BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR: The Hurt Locker BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE: Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE: Sandra Bullock for Blind Side BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:Mo'Nique for Precious BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: UP ACHIEVEMENT IN ART DIRECTION: Avatar ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY: Bruno Delbonnel for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (I'm serious too) ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN: Catherine Leterrier for Coco Before Chanel ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTING: James Cameron for Avatar BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: The Cove ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM EDITING: Bob Murawski and Chris Innis for The Hurt Locker BEST FOREIGN FILM: The White Ribbon ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING: Wylie Stateman for Inglourious Basterds ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING: Avatar ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS: Avatar ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner for Up in the Air ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds (I hope this happens just for the acceptance speech alone...)
Auteur Criticism: Eyes Wide Shut and Stanley Kubrick
When it comes to the auteur theory, this is a debate over whether it is possible for one person to be the “author” of a film, or not, seeing that it is argued that film is more entertainment than art. The people who would argue this have obviously not seen the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Orson Welles or Stanley Kubrick. An auteur is defined as “a filmmaker whose individual style and complete control over all elements of production give a film its personal and unique stamp” (dictionary.com). This definition couldn’t be applied more to anyone than that of Stanley Kubrick. He has was one of the most respectable directors in cinematic history, yet only directed 13 feature films over the span of a half-century. Each of his films, with the exception of his first two, were adapted from novels; yet Stanley Kubrick left his mark on each of those films. He was more than just the films’ director; he also acted as the producer, writer, and even sometimes the cinematographer and editor. Kubrick loved to challenge himself, his crew and cast, by being vigorous through pre-production, production and post-production.
His films cover a vast array of different topics, yet they are all uniquely the production of one cinema’s most visionary directors. Each film was unlike the one that came before it, and also the one that came after; Kubrick was constantly switching genres, never making the same type of movie twice. Paths of Glory, his first feature film, was an anti-war movie; Lolita, a love-story of sorts that was more concerned about lust and obsession; Dr. Stangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a sardonic, satirical black-comedy about the Cold War; 2001: A Space Odyssey, a philosophical science fiction film about artificial intelligence and evolution; A Clockwork Orange, a social-study of teen violence in the world; Barry Lyndon, a period piece of one man’s life journey; The Shining, a horror film about the destruction of an all-American family living in isolation from society; Full Metal Jacket, another war movie, but was more concerned with the dehumanization of American soldiers during Vietnam; and lastly, Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick’s meditation on fidelity, sex and death. These films seem to have nothing in common, but when watching them, one can see an artist at work. Many Kubrick films have to do with existential problems and society's effect/influence on the individual, the dehumanization of the individual, and the problem of differing dream from reality as well as recurring cinematic motifs, thus making Stanley Kubrick an auteur.
Kubrick is infamous for being very exacting with his actors, as noted in The Complete Kubrick: Kubrick’s customary high take ratio – rumor had it he shot ninety-five different versions of Cruise walking through a door [in Eyes Wide Shut] – suited several other actors too. “I loved the fact that you were able to work a scene again and again,” Alan Cumming told Premier magazine, adding that, because the sound technician kept track of the slate numbers silently, “you didn’t go, ‘Oh, take 48, my God, this is terrible. You weren’t bored, because every take was different”. (Hughes, 247).
Stanley Kubrick’s films are more concerned with the study of the characters than the plot alone. His films play out as if a microscope were put up to the innate-human nature of his characters; his films show us the inner-workings, and sometimes, the dark side of people; it’s very hard to watch a Kubrick film and find yourself liking or relating to the main character(s). Yet Kubrick is well known for getting some of the best performances out of many accepted actors and actresses. His use of multiple takes, leading to lots of stress and anxiety in the actors, is what can be attributed to the very strongly emotional performances seen in his films such as Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson’s roles in The Shining or Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut. Throughout Eyes Wide Shut’s extended shooting schedule, the usual rumors circulated: Kubrick was putting his two stars through an infinity of retaken scenes and script additions. If true, it looks worth the pains taken and given. Their performances come from mind as well as gut. Kubrick has wrenched Cruise and Kidman away from the placenta of their customary starring roles, making them seem to think for themselves and feel grief, guilt, shame and jealousy, too. (Walker, Taylor, Ruchti, 356) Kubrick’s ability to get the most honest, powerful emotions out of his actors could be ascribed to the stressful environment he would create with his re-takes of shots, and even due to the fact that he read plenty about psychology and applied it to his directing methods.
Setting Kubrick’s films all take place in different times and places, and obviously, in different genres of film. Yet one thing that can be said of his films is that each one contains a pivotal scene that takes place inside of a bathroom. This is the imagery Kubrick liked to use to show the audience that we are really looking into these characters’ lives more than the average film would. Each of Kubrick’s films showed us that we are not passive viewers of these characters’ lives, but more of active “voyeurs” of sorts. The bathroom, of course, is the most personal and secluded room a person can be in. Yet Kubrick (think of what Hitchcock did with Psycho), invites us into these private lives in the most private place a person can be, with an unblinking eye. In Eye’s Wide Shut, location is crucial to the imagery and motifs Kubrick is presenting. From the very first shots of the film, we are invited into Bill and Alice Harford’s (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) private life. We are introduced to Alice, wife of Bill, as she has her back to the camera and her dress slips off of her body, then the screen cuts to black. Following that is the married couple getting ready in the bathroom together, with Bill at the mirror and Alice using the toilet. Bathrooms and their ceramic conveniences occupy a central and ominous place in Kubrick interiors: the scene where Jack Nicholson’s Torrance encounters the messenger from his past life and foresees his fate in The Shining; or the site where Vincent D’Onofrio’s demented Marine in Full Metal Jacket blows his brains out seated on the toilet. (Walker, Taylor, Ruchti, 352-53)
Yet the most important use of the bathroom in Eyes Wide Shut is when Bill is at the Christmas party his friend Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack) throws. After Bill is nearly seduced by two attractive young women, he is summoned to Victor’s bathroom to resuscitate a young, naked woman who has overdosed on drugs. It is implied that Victor was having some sort of sexual encounter with this woman, therefore cheating on his wife. This scene is so significant because it is introducing Bill to the extra-marital world for the first time which leads to the argument with his wife and, ultimately, his journey to the orgy.
