The Secret History of Movies #7 (Christmas Edition)

(James Edmond in Black Christmas, 1974, d. Bob Clark)

(Peter Billingsley in A Christmas Story, 1983, d. Bob Clark)

The State of Fear - Part One

In 1974, a small group filmmakers and unknown actors from Texas, with a budget of less than $100,000 and driven by the simple need to make their own movie, began filming on what would turn out to be a landmark in inpendent filmmaking, and which would essentially ruin the horror genre for the next 34 years. And counting.

Not intentionally, of course. But Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the film that is at the far end of the graph whose nearest point is Hostel and House of 1,000 Corpses and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes and on and on. Now you might be saying, "But hold on, Bill R.! I like some of those movies! Not The Hills Have Eyes, or House of 1,000 Corpses, but Hostel had its moments. And what's that other one? About the creek?"

Yes, well, okay, there are not-untalented people working on these films (and it's Wolf Creek you're thinking of). But The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the film that issued in the era -- or at least legitimized the idea of -- horror as "slasher film", horror as gorefest, and little more. Sure, you can trace slasher films back further, even to Psycho. Psycho is the first major film to use a serial killer, as we understand the term today, as its villain, and as the source of its horror (although the twist aspect of the story doesn't make that clear until the end). And possibly Black Christmas has a claim as the father of this horror subgenre almost as great as Chainsaw Massacre. Both films have what can now be considered classic slasher plots. In Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a group of college kids get lost, and are eaten. In Black Christmas, a madman is loose in a sorority house. Both films came out the same year, and both films are far less violent than their

reputations would indicate. The big difference between the two -- and here's why Black Christmas exists as a cult movie, while Texas Chainsaw Massacre is seen as a classic, both as a horror and an independent film -- is that Black Christmas has its roots in classical Hollywood filmmaking, and Hooper's film, well, does not.

Black Christmas is structured as a mystery and suspense film more than a horror film. As the co-eds are picked off one-by-one, the police try to figure out who the killer is. Keir Dullea is offered to us as a possible suspect. The audience is invited to try to puzzle out the mad (and extraordinarily creepy) phone calls made by "Billy". We wonder who will be the next victim. John Saxon behaves awesomely. We grip the edges of our seats while the police try to trace the call, and are horrified by the plot turn that is the result of that trace (a twist that would be made famous by, and is forever associated with, When a Stranger Calls...which came out five years later. Fuckin' rip-off artists).

What do we get with Texas Chainsaw Massacre? In a film of roughly 80 minutes in length, we get five college kids on a road trip. They get lost. They seek help at the wrong house. Four are killed, one is terrorized but escapes, and we roll credits. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a huge success, and is the lazy horror filmmaker's rubber stamp. But what have subsequent horror filmmakers learned from it? That bad acting is no obstacle. That, despite the lack of gore, because it dealt with the most depraved kind of violence, an upping of the depravity ante could only work to their favor. That no story is plenty.

In other words, the wrong lessons were learned. Isn't that always the case? I don't feel that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a bad movie. I think it's overrated quite a bit, but it does some things extremely well. For instance, while there is nothing supernatural about it, the nature of its horror is unknowable and bewildering, as all horror must be. When Leatherface makes his first appearance, it is impossible for us -- and we can see that his soon-to-be victim agrees with us --

to understand what is happening, what this thing in front of us is capable of doing. The realization that this man wishes us harm, and is completely removed from such things as pity and conscience, somehow also clues us into the fact that he also has no gag reflex, or respect for human anatomy. This is not encountering some small human transgressor, like a shoplifter. This isn't even encountering an intruder in your home. The intruder might kill you, but he won't eat you afterwards. The intruder, if we encountered him, would fill us with fear and panic, even terror. If we were to encounter someone like Leatherface -- which we know is, technically, a possibility -- who knows how our brains would react? Hooper and Henkel's film seems to believe that our brains would begin to understand the depths to which this person will sink in order to cause us pain and himself gratification, and therefore shut down. Our fuses would blow, in order to protect us. Because that is horror. But what, pray tell, is Friday the 13th, Part 4?

.

I remember very vividly watching TV one night, some years back, flipping through the channels, when I suddenly came upon that movie (okay, it may not have been Part 4. It could have been Part Three or Part Five). I didn't know it was a Friday the 13th movie at first. The first thing I saw from the film was a nude, buxom young woman engaged vigorously atop a young man. I stopped flipping through the channels, as one does in these situations, and wondered what it was I was watching. I could tell it was bad, and cheap. The fact that they were in a tent should have tipped me off right away. In any case, my questions were soon answered, because presently a long, sharp, spear-like object was thrust through the woman's back and out her chest, and then jerked upwards.

The point of this very long post, and those that will follow, isn't to decry violence, even graphic violence, in horror films. If you're making a movie about flesh-eating zombies, you're gonna have to break a few eggs. I get that. But it's nice for these things to have some sort of point, isn't it? I mean, what was the purpose of the scene I just described? Because it wasn't to frighten the audience, I assure you. To shock them, maybe. To startle them. To gross them out. And then what? To make them laugh? Even if not that last one -- though I have my suspicions -- I know that the scene acheived the goal which was without a doubt at the top of the director's list, and that was to give horror fans what they'd come to demand from the genre by that time: tits and blood. This was their way of building off of the Hooper/Henkel film, and we've been living with it ever since.
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NEXT: I Act Like an Old Man, Begin to Give You Some Idea of What the Hell My Point Is, and Most Likely Get in Way Over My Head