Salute To Slashers

            The new promos for Ryan Murphy’s upcoming season of American Horror Story hints that it might be an homage to 80s slasher films.

            My heart leapt at this. True, most of today’s more successful modern horror movies like The Babadook, The Witch, Hereditary, etc. are more about mood and menace. But there was something so refreshingly blunt about that golden age of movie which eschewed gore and nudity over intelligence. When the hockey-masked killer Jason and Halloween’s Michael Meyers were our gods at the box office; Jamie Lee Curtis was our scream queen and gore make-up artist Tom Savini ruled.

            When John Carpenter’s Halloween debuted in 1978, it set the wheels in motion for a cycle of horror movies in which teenagers existed only to get stabbed and skewered by assorted lunatics with a grudge and an endless supply of interesting weapons. Those were the halcyon days: you could spend a hellish week at work only to kick back on the weekend with your date at the local picture show, hold hands and watch the youth of America being sliced, diced and disemboweled.

            Historically speaking, Halloween didn’t create the blueprint for these films. Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, the story of a group of people on a deserted island who are systematically bumped off, established the premise in 1945. Mario Bava added graphic gore to the mix with Twitch Of The Death Nerve (1971). But it was Sean Cunningham’s Friday The 13^th (1980) that cast the mold for what was to come. A summer camp. A group of horny teens. A knife-wielding psycho. Season with liberal amounts of bare breasts and blood and bake for an hour and a half. The result was Zen-like in its simplicity.

            The fact that these “splatter” epics were cheap to make and promised profits unleashed a tidal wave of low-budget rip-offs. Holidays were snapped up with such offerings as My Bloody Valentine, Mother’s Day, New Year’s Evil, Black Christmas, April Fool’s Day and Home Sweet Home (Thanksgiving).

Santa Claus stopped asking if you’ve been naughty or nice in Christmas Evil and Silent Night, Deadly Night 1, 2 & 3. If Groundhog Day had been made in the 80s, Bill Murray would have been a serial killer in a time loop.

Situations in which teens could be put in peril had to be created, so lunatics stalked schools (The Dorm That Dripped Blood, Final Exam, The House On Sorority Row, Graduation Day, Night School, Splatter University, Sorority House Massacre); camps (Sleepaway Camp 1, 2 & 3, The Burning); forests (Madman, Don’t Go In The Woods, Just Before Dawn, The Forest, Memorial Valley Massacre, The Final Terror); senior proms (Prom Night 1, 2 and 3); stores (Intruder and Hide And Go Shriek); hospitals (Visiting Hours and Halloween II); trains (Terror Train); high-rises (Too Scared To Scream) and movie theaters (Drive-In Massacre, Anguish and Blood Theater). Maniacs never seemed to die and returned in as many sequels as were profitable.

Who said there was no creativity at work in these “body count” movies? Look at the ingenious way these multiple maniacs found to end a life. Aside from knives, axes and machetes, killers used pitchforks, arrows, curling irons, nail guns, pickaxes, a 14-inch Black and Decker power drill and two of my personal favorites- a corkscrew (Friday The 13^th Part 4-The Final Chapter), an umbrella shoved through a body and then opened (Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2), and that nasty fishing hook to the groin (The Mutilator). My favorite tagline was for the movie Pieces which stated “It’s exactly what you think it is!”

Feminists groused that these movies exploited women, but most 80s psychos were equal-opportunity killers, dispatching both men and women (not to mention the occasional pet). And talk about encouraging safe sex and saying no to drugs: promiscuity and recreational narcotic use were rewarded with instant death in slasher movies. If anything, these films could be construed as cautionary tales.

Since there were so many parts available, scores of young actors got their first break playing victims: Kevin Bacon in Friday The 13^th; Tom Hanks in He Knows You’re Alone; Daryl Hannah and Rachel Ward in The Final Terror: Jennifer Jason Leigh in Eyes Of A Stranger; Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens and future Academy Award-winner Holly Hunter in The Burning.

Older actors were able to cash in on the slasher boom too. Farley Granger (The Prowler), Cameron Mitchell (The Toolbox Murders); Betsy Palmer (Friday The 13^th); Glenn Ford (Happy Birthday To Me); Vera Miles (The Initiation); Jack Palance (Alone In The Dark); Jeanne Crain (The Night God Screamed). The list goes on endlessly.

Think how much better today’s movies would be if they had a slasher in them. Downtown Abbey would be so much more fun if there was a killer hiding in the walls of the mansion. Imagine Maggie Smith dispatched with a meat tenderizer. Or Hugh Bonneville found by servants drawn and quartered on the front lawn.

How about TV? If a series ends or gets cancelled, just think of the closure the show’s fans would experience if the whole cast was killed off for the finale. Imagine a police officer cautiously entering Will & Grace’s apartment to find everyone hacked to pieces. Talk about a punch line. No one was ever going to be satisfied with whatever ending was constructed for Game Of Thrones, but imagine how disturbing if they had slipped in scenes of Arya Stark sneaking around villages and creeping in windows stabbing indiscriminate strangers with her little “needle” knife. This year’s finale of Criminal Minds might be more fascinating if the weary officers of the BAU finally just gave up trying to catch serial killers and decided to start killing themselves, just for the hell of it. The thought of criminally cute Matthew Gray Gubler running amok with a chainsaw might temper the sadness of not being able to see another episode of that enjoyably twisted TV show.

And how much fun reality TV would be if The Bachelorette chose a more bloodthirsty process of elimination?