Another important thematic motif is the use of Christmas to signify the “dream state” Bill finds himself in. As with other Kubrick films (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange), there is the contrast between reality and dream states present throughout many scenes in this film. Christmas trees and lights are nearly ubiquitous throughout the film, present in nearly every scene starting with the Christmas party. “Christmas trees appear in almost every scene: in the couple’s living room, in the ballroom at Ziegler’s apartment, at the Sonata Café, even in the prostitute’s tiny apartment…Each appearance of a Christmas tree leads to a new phase of the doctor’s alienation.” (Helmetag, 277). One of the first shots of this Christmas party is that of the dance floor, shot at a relatively high-angle overlooking the dance floor, which is illuminated by chandeliers and (mostly) Christmas lights. “These ‘rich and famous’ guests dancing with the stars to easy-listening music might soon be enveloped into some time warp like that in The Shining, doomed to repeat their pleasurable, purposeless distractions to time without end.” (Walker, Taylor, Ruchti, 350) Yet even with the dreamlike use of Christmas lights in the party scene, Christmas lights are also present in nearly every single interior shot throughout Eyes Wide Shut. It is not until the end of the film, after Bill meets with Victor to discuss the last 24 hours of his dream-like walkabout the city and the events that unfolded after attending the orgy, that the Christmas lights are most important. “His nocturnal wanderings come to an end, and Kubrick shows us Bill arriving home. As Bill enters his home, he turns off the Christmas lights that have been so prominently featured throughout the film, as if to signal that the fantasy is over. It is time for Bill to [finally] face his wife.” (Hoffman, 77).
Structure Seeing that Stanley Kubrick started out as a photojournalist, his movies are highly visual, allowing the images to speak louder than words. He constantly utilizes both elaborate moving-camera shots (mostly with the use of steadicam) and also very symmetrical compositions. “One of Kubrick’s formal trademarks is the use of symmetry and perspective in his compositions, which usually communicate a sense of uncontrollable fate.” (Mather, 209) These compositions are customary in Kubrick’s films: from the interiors of the barracks in Full Metal Jacket to the hallways of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Kubrick uses symmetry in his compositions most sparingly in Eyes Wide Shut, unless when needed to express the situation of providence and uncertainty. The famous “hallway shot” Kubrick has in his movies is when he combines both his use of the moving camera and that of a perfectly symmetrical composition of the hallway, it surrounds the character on all sides, creating a frame within a frame. This hallway shot is used many times in Eyes Wide Shut as the camera follows Bill Harford on his journey through the city by night, coming across strange people and even stranger situations, in search of some sort of answer to why his wife felt lustful towards another man. Every time Kubrick uses his hallway shot, we are watching Bill travel though a location that is foreign to him; it surrounds him, overtaking him in size and importance. Kubrick loved to use this shot in his films to show the contrast between disorder and order. His characters are always going through an internal struggle, and must fight against outside influences from their environment, and Kubrick used the frame within a frame shot of hallways to show this distraught character traveling through this orderly external world to find their own purpose at the end.
Kubrick’s use of color in his films is indicative of not only mood but also theme. Of all the Kubrick films done in color (2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket) Eyes Wide Shut is the most vivid in its color usage. Two main primary colors are ubiquitous throughout the film; red and blue. Throughout the film, a blue gelled light is used to signify the ambient moonlight. Seeing that nearly the entire film takes place at night, this dramatic blue is in virtually every scene. Yet this isn’t an “ordinary” artificial moonlight color seen in most films, it is a very bold and flamboyant blue. The reason for this is that the entire movie takes place in a dreamlike state for Bill Harford. After Bill and Alice “awake” from their dream is when this blue light isn’t seen anymore. This is also similar to the blue used in the bathroom scene in Full Metal Jacket, which also takes place at night, where Private Pyle kills himself, but not before saying “ I am…in a world of shit”. Furthermore, there is one color that cannot unnoticed in any of his films; the color red. He constantly uses red for its association with danger or harm. For example, take 2001: A Space Odyssey and its many uses of the color red. “White, black and red are its predominant hues: the black of space, the white of the spacecraft in it, the red glow bathing the crew inside the craft at moments of tension, peril, or disaster. (Walker, Taylor, Ruchti, 224). Or the red elevator doors and the dark red blood that spills from them in The Shining. But it is the use of red in Eyes Wide Shut that is most palpable. Red is used in every scene that involves Bill’s journey into the “underworld” of debauchery and promiscuity. Such as the doors of the prostitutes house Bill is invited into, the walls and stage curtain at the Sonata Café that Bill finds his old friend Nick, playing piano in (which is how he gets information about the orgy). Or the orgy scenes, where red is most evident, from the color of the carpets to the masked leader of the orgy, who is draped in a red cape. “Kubrick ballasts the architectural flamboyance by rigorously formal pattering of the figures in it, while a palate reduced to stark crimsons and livid purples signals the danger of trespassing on forbidden territory.” (Walker, Taylor, Ructhi, 230).
