Friday the 13th

Its Friday the 13th again and that means its time to don your favorite hockey mask and go on a murderous rampage, killing any and all fun-loving teens you find.

Being that it's Friday the 13th, the recent films Wolf Creek and Hostel have got me thinking about Occidental Horror. I'm excluding Asian films (for now) because they don't share a lineage with horror from the US, Europe, and Australia. I'd like to not stick to Occidental countries but we seem to share most of our horror themes.

And that is what horror is all about... a population's shared fears.

I'm only going to lump the first three decades of horror films because, from 1910 up through the 1940s, most films dealt with human abominations functioning within society.

The Golem (1915)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)
Nosferatu (1922)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Dracula 1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
The Mummy (1932)
The Invisible Man (1933)
The Wolf Man (1941)

The films of the 50s, with the Cold War and giant leaps in technology, were all about Alien-Invasions-As-A-Metaphor-For-Communism and Science-Backfires-and-Creates-A-Monster-That-Destroys-Humanity.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
The Thing From Another World (1951)
The War of the Worlds (1953)
The Quatermass Experiment (1955)
It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955)
Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1956)
It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)
The Fly (1958)

Enter the 60's with Women's Lib, Mainstream Psychopaths, Thalidomide, and the end of the Production Code of America. The reaction to Women's Lib brought us the whole 'bad-girl' element (Janet Leigh as Marion Crane being the poster girl). Psychopaths, fronted by winners like Eddy Gein and Charley Manson, introduced maniacs into horror films. While this laid the groundwork for the coming slasher flicks, it directly influenced the likes of Roger Corman and his "Splatter Fests". Thalidomide made us take note of all that could go wrong with human biology. We now understood that two arms and two legs weren't a given and that, sometimes, dead and buried doesn't mean gone forever.

Psycho (1960)
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962)
The Birds (1963)
Blood Feast (1963)
Repulsion (1965)
Wait Until Dark (1967)
The Devil Rides out (1968)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Sexual and cultural revolution, the introduction of birth control, Nixon, Nam, everybody cool dying from drug overdoses, and a new crop of adults that were kids during Manson and Thalidomide... in the 70s, we were our own worst enemy. Be it our faith, our children, our classmates, our parents, or our ability to reproduce... the focus was inward. It wasn't the threat of nuclear annihilation from another country, it was our own government. It wasn't a complete stranger, it was family.

The Exorcist (1972)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Jaws (1975)
Carrie (1976)
The Omen (1976)
Suspiria (1977)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
The Hills Have Eyes (1978)
Halloween (1978)
Alien (1979)
The Brood (1979)
Phantasm (1979)

The narcissism of the 80s made us feel invincible and, as a result, afraid to get hurt. It didn't matter what was doing us in or why, only thing that mattered was that you were about to die. Someone or something wanted you dead and would stalk you to the ends of the Earth. There was no escape.

The 80s also marks a shift in the way film reacts to its audience. Toward the end of the 70s, special effects technology took off and audiences wanted more. Some 80s films were rehashes of plots and themes from previous decades, just with more flare and gore than ever before. Also, some people just couldn't be scared so filmmakers started playing to that audience. Enter the 'campy' horror flick.

The Shining (1980)
Friday the 13th (1980)
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
The Thing (1982)
The Evil Dead (1982)
Poltergeist (1982)
Videodrome (1983)
Children of the Corn (1984)
Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
The Toxic Avenger (1985)
Reanimator (1985)
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
Hellraiser (1987)
The Evil Dead 2 (1987)
Bad Taste (1987)
Child's Play (1988)

There are four sides to the 90s. On one side was the endless stream of sequels-to-hit films from the 70s and 80s. On the next side is the rise of the PG-13 (gore-less and less intense) horror film. The third side is self-aware and makes fun of it's own conventions. The last side is the Gen-X stamp on the horror genre... the terror of a killing spree is short-lived and fairly unintelligent, but a serial killer is methodical and can work for years.

Silence of The Lambs (1991)
Candyman (1992)
Dead Alive (1992)
Kalifornia (1993)
Se7en (1995)
Copycat (1995)
Demon Knight (1995)
Bordello of Blood (1996)
The Frighteners (1996)
Scream (1996)
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
Blair Witch Project (1999)
The Sixth Sense (1999)

In the 00s, horror filmmakers almost seem to be out of ideas. We've seen a lot of the reissuing of older material and the importing of horror from eastern countries, most notably China and Japan. Some films, however, do seem to point toward horror's future. The immerging trend revolves around torture. The vic will still die, but the death will be slow and the pain will be great.

Also, as a continuation of the self-referential films of the late 90s, victims are becoming smarter. It's nothing new that someone will survive the onslaught and banish the evil (Halloween, any Nightmare on Elm Street, any Friday the 13th, the Scream trilogy), but these new, smart, vics are escaping, maybe getting a little bit of revenge, but failing to banish the evil completely.

Final Destination (2000)
Jason X (2001)
Resident Evil (2002)
28 Days Later (2002)
The Ring (2002)
High Tension (2003)
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Saw (2004)
The Amityville Horror (2005)
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
Wolf Creek (2005)
Hostel (2005)

The thought that sparked this little riff was of horror's immediate future. What's next? Do we extend out from Saw and Hostel to a place where people are forced to hurt others? Or do we move from High Tension and Wolf Creek to a place where it doesn't matter how smart you are, you are fated to die a screaming death? What scares people these days? Will the next step be political? Is horror going to head off in a The Man in the High Castle or 1984 direction? Maybe some bizarre equilibrium between Fight Club, Battle Royale, and Death Race 2000 where people are so dissatisfied with their lives that they willingly enter televised kill-or-be-killed last-man-standing competitions that take place in a convienently-empty cul-de-sac in a posh neighborhood?

Odd... that sounds, suprisingly, like the plot to Series 7: The Contenders (pops).