The Slasher Film

2019 ◽  
pp. 181-202
Author(s):  
Bryan Turnock
Keyword(s):  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
Slasher Film ◽  
Slasher Films ◽  
Lasting Influence

This chapter argues that of all the horror genre's many strands and variations, the original 'slasher' cycle of the 1970s and early 1980s remains the most disreputable and critically vilified, yet its commercial popularity and lasting influence are unquestionable. Whilst rarely making out-and-out slashers themselves, major Hollywood studios cashed in by buying finished films from their independent producers, giving the makers an instant profit and the studios a cheap marketable film virtually guaranteed an audience of teenagers. The chapter examines a film frequently cited as a forerunner of the slasher, one heavily influenced by the Italian giallo genre of crime fiction. In diverging from the established conventions of the giallo, Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (1971) introduced a number of narrative and aesthetic features found in many of the slasher films that followed. The chapter then considers the influence of the video industry on the evolution of the horror genre (and vice versa), and looks at the issue of censorship as it assesses the British 'video nasties' scare of the early 1980s.

Body Horror

2019 ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Bryan Turnock
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
David Cronenberg ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Film Maker ◽  
Lasting Influence

This chapter describes Canadian film-maker David Cronenberg as one of the most highly regarded auteurs within the horror genre. During the 1970s and 1980s, from low-budget independents to high-profile studio productions, the viewing of a 'David Cronenberg film' usually promised horror audiences a unique and disturbing experience. Coinciding with advances in make up and special effects, and the rise in popularity of the artists who created them, Cronenberg's films spearheaded one of the most popular sub-genres of the 1980s in the form of 'body horror'. The chapter looks at how and why this sub-genre emerged, a product of technological, commercial, and cultural changes in the industry, and how it relates to the 'transformation' films that had gone previously. It also discusses how such a distinctive director as Cronenberg was able to produce a successful mainstream horror film (The Fly, 1986) while remaining true to his own world view, and the lasting influence of his work on the genre as a whole.

You can't escape: inside and outside the ‘slasher’ movie

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catriona Miller
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
Women's Experience ◽  
Slasher Films

Since the 1970s, the ‘slasher’ movie, with its violence towards women and the surviving ‘final girl’, has been a constant presence in the horror genre to the delight of some and the perplexed dismay of others. Traditional academic approaches to the genre have tended to make assumptions about who is watching these films and why. This article uses a Jungian-inflected approach to reconsider the potential meaning of the genre, suggesting that the violence in the films is less an exhortation to violence against women, but rather a representation of women's experience of patriarchy, with the ‘final girl’ as a figure of resistance. The article also considers the meaning of the more contemporary ‘final girl as perpetrator’ slasher films.

“You're All Doomed!” A Socioeconomic Analysis of Slasher Films

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 953-970 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARA M. KVARAN
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Socioeconomic Analysis ◽  
Slasher Film ◽  
Economic Climate ◽  
Slasher Films ◽  
American Economy

This paper posits a socioeconomic explanation for the popularity of the slasher film genre. These films created a unique sub-genre in which teenage protagonists had to contend with unstoppable forces, in the form of manic killers, while every aspect of modernity and the middle-class lifestyle failed them. Cars and telephones die, the suburbs offer no sanctuary, and adults are absent or ineffectual. The slasher genre rose in popularity as the American economy spiraled into recession. By examining the big three franchises of Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street this paper analyzes the slasher films of the 1980s and their remakes in the late 2000s. It argues that slasher films symbolized a cathartic release for their mainly adolescent audiences at a time in their lives when impending adulthood and an unfavorable economic climate seemed to conspire against them.

The Birth of Modern Horror

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
Bryan Turnock
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The Face ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Lasting Influence

This chapter focuses on the birth of modern horror. The horror genre is ultimately concerned with the battle between good and evil. At times this can be very clearly delineated, but in real life this is not always the case. At the time of its release, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) was truly ground-breaking in its approach to horror in everyday life. Shocking and controversial, it was initially denounced by critics yet became a worldwide box-office sensation and set the direction of the genre for the next fifty years. One of the most analysed and discussed films in cinema history, and arguably the single most influential film in the evolution of the horror genre, entire books have been written about every aspect of Psycho's production, reception and lasting influence. By contextualising the film in the environment of a Hollywood that found itself under mounting pressures, the chapter examines how Hitchock's low-budget film changed the face of horror forever.

scholarly journals Slasher therapy: the slasher movie as an allegory for uncovering trauma

Literartes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 199-214
Author(s):  
Amanda de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Process ◽  
Film Structure ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Fictional Narratives ◽  
Slasher Film ◽  
Slasher Films

This study aims at analyzing slasher films as potential allegories for the therapeutic process of uncovering trauma, proposing a reading of the slasher killer as a metaphor for the trauma. To perform this analysis, the plots of the movies A Nightmare on Elm Street (Bayer, 2010) and Final Girls (Schulsson, 2015), were read as possible allegories for a psychoanalytical process in which their final girls come to terms with trauma as they face the killers. This analysis is performed based on the slasher film structure as composed by Final Girl versus Slasher killer, as defined by Carol Clover (1992), and, as their confrontation takes place in what Clover calls the Terrible place, that is compared to the unconscious and its dynamics, as proposed by Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id (2019). The correlation of trauma and fictional narratives is performed based on Cathy Caruth’s (1996) studies of trauma and the construction of narratives.

Introduction: Crime Fiction and the Past

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-156
Author(s):  
Eric Sandberg
Keyword(s):  
Crime Fiction ◽  
The Past

Brian Cliff, Irish Crime Fiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-393
Author(s):  
Shirley Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Crime Fiction

Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film

1987 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol J. Clover
Keyword(s):  
Slasher Film

An early mainstream economist from Hungary: István Varga (1897–1962)

2003 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Majoros
Keyword(s):  
Austrian Economic ◽  
National Income ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Turbulent Times ◽  
The Usa ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Economic Thinking ◽  
Lasting Influence

The study introduces a Hungarian economic thinker, István Varga*, whose valuable activity has remained unexplored up to now. He became an economic thinker during the 1920s, in a country that had not long before become independent of Austria. The role played by Austria in the modern economic thinking of that time was a form of competition with the thought adhered to by the UK and the USA. Hungarian economists mainly interpreted and commented on German and Austrian theories, reasons for this being that, for example, the majority of Hungarian economists had studied at German and Austrian universities, while at Hungarian universities principally German and Austrian economic theories were taught. István Varga was familiar not only with contemporary German economics but with the new ideas of Anglo-Saxon economics as well — and he introduced these ideas into Hungarian economic thinking. He lived and worked in turbulent times, and historians have only been able to appreciate his activity in a limited manner. The work of this excellent economist has all but been forgotten, although he was of international stature. After a brief summary of Varga’s profile the study will demonstrate the lasting influence he has had in four areas — namely, business cycle research and national income estimations, the 1946 Hungarian stabilisation program, corporate profit, and consumption economics — and will go on to summarise his most important achievements.

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