“The Glare” Following with the theme of the dark side of human nature and the dehumanization of characters, Kubrick uses his most iconic shot which has been dubbed “the glare”. It is the glare shot which is a common shot in Kubrick films which tend to show a character's emotional meltdown by showing a close up of the actor with their head tilted down slightly and their eyes looking up straight into the camera. In the Shining, the glare shot occurs when Jack is staring out a window and viewing a snow covered ground. The camera slowly zooms in on Jack who has demented look on his face. That one shot says it all without one word of dialog. Full Metal Jacket is great depiction of dehumanization […] Once again in Full Metal Jacket, the glare shot is used. This time it is in a bathroom where Private Pyle is sitting on a toilet with an M16 in his hands. The glare shot shows just how much Private Pyle has changed since the beginning of the movie. (associatedcontent.com) The use of “the glare” in Eyes Wide Shut cannot go unnoticed, as with the aforementioned films. Although the use of Kubrick’s glare isn’t as conspicuous and diabolic as it is in previous Kubrick films, it still plays an important role in Eyes Wide Shut. One such use of “the glare” is when Bill Harford is riding inside of a taxi cab on a number of occasions. The first time is when he leaves the apartment after his wife’s confession of feeling licentious towards another man and takes a taxi cab to visit a deceased patient of his. During this cab ride, Bill is framed in a mid-close up with chin tilted downwards, but eyes upward looking toward the camera; this is Kubrick’s first use of “the glare”. In this scene, Bill’s glare is “focused” on a scene he has concocted in his imagination of his wife philandering with the sailor she mentioned earlier that night. “Kubrick adroitly makes use of genre expectations and cinematographic history to make an aesthetic statement on love and Bill's assumptions of love […] Kubrick portrays Dr William Harford's imaginings of his wife in a sexual encounter with a navy officer with the aesthetic of a mainstream pornographic film.” (Frey, 41). This pornographic image Kubrick is showing us is seemingly from Bill Harford’s subjective point-of-view. The juxtaposition of this image and “the glare” shot is what Kubrick is using to show us the state of mind Bill is in. He is beginning to question his wife’s faithfulness and also marriage in general. This stems from the previous scene, during which Bill and Alice have an argument over marriage and fidelity; Alice asks Bill if he wanted to sleep with the two women she saw him talking to earlier at the party and: He adds that he does not desire other women because, as he tells Alice, ‘we are married and because I would never lie to you or hurt you’. Unfortunately, Bill’s claim only fuels his wife’s anger, because Alice interprets it to mean that Bill’s only reason for not sleeping with the models is ‘out of consideration’ for her, not because he does not desire them. (Hoffman, 63). As with other Kubrick movies, Eyes Wide Shut is more than just about a struggling relationship, it is also about the challenging of institutions, in this case, the institution of marriage. The “institution” vs. the individual is present in nearly every Kubrick movie: The institution of family in The Shining, the individual vs. society in A Clockwork Orange, the soldier vs. the military in Full Metal Jacket. The one thing that links all these films together is the use of “the glare” to show the degradation of the individual due to the conflicts with the establishment they find themselves apart of. As with Full Metal Jacket’s treatment of the soldier as being nothing more than a mere member of the overall structure of the military, Kubrick treats Bill Harford’s assumptions of marriage in a similar light: His eyes are indeed wide and shut at the same time, and the film is about, precisely, the relation of voyeurism to obliviousness in the construction of bourgeois heterosexuality. Kubrick’s attention to the structure of institutions may be seen to be in abeyance, then, only because it has been turned to that of an institution so prevalent that it might not even be recognized as one. It is as if the theme has become submerged, newly unconscious—distilled as the most fundamental and durable assumptions typically are. (Morrison, 39).
Stanley Kubrick was one of the least prolific yet one of the most respected filmmakers of his generation. With his career spanning over 40 years and having made 13 films, it is hard not to call him an auteur when looking at his method of use with his actors, motifs and thematic elements, color usage, camera movement and signature shots as a means of direct speech to the audience. After Kubrick’s death, Steven Spielberg was interview for the Eyes Wide Shut DVD, and he had this to say of Kubrick’s films: “Kubrick films tend to grow on you, you have to see them more than once. The wild thing is… I defier maybe one Kubrick film that you can turn off when you start it; it’s impossible. He’s got this fail-safe button or something, it’s impossible to turn off a Kubrick film.” (Eyes Wide Shut) This is the result of a great film artist, the auteur: Stanley Kubrick
I stumbled across this the other day while "surfing" Roger Ebert's website. I've always wanted to write about Unbreakable, but Emerson beat me to it. Watch the video, it's neat. LINK
I was having trouble finding a 5th scene, so I chose this one because it's the first that came to my mind. This is only the second feature film that Roger Avery made, and it's not all that great, but worth the watch. He is the guy that wrote Pulp Fiction with Tarantino. He is also the guy that had come up with most of Pulp Fiction, but Tarantino screwed him over and took all the writing credit for it, go figure. Oh wait, Tarantino was nice enough to give him the "Stories by..." credit.
But first time I saw this scene I couldn't stop grinning. The pace of this scene encompasses everything we now see on television, these quick cuts without a moments breath in narration. MTV generation filmmaking to the fullest extent. I have still not watched a scene in a movie quit like this one, and if I have, I'm willing to bet this one was first. Either way, it's funny, innovative and has probably influenced a lot of commercials, but I can't think of any as of right now.
#4- "You're Part Eggplant"- True Romance
Dear Tony Scott,
You haven't made any really good movies, but somehow you made one kick-ass scene. Congratulations.
Sincerely,
Tim
Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken. That's pretty much all you need to know. Just watch and love.
#3- "Winkie's Dream"- Mulholland Drive
I am not a fan of David Lynch for the most part, but I did enjoy Mulholland Drive even if it still doesn't make total sense to me yet. But this scene was great, and managed to scare the feces out of me. I've only seen this movie 3, maybe 4, times and I still don't get what this scene has to do with anything, but who cares?
First of all I've always noticed that in the classic two-shot dialogue sequence that the camera is literally "floating". It's effective because it gives a dreamlike quality to the scene where a dream is being described. I guess maybe the importance of this scene is that is sticks with the idea that this entire movie is a dream (as cliche as it sounds) and this is about a dream actualizing itself. I digress... As I've said the camera is "floating" in this scene, the ENTIRE scene, there is not one static shot in the whole 5 minutes.
The way that Patrick Fischler describes this dream is very well acted, you can tell he has this anxiety of telling someone about this dream, but it seems as if he has to. You can tell he is nervous as hell, and the camera makes us start to feel nervous about where this scene is heading....
The final walk to the back of the restaurant takes an entire minute, which is what it would probably take to actually walk to this location, but in the world of film it seems quite a long time. It is also mostly a POV shot with a steadicam and the tension escalates until we finally see this man in back of Winkie's. I don't know if you'll agree, but it really did make me jump upon first viewing.
#2- "This is a Harvard bar, huh?"- Good Will Hunting
Welp, Gus Van Sant's most (or second most) "conventional" films, yet every time I see this scene, I get an intellectual erection. And I hate to say it, but the writing in this scene, and even the entire movie, is great; But I'm still skeptical if Ben Affleck had anything to do with the writing or just slapped his name on the credits. Matt Damon went to Harvard and studied english, but never graduated. On the other hand, Ben Affleck went to Occidental College (where?) to study Middle Eastern studies, but dropped out after a year. Either way, this scene and movie is great.
We've all met people like this didactic, Harvard prick. And Will Hunting does such a good job summing this guy up that it makes me wish I was as pedantic as this guy just so I could have Will Hunting give me the same lecture just so I could hear it in person.
#1- "Drug deal gone wrong" - Boogie Nights
(sorry for the quality of this video)
Now I know what you're thinking, Paul Thomas Anderson sucks. Well actually you're not thinking that, and if you are, you should be shipped off to a third world country and work in a sweat shop.
