ticket for black identity, as the communal experience of the theatre unified their anxiety in a turbulent era.

People ultimately seek ways to break free from the chains of social construction, from the tethering taboos of sexuality, and, in the end, seek reconciliation with the Other. Whether it be through confronting Otherness in the backyard or in oneself, or even justifying Otherness, exploitation cinema vents anxieties formulated from repression and oppression From Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Blacula, staples of the genre are reformed to represent the volatile nature of the family and of race in the Seventies. The American horror film maps the quest for identity among individuals who feel that Hollywood conventions fail to represent their story. The appeal of Otherness in the horror film entices social outcasts and minority groups, so that they can reassure their identity as “something else” or “something different” from the status quo.

Works Cited

Benshoff, Harry M. “Blaxploitation Horror Films: Generic Reappropriation or Reinscription?” Cinema Journal. Vol. 39, No. 2. (Winter) 2000, pp. 31-50.

Bould, Mark. “Apocalypse Here and Now; Making Sense of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” in Gary D. Rhodes (Ed). Horror at the Drive-In: Essays in Popular Americana. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland Publishing, 2001, pp. 97-112.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Mask. Grove Press: New York, 1952.

Lipsitz, George. “Genre Anxiety and Racial Representation in 1970s Cinema.” In Nick Browne (Ed.) ReFiguring American Film Genres: Theory and History. Berkeley: UC Press, 1998.

Medovoi, Leerom. “Theorizing historicity, or the many meanings of Blacula.” Screen. Vol. 39. (Spring) 1998, pp.1-21.

Wood, Robin. “An Introduction to the American Horror Film,” in Barry Keith Grant (Ed). Planks of Reason: essays on the Horror Film. London: Scarecrow Press, 1984, pp. 164-199.