Everyone knows the story of Boogie Nights, the classic rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-bitches kind of movie. Dirk Diggler has a huge weiner, and this scene shows the exact opposite of that. If you're reading this, then you probably know the situation: Dirk's career is waning and he is doing more lines of cocaine than you can find on college-ruled notebook paper, so him and his "friends" go to sell Rahad Jackson (this movie has some of the best character names of all time) some coke that is cut with baking powder [?] and the following scene ensues.
There are so many things going on in this scene, we as an audience are on sensory overload. You have blue lights subtly placed all over the apartment, the arrangement of the furniture is no wear near "organized" and you have Cosmo (he's asian) lighting off firecrackers and some classic 80's music you wouldn't expect to hear in a scene like this. This is genius on PTA's part. Now it seems absurd to have this little asian kid lighting off firecrackers, but in the context of this scene it just makes sense. Your in this coke-dealer's house, with a slight ubiquitous haze of smoke and Sister Christian blasting on the stereo. From the beginning of the scene, with the gate entrance, you know this isn't your ordinary "home".
This scene is about 9 minutes long and never once do you get a chance to relax, PTA keeps you constantly on edge. The camera is nearly always moving, even if it is a very slight movement (which PTA loves to do) and he constantly cuts back to the wide shot of these 3 bone-heads sitting on the couch, with plenty of space on either side of the frame. These guys are little shits in a world completely unknown to them, and at any moment anything can happen and come from anywhere. We are reminded by this every time Cosmo lights off a firecracker and they jump in their seats. And when Rahad Jackson starts playing russian roulette with his gun, at first you don't know if the guns goes off or if it's a firecracker. I wonder if Rahad Jackson has Cosmo purposely lighting off firecrackers to let these guys know that if they do get shot for trying to screw him over, nobody is going to hear it because they'll think it's just another firecracker; Or it's just for the convenience of the scene to keep the audience on edge. Either way, its great stuff.
Now the shot where the camera holds the close-up of Dirk for a good 50 seconds, we see one of the biggest, yet simply done, character transitions. First Dirk kind of does this grin which is basically saying "eh, what the hell do I have to lose?", and then a few seconds later he just goes stone cold in the face. Without saying a word, we all know that Dirk is thinking "what the fuck am I doing here? How did it come to this?". I'm sure I've seen shots similar to this in films before, but never has one stuck with me for so long. I don't know if it's the context of the film or Mark Wahlberg's (surprisingly) good acting, but this shot is the best part of the scene.
Thanks PTA for giving us all a lesson on how to masterfully construct a scene.
“Do you like scary movies? “ ” What's the point? They're all the same, some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door, it's insulting.”- Scream, 1996 (imdb.com)
The horror genre is the black sheep of the film industry. It is usually associated with providing very lethargic plots and superficial characters.These films are usually classified as a “B- Movie”. A B-movie is defined by the B- Movie Database as one that has:
Poor production including some of the worst special effects conceivable in a motion picture
Bad acting
Unknown actors and actresses or if they are known, they must be a member of the B-movie cabal of actors including the likes of Steven Segal, Lorenzo Lamas, Lance Henriksen, and Wesley Snipes
A badly written and confusing script that either tries to be clever and intelligent or artsy and different. The end result is neither.
An abundance of continuity errors and screw-ups that make you think the movie was filmed at the directors lakeside cottage with a bunch of drunken buddies.
They go direct to video (bmdb.ca)
I would like to argue that horror films may appear to be “B-movies” on the surface, but there are things at work, almost subconsciously, in these films that lead to a very lucid commentary on different social issues. All sorts of different types of films deal with social issues, but the horror genre does it in the most abstract, unobtrusive way. Early monsters films like Dracula and The Thing from Another World, to the zombie films like Night of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later, to the teen-slasher films like Halloween and Scream; These movies are about much more than just scary monsters or unstoppable serial killers, they are metaphors used to comment on our social values and ideologies.
Pablo Picasso once said: “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” (quotegarden) This quote couldn’t be applied more perfectly to any other art form than that of filmmaking. Filmmaking is one of the definitive forms of art, combining all facets of art: painting, photography, literature, music, acting and architecture. Using this quote in context of the horror film further cements the idea of how this genre is used to criticize social principles and ideologies. Who could take the story of Dracula or Night of the Living Dead at face value? The answer would be most filmgoers. That is the problem with the art of filmmaking; it is not only a form of art but also a form of entertainment.
Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula has been adapted for the screen over thirty times since 1931.The story of Dracula is not an unfamiliar one; it is about a vampire that struggles with eternal life (unless a wooden stake is driven through his heart) and the search for his bride (which he has to bite in the neck in order for her to become “undead” like Dracula is). I would like to focus on the two most superlative of the other Dracula films; The 1931 Dracula directed by Tod Browning and the 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula directed by Francis Ford Coppola. These two films are significantly similar, even though there was a 61 year gap between the productions of these films.The prevailing theme in both of these films is that of sexual norms. Sex is a common theme among horror films, but the context in which it is portrayed in Dracula is worth noting, especially of the 1931 version of the film.When evaluating horror films, one must always think about the time period during and before the films creation. The 1920s were just a decade before the release of Tod Browning’s Dracula.
“The 1920s had, indeed, roared. It was a decade of jazz, illicit alcohol, sexual promiscuity, and gender confusion. The epitome of the Roaring Twenties was the “flapper”- a liberated woman of the jazz age who cut her hair short and began wearing trousers….As with other areas of culture, the 1920s represented a period of great moral experimentation within the seemingly secure envelope of American political and economic stability. The 1930s, on the other hand, brought this stability to a crashing end.” (Phillips 2005)
So in this context, we could deduce that Dracula represents the antagonist’s need for “normalcy”. Dracula represents everything that the people whose lives he invades are not. He is not living nor dead, not human nor animal, nor grounded in present time being that he is quasi-immortal. But the biggest issue here is the sexual norms and confusion that is most salient. Film critic Roger Ebert has addressed this topic: “The vampire Dracula has been the subject of more than thirty films; something deep within the legend is suited to cinema. Perhaps it is the joining of eroticism and terror”. (rogerebert.com) Being the early 1930s, sexuality was still a very taboo matter, especially after the untamed 1920s. The film came out right around the time prohibition ended, and the end of the jazz age where marijuana smoking and sexuality was being explored. Dracula represents the primal instinct of sexual appetite, and he uses his charm to accomplish this: by wooing his women and then going in for the “fatal kiss”. Mina, the female lead in which Dracula is attempting to take her human life and making her into his “vampire bride”, almost falls prey to Dracula’s attempts at seduction. “When Mina begins to change into a vampire she states that she would rather die than become a threat to anyone she loves. Van Helsing responds, “you must not die…your salvation is his destruction”. Thus Mina’s salvation- and indeed the salvation of all- lies in her resistance to Dracula’s sexuality; that is, her ability to place and enforce limits on the primitive, violent extravagances he represents.” (Wyman and Dionisopoulos 1999) And this is just one of many cultural concerns that are touched upon in Dracula; there is also the issue of Dracula being a foreigner (seemingly European), also a wealthy individual (this movie came out right after the Great Depression), and also it has been debated whether there are homosexual undertones in the film as well. So as you can see, this simple story of a vampire has a lot more to it than just a thrilling story of a scary monster-like being.
Resonating from the social commentary of the Draculafilms comes the teen-slasher sub-genre of horror film. These are the most well known and most profitable of horror movies, because they are obviously aimed at the teenage audience. These films are the campiest of the horror film genre, with an almost superfluous amount of sequels: Halloween has 9 sequels, A Nightmare on Elm Street has 8 and Friday the 13th totals in with a whopping 11 sequels. The most discussed and written about of these three franchises is the Halloween franchise. In 1978, John Carpenter’s Halloween shocked America, mainly its youth. The film tells the story of Lori Strode and how she and her friends come to be stalked by the maniacal killer Michael Meyers. Michael Meyers murdered his sister (after she was finished having sex with her boyfriend instead of babysitting Michael) when he was 6 years old, then 15 years later returned to his hometown to go on a killing spree. On one level, this is all there is to be told about the story of Halloween. On another level, it is the story of sexuality, feminism, and the cultural standards of the time. In the Wes Craven’s film Scream, a film-geek named Randy tells his friends some of the “rules” of the slasher genre:
There are certain RULES that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one: you can never have sex.BIG NO NO! BIG NO NO! Sex equals death, okay? Number two: you can never drink or do drugs.The sin factor! It's a sin. It's an extension of number one.” (imdb.com)
Now these first two rules are an accurate description of the “rules” that are broken in the film Halloween and many other slasher films. This phenomenon is examined by Fred Molitor and Barry Sapolsky in a study done on sex and violence in slasher films: they found that “slasher films contained an average of 3.1 incidents per film in which a sexual display or behavior occurred immediately preceding or at the time of violence.” (Sapolsky, Moltor, and Luque 2003)These rules don’t even have to be applied to the horror film; they can be the “rules” set out by the conservative public during the 1970s disco movement; one that was full of sexual exploration and drug use and also 1970s rock and roll music and teenage rebellion. These are the kids that come from the post-counterculture movement, whose parents are from the pre-counterculture movement; Two completely different schools of thought on social norms and ideologies. One thing that is rather conspicuous in Halloween is the absence of the parents of both Michael Meyers and the teenagers he stalks and murders. “Michael’s parents appear only after the murder of his sister. Laurie’s father is viewed only briefly early in the film as he asks his daughter to drop off the keys at the Meyers’s house. In this regard, the role of both sets of parents is to facilitate the subsequent crimes. Michael’s negligent parents set the stage for all the murderous acts in the film.” (Phillips 2005) With the absence of their parents, the teenagers in Halloween, with the exception of Laurie, engage in premarital sex, drug use and alcohol consumption. This is faithful to what Randy from Scream warned about; these rebellious teenagers are acting outside of the social norms of their parents’ generation, and they are punished accordingly by Michael Meyers. All except one that is: the character of Laurie. She is the one that doesn’t take part in the drug use or fornication that her friends are engaging in. She stays at home with Tommy, the boy she is babysitting, while her licentious friends are out and about. It could be this simple fact that Laurie is being the “mother figure” for these children while her friends are lacking that “mother figure” for the time being, which leads to their deviant behavior and ultimately, their demise.
Laurie learns the hard facts of teen slasher films: family is more often a hindrance than a help, law enforcement is suspicious and ineffective, and surviving into adulthood demands a full comprehension of and a comparable response to savage evil. (Gill 2002)
This leads to the second archetype of the slasher film: the “final girl”. It is almost a trite fact that the slasher movie must contain the “final girl” lead role. The “final girl” can be defined as:
After all her friends have been eliminated by the film’s monster, this girl is the one who recognizes the horror surrounding her and fights back against her attacker and defeats him, typically single-handedly. She is the undisputed main character, both because of increased character development afforded to her through the film and because of her early discovery of the killer. (Trencansky 2001)
In Halloween, as well as the other two fundamental slasher franchises Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, there is the existence of the “final girl”. As for Laurie Strode in Halloween, she is the quasi-embodiment of the “final girl”, seeing that she is the one that is celibate, more intelligent and also more masculine than her female companions. She almost single-handedly defeats Michael Meyers, the punisher of sexual deviance, by the end of the film. Both in Dracula and in Halloween, the antagonist is overcome by the female victim. Also, both Michael Meyers and Dracula use a sexual symbol as a means of murder; Michael with his phallic butcher’s knife and Dracula with his “kiss” of death on the neck. Both of these films were released shortly after a cultural revolution of sorts. Slasher films are considered sexist by those who merely see the victims as mostly female, a purely patriarchal society where the men are the powerful “killers” and the females as the defenseless victims. On the contrary, these films are seen as taking a feminist viewpoint by both scholars and critics alike. All of the teen slasher films have one thing in common: the “final girl”.
Abject terror may still be gendered feminine, but the willingness of one immensely popular current genre to represent the hero as an anatomical female would seem to suggest that at least one of the traditional marks of heroism, triumphant self-rescue, is no longer gendered masculine. (as cited in Conelly 2007).
The original Halloween treats Laurie as the “final girl” to an extent; she does everything in her power to fight off Michael Meyers, with quite an effect, but does not completely “kill” him. It is Michael’s psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis, whom ultimately “kills” Michael at the end, but not without the help of Laurie. After Halloween’s success, there was a plethora of impersonators, most notable Friday the 13thand Nightmare on Elm Street. Both of these films used the same formulas: promiscuous teenagers using drugs and alcohol, ultimately being hunted by a maniacal serial killer. These films also took the role of the “final girl” and defined it for the rest of the slasher genre, but not without Halloween developing the “final girl” role first. In both Friday the 13thand A Nightmare on Elm Street, the female protagonist defeats the killer single-handedly.
The heroines of the 1980’s series go much further than simply defending themselves, matching or exceeding the powers of their monsters with their own. This is most pronounced in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, beginning with the heroine of the first film, Nancy. Nancy recognizes early in the film that Freddy is responsible for the deaths of her peers, and she takes immediate action. Beyond merely haphazardly defending herself, Nancy draws up a precise plan of action, timed to the very minute. (Trencansky 2001)
In A Nightmare on Elm Street, unlike Laurie Strode of Halloween, Nancy is unable to rely on a male to help her defeat the “monster”, as shown in the scene where she has her boyfriend “stand guard” while she tries to fight Freddy Kruger in her dream. When Halloween was released, the feminist movement was in the middle of its second phase, while when A Nightmare on Elm Street was released, the second phase of the feminist movement was coming to a close. This is can be paralleled to the “final girl” from Halloween and the “final girl” from A Nightmare on Elm Street. By the end of Nightmare, Nancy stands up to Freddy, resisting his attempts at killing her by merely standing up for herself and turning her back on him. No longer are women afraid to stand up to the dominating men and are ready to fight back, as shown with Nancy’s resistance to Freddy Kruger.
Another horror film that is full of social commentary and metaphors for a cultural movement are the zombie films Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead by George A. Romero. The former of these two films was released in 1968, the year of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination and the heart of the counterculture revolution. “The film has been widely interpreted as a comment on the Civil Rights struggle and the Vietnam War, both at the forefront of the American public’s consciousness in 1968.” (Marriott 2004) The social commentary by use of metaphor in this film is more conspicuous than the two previously discussed films Halloween and Dracula. The first thing to notice is the use of an African American actor as the lead character, Ben. This was one of the first films to use an African American as the protagonist of a film. The metaphorical use of the zombies is also quite clear; they are the “bumbling masses”, or mainstream society. The people that take refuge from the zombies inside of a cabin, they are the rebels, the “hippies” so to speak.
More than any other archetypal character in the popular imaginary, we suggest the figure of the zombie best illustrates the underlying anxieties that communication scholars in the early and mid 20th century
harbored in respect to ideology. The evolution of the zombie from a mindless source of labor to a ravenous agent of consumption helps to illustrate how the general understanding of ideology has shifted from the so-called ‘‘magic bullet’’ model to that of a structuralist ‘‘interpellation.’’ Such an approach to understanding the concept of ideology is useful because it produces an introduction to the complexities of ideology
critique that is inclusive of the anxieties fueling critical invention. (Gunn and Treat 2005)
The zombies of Night of the Living Dead are the mindless mass of consumers and ideologies. By the obvious symbolic resistance of these zombies, the metaphor goes one step further with the television reports suggesting that shooting them in the brain is the only way to stop them. It almost seems ironic that to stop these mindless zombies is to shoot them through their nonfunctioning brain. The most talked about message of the film is that of Ben’s ultimate demise. He survives the zombie attack until the very end of the film, boarding himself up in the basement. By this time, all of the people sharing the cabin with him have now been devoured by the zombies. With only a few minutes of the film left, a “posse” of policemen and countrymen alike, led by the sheriff, start making their way towards the cabin that Ben is shacked up in. When he sees them, Ben tries to get outside of a window to greet them, only to be shot “in the brain”, as the TV suggests to do. These final images have been disturbing for many, seeing as to how cynical this film is, that there is no hope in defeating the masses or the government.
The all-white cracker posse at the end of the film recalls a lynch mob in its appearance, and a platoon of soldiers in its laconic banter while shooting anything that moves; it’s impossible not to associate such hand-held black and white imagery, or the grainy stills of Ben’s corpse being tossed onto a pyre, with the newsreel footage- of Kent State, Vietnam and the protest movement- burning its way into the American psyche at the time. (Marriott 2004)
This is why one should always take into account the point in time of a horror film’s release, as it could open your eyes to some very profound metaphors or motifs that you would never have even thought about before or after seeing such a film. Although zombies have been present in films dating back to the 1920’s, George A. Romero created something that transcended the zombie; he created the “living dead”. They are never called “zombies” in any of his films, which is also something to note. They are the “living dead”, they are people like you and I; one’s that have been brought back to life functioning on nothing but motor skills and instinct. This leads to the consumerism commentary in Dawn of the Dead, Romero’s sequel to Night of the Living Dead. In this film, the living dead flock to a mall, where a group of survivors take refuge. One character asks in the film:
Francine Parker: What are they doing? Why do they come here?
Stephen: Some kind of instinct. Memory, of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives. (imdb.com)
This almost satirical comment says a lot in terms of consumerism of that had a surge in the mid to late 70’s and has continued on ever since. Zombies have been used in many different films as metaphor for different social issues. Danny Boyle’s recent zombie film 28 Days Later, for example, is a commentary on the near-mad cow disease breakout that happened a few years ago. The film was to show us how easily something like this could happen, simply from eating a hamburger.
After reviewing horror films like Dracula, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Streetand Night of the Living Dead, it seems most clear that although horror films are mostly B-movies, they are not merely popcorn, mind numbing, lethargic films. These films are allegories used to work at a deeper level than most films. Next time you view a horror movie, ask yourself what the significance is of both the antagonist and the protagonist, I guarantee you will almost certainly find something lingering there that you never would have imagined. One of the most effective ways of communicating social critique is the arts, and that includes the art of filmmaking. Just remember, in the film world “if something happens twice, it’s a coincidence; if it happens three times, it’s a motif.”
"The question is not can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But can they suffer?" -Jeremy Bentham Late in 1981 a reporter for a large metropolitan newspaper (we'll call her Karen to protect her interest in remaining anonymous) gained access to some previously classified government files. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Karen was investigating the federal government's funding of research into the short- and long-term effects of exposure to radioactive waste. it was with understandable surprise that, included in these files, she discovered the records of a series of experiments involving the induction and treatment of coronary thrombosis (heart attack). Conducted over a period of fifteen years by a renowned heart specialist (we'll call him Dr. Ventricle) and financed with federal funds, the experiments in all likelihood would have remained unknown to anyone outside Dr. Ventricle's sphere of power and influence had not Karen chanced upon them.
Karen's surprise soon gave way to shock and disbelief. In case after case she read of how Ventricle and his associates took otherwise healthy individuals, with no previous record of heart disease, and intentionally caused their heart to fail. The methods used to occasion the "attack" were a veritable shopping list of experimental techniques, from massive doses of stimulants (adrenaline was a favorite) to electrical damage of the coronary artery, which, in its weakened state, yielded the desired thrombosis. Members of Ventricle's team then set to work testing the efficacy of various drugs developed in the hope that they would help the heart withstand a second "attack." Dosages varied, and there were the usual control groups. In some cases, certain drugs administered to "patients" proved more efficacious than cases in which others received no medication or smaller amounts of the same drugs. The research came to an abrupt end in the fall of 1981, but not because the project was judged unpromising or because someone raised a hue and cry about the ethics involved. Like so much else in the world at that time, Ventricle's project was a casualty of austere economic times. There simply wasn't enough federal money available to renew the grant application.
One would have to forsake all the instincts of a reporter to let the story end there. Karen persevered and, under false pretenses, secured an interview with Ventricle. When she revealed that she had gained access to the file, knew in detail the largely fruitless research conducted over fifteen years, Ventricle was dumbfounded. But not because Karen had unearthed the file. And not even because it was filed where it was (a "clerical error," he assured her). What surprised Ventricle was that anyone would think there was a serious ethical question to be raised about what he had done. Karen's notes of their conversation include the following:
Ventricle:
But I don't understand what you're getting at. Surely you know that heart disease is the leading cause of death. How can there be any ethical question about developing drugs which literally promise to be life-saving?
Karen:
Some people might agree that the goal--to save life--is a good, a noble end, and still question the means used to achieve it. Your "patients," after all, had no previous history of heart disease. They were healthy before you got your hands on them.
Ventricle:
But medical progress simply isn't possible if we wait for people to get sick and then see what works. There are too many variables, too much beyond our control and comprehension, if we try to do our medical research in a clinical setting. The history of medicine shows how hopeless that approach is.
Karen:
And I read, too, that upon completion of the experiment, assuming that the "patient" didn't die in the process--it says that those who survived were "sacrificed." You mean killed?
Ventricle:
Yes, that's right. But always painlessly, always painlessly. And the body went immediately to the lab, where further tests were done. Nothing was wasted.
Karen:
And it didn't bother you--I mean, you didn't ever ask yourself whether what you were doing was wrong? I mean...
(baby chicks have no use for an egg farmer. So they are just thrown out in the trash, alive. Sometimes ground up as well, for fertilizer)
Ventricle (interrupting):
My dear young lady, you make it seem as if I'm some kind of moral monster. I work for the benefit of humanity, and I have achieved some small success, I hope you will agree. Those who raise cries of wrong-doing about what I've done are well intentioned but misguided. After all, I use animals in my research--chimpanzees, to be precise--not human beings.
The story about Karen and Dr. Ventricle is just that--a story, a small piece of fiction. There is no real Dr. Ventricle, no real Karen, and so on. But there is widespread use of animals in scientific research, including research like our imaginary Dr. Ventricle's. So the story, while its details are imaginary--while it is, let it be clear, a literary device, not a factual account--is a story with a point. Most people reading it would be morally outraged if there actually were a Dr. Ventricle who did coronary research of the sort described on otherwise healthy human beings. Considerably fewer would raise a morally quizzical eyebrow when informed of such research done on animals, chimpanzees, or whatever. The story has a point, or so I hope, because catching us off guard, it brings this difference home to us, gives it life in our experience, and, in doing so, reveals something about ourselves, something about our own constellation of values. If we think what Ventricle did would be wrong if done to human beings but all right if done to chimpanzees, then we must believe that there are different moral standards that apply to how we may treat the two--human beings and chimpanzees. But to acknowledge this difference, if acknowledge it we do, is only the beginning, not the end, of our moral thinking. We can meet the challenge to think well from the moral point of view only if we are able to cite a morally relevant difference between humans and chimpanzees, one that illuminates in a clear, coherent, and rationally defensible way why it would be wrong to use humans, but not chimpanzees, in research like Dr. Ventricle's....
It's October 26th and to say, quite honestly, I'm disappointed in myself. This month was devoted to horror films, nothing but. Somehow, I've lost control and have become addicted to watching The Office. But fuck you, I'm going to review the movies I have seen, and by review, I mean give a very futile summary and some sort of clever joke that only Marshall McLuhan will get. First on the list we have:
Rosemary's Bab(a)y
I give this movie : ///
(three slashes- because this is a horror movie,kind of, so I rate in slashes. I came up with this idea entirely on my own, but someone stole it from me, check out:www.yellowbarrel.blogspot.com to see what I mean)
The film starts out like any other: character exposition and John Cassavette's getting laid by Mia Farrow. I don't really know how to classify this movie, it is a sub-genre in the horror realm, I can tell you that much. But it fits in that category of which theExorcist and the Omen belong in. According to Netflix, it is a "Supernatural Horror" film. I guess this makes sense...
The thing I liked about this movie, besides Polanski's direction, was the fact that we're never really sure if Rosemary is right about her suspicions of the "satanic" neighbors. Speaking of which, the neighbors were my favorite part of the film. As we all love quirky, interesting characters; the old couple next door were just as entertaining as the thought of Bill O'Reilly getting a vasectomy.
This movie would be a 4 slash movie, but the final scene made me frown twice at the same time. It's like spending 2 hours talking to a girl, falling in love with her, and after the two hours she tells you that she is a lesbian and thought you were a girl the whole time. Such a disappointment.
But I did like the fact that Roman doesn't show us the baby. ss
The People Under the Stairs
x
This movie was so stupid, it made me want to go back into the womb and accidentally choke myself with the umbilical cord. Or go back in time and convince my mother to take lots of psychotrophic drugs while she's pregnant with me so I have some sort of brain defect and then maybe I'll appreciate this movie. The best part of this movie: Ving Rhames being a bad ass, as always. The worst part: Everything else. Especially the use of members from Motley Crue and Guns & Roses as the "people under the stairs" (see photo above)
I could say more about this movie but I don't want any death threats. So just watch this clip instead and then cut out your eyeballs, burn them, and then bury them in your backyard.
The Exorcist ////
This movie is super cool. Cooler than a penguin's butthole. One day William Friedkin made The French Connection. Then two years later he said to himself: "Fuck Gene Hackman, Satan is better". And the result was one of the best horror films ever made.
Cheers to Selma Blair being creepier, or just as creepy, as John McCain's wife. She was 15 years old when this movie was made, and when it was finished, she was a demon. So many things about this movie make it creepy: its soundtrack, the special effects, Ellyn Burstyn being the most convincing stressed out mother ever.
There are so many wonderful shots in the movie, my favorite being in the opening moments of the movie. But one of the best, by far, is the famous "taxi arrival" shot (seen above). It's an homage to a painting called "Empire of Light":
You learn something new every day....
The Omen
////
Although very similar to the Exorcist in my opinion, this movie was still just as good. Gregory Peck was kind of strange to watch in this role, because it seemed that he was a little too cold towards his son (Damien) even from the beginning. The opening scene was creepy, thats for damn sure. I kept wondering to myself why anyone would listen to a priest, yet alone one that is telling a new father to get rid of his first born child.
But I liked the pace of the film, because it totally shifts after the nanny hangs herself on the roof at Damien's birthday party. I am working on compiling a list of the top 10 "best deaths" in horror films. Two will be coming from this movie; the nanny hanging herself, and the plate glass window beheading the photographer. I am not a sadist, I'm just aesthetically incorrect.
(my biggest beef with this movie was the fact that the shot shown above, of Damien, was not in the movie. This picture is awesome. I would know, I am a photojournalist)
Black Sunday
////
This movie was hands down more transcendent than Jesus Christ himself. If you like horror movies, or appreciate good filmmaking, then rent this movie...twice. This was my first Mario Bava picture, and it definitely won't be my last. The opening scene had me transfixed, I refused to stop watching, at any cost. Unless the Bulls went to the superbowl. There are so many great shots in this movie, that if you took a shot of rum for ever beautiful shot, you'd die of love.
Now, the movie had its "scary" moments, but I don't think it was that kind of movie. Movies dealing with satan and witches aren't all that scary, especially if they take place in the 19th century. But there were scenes that were pretty good at making me wish I were back in 1960 when this movie premiered, maybe then I would've gotten a bit scared. God damn CGI...
If you've seen Sleepy Hollow, you must definitely see this film. Tim Burton has even admitted to having been largely influenced by Bava, especially Black Sunday. There is one particular scene, towards the end, where the witch is taking over the princess. Now, we get a close up of the princess' face, which slowly turns into an old, wrinkled looking face. I was utterly perplexed at how this was done; I mean, come on, it was 1960. So I began thinking of how this could be done. There were no visible cuts in the film, no changes in lighting whatsoever, no prosthetics at all because this effect fades in and fades back out.
I couldn't figure it out, so I watched this scene with audio commentary. I learned, quite to my suprise, that Bava lit this film with color gels, as one would if they were shooting on color film. But Bava did this to achieve the effect of the "face morph". He painted Barbara Steele's (what a babe) face with red lines, and used a red light, so they would not show up on the film. But then he faded into a green light while fading out the red, so the lines slowly appeared.
THIS IS INGENIOUS. (not to be confused with indigenous)
So I'm in my kitchen, getting ready to make a plate of angel-hair pasta. Boy I can' wait, it's so delicious it makes Kwanzaa look like a record release party for Coldplay. I'm already starting my nonsensical rambling...basically I dropped the angel-hair pasta before I got to boil it. And all this pasta was laying on the kitchen floor and I started thinking to myself: "would John McCain pick up this pasta?". Hell no, he'd pay someone else to do it.and I realized, for the first time, why I'm voting for Obama....
What cost $800,000 in 1960 would cost $2,229,890.92 in 1980. Why the hell should you care about that?
I don't know, but look at the picture on the right. Any film connoisseur could tell which movies those stills are taken from. One is a well respected, "low budget"($800,000) thriller movie made by Alfred Hitchcock, the other is a campy 1980's slasher film (also a low-budget, $550,000) with tits and Kevin Bacon having an arrowhead shoved through his throat. What people seem to miss is that there is a connection between these two movies more obvious than Condoleeza Rice's adam's apple.
Let's start with the obvious. Both films are about a boy's (or a man if you consider Norman Bates an adult) mother committing murders. But the catch is, in Psycho, it is not the mother committing these murders (or is it?), but it is her son, Norman, doing the killing "in her name", taking on the personality of his mother while doing these crimes. As well with Friday the 13th, there isn't any real clues as to who the killer is in the film, with the exception of the town crazy, Ralph, and his warnings. As well as the man who gives the Annie a ride to Camp Crystal Lake (well, halfway there). He warns that there have been murders there, and the place is "jinxed" and tells of the boy who drowned in the lake who was given the name Jason by his loving mother.
We find out in the end of these two films that we have been deceived, that the killer is not the mother/son but the other way around. In Psycho, Norman takes on the persona of his mother and kills vicariously through her. As well as Mrs.Voorhees (what a great way of introducing this character I may say) killing through the memory of her child, Jason, who drowned because the camp counselors were too busy playing "hide the salami" to keep an eye on this boy who was a poor swimmer (so what was he doing swimming alone in the first place?).
(listen to the score in the video above,Psycho anyone?)"Kill her mommy, kill her" Mrs. Voorhees keeps repeating throughout the painstakingly long cat-mouse chase sequence that takes up the last 15-20 minutes of Friday the 13th. Now, in Psycho, Norman basically "becomes" his mother, by having this split-personality going on, with the mother eventually taking over his brain. In Friday the 13th, it seems more of the mother killing in vengeance of what happened to her child, something she obviously can't get over. But then again, when we first are introduced to Mrs. Voorhees, she seems completely ignorant to what is going on at the camp. There's no explanation as to why she is there, but she doesn't seem to know why she is there either. So it might be possible that she has this same complex as Norman Bates does, and she just becomes Mrs.Voorhees. Like when she first enters the house and sees the dead body in the kitchen, she says " Oh, good Lord! So young. So pretty. Oh, what monster could have done this?". But after a few moments of talking with Alice, Mrs. Voorhees snaps and then goes on a rant about Jason and teenage fornication. Which then sparks the almost gratuitous chase scene.
I am done writing this for now, I forgot what point I was trying to make. I'll get back to you next year.
