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HORROR 101 main discussion

post #1 of 65
11/10/10 at 11:37pm
Thread Starter 
Figured I'd give Horror 101 a nice cozy central home. Past pieces: Lesson 1 Lesson 2 Lesson 3

Newest lesson: The Guy/Girl Who Knows Things. Feast! http://chud.com/articles/articles/26...NGS/Page1.html

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post #2 of 65
11/10/10 at 11:54pm
OK - So, by the GWKT classification parameters for the Scientist, we can say that Zelda Rubinstein's Tangina Barrons in Poltergeist III would be classified as such. Her exposition duties in the film are prominent throughout. Would she be considered another type of GWKT? Folk Teller perhaps.

Great lesson! I am all about Slow Dave in Day of the Dragon. Shoulda listened Josh Hartnett and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
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post #3 of 65
11/11/10 at 12:13am
I think you also forgot about the "little kid who is psychic or talks to God" and the "retarded/handicap person". These can both fall into the Prophetic Local or Know it All categories.
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post #4 of 65
11/11/10 at 12:16am
Thread Starter 
You know, it's been quite a long time since I've seen P III, so I can't really say. Though I'd probably classify her as a Fanatic in the first film.

Quote:
Originally Posted by E.T.C. View Post
I think you also forgot about the "little kid who is psychic or talks to God" and the "retarded/handicap person". These can both fall into the Prophetic Local or Know it All categories.
Retards would fall under Crazy Guy, depending on how they functioned in the film. Psychic knowledge can be used differently from film to film. Sometimes that knowledge can be given to a Know It All, sometimes Fanatics.
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post #5 of 65
11/11/10 at 1:11am
Very cool. Looking forward to The Jokester article. I wonder if Crispin Glover will get noted for his role in FRIDAY THE 13TH The Final Chapter as corkscrew-hand hatchet-face. Then again he was more of a tool than a jokester.
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post #6 of 65
11/11/10 at 3:47am
Grizzly murders at camp crystal lake? Like, with bears? Or like "grisly"?

I lulzed more than once reading this, at any rate. Good job man, these are a lot of fun.
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post #7 of 65
11/11/10 at 4:06am
So, so great. This is my current favorite thing on CHUD right now. That's all. Waiting for the rest.
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post #8 of 65
11/11/10 at 5:54am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Soilent Green View Post
Grizzly murders at camp crystal lake? Like, with bears? Or like "grisly"?

I lulzed more than once reading this, at any rate. Good job man, these are a lot of fun.
You don't remember the twist at the end of FRIDAY THE 13TH where Mrs. Voorhees turns out to be a brown bear?

Typo fixed!

Glad people are enjoying these.
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post #9 of 65
11/11/10 at 1:28pm
Another gem.

Quote:
More relevant though is the fact that any small child could have told Mears to stake the vampire during the daytime.
Quote:
Slow Dave (Jeffery Combs)
LOL and LOL
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post #10 of 65
11/11/10 at 1:38pm
Quote:
“Beware the moors.”
Boo this man! Booooo!

(Sorry. But come on!)
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post #11 of 65
11/11/10 at 1:49pm
Imagining the "..and Jeffrey Combs as Slow Dave" credit, and it's up there with "Donald Sutherland as The Clumsy Waiter".
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post #12 of 65
11/11/10 at 2:02pm
Josh, these have been great. Loving them.
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post #13 of 65
11/11/10 at 4:08pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Boo this man! Booooo!

(Sorry. But come on!)
"Moor" and "moon" look too similar, Phil! They look too similaaaaaar! *screams towards heavens*

I will destroy you.
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post #14 of 65
11/11/10 at 6:35pm
My favorite Folk Teller of all, truly the Marlon Brando of Folk Tellers, is John Houseman at the beginning of The Fog. Does an amazing five-minute monologue and then exits the film before the titles, carrying a nice paycheck with him.

I must take umbrage at Crazy Ralph from the first two Fridays getting the Crazy shaft over Eyeball Guy in Part III.
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post #15 of 65
11/11/10 at 7:07pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ratty View Post
I must take umbrage at Crazy Ralph from the first two Fridays getting the Crazy shaft over Eyeball Guy in Part III.
I just wanted to show that great pic.
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post #16 of 65
11/11/10 at 7:09pm
I like the Platinum Dunes' "bitchy old local" version of the GWKT trope.
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post #17 of 65
11/25/10 at 9:18pm
Thread Starter 
Happy Thanksgiving! http://chud.com/articles/articles/26...TER/Page1.html
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post #18 of 65
11/26/10 at 6:55am
Best one yet Josh, well done. Great highlighting of when audiences started actively rooting for character deaths. Most recently, Piranha 3D is packed to the brim with these sorts of jokesters (not all male though), which is what makes their eventual comeuppance so much fun.
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post #19 of 65
11/26/10 at 7:45am
But then Aja reveals his asshole side and kills poor Kelly Brook instead of the stupid kids./sadface

Josh, this is a pretty damn daunting thing you got going there. You're a damn hero.
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post #20 of 65
11/26/10 at 4:34pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by stelios View Post
But then Aja reveals his asshole side and kills poor Kelly Brook instead of the stupid kids./sadface
Sadface, indeed.
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post #21 of 65
11/26/10 at 6:59pm
Love this feature. Joshua es bueno.
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post #22 of 65
11/27/10 at 12:35am
Good stuff. I think on rare occasions though there are Jokesters who we do not actively wish horrible death upon, because they somehow win us over. I call this "The Dennis Dun Effect".
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post #23 of 65
11/27/10 at 1:19am
The Dennis Dun effect was very strong in the Friday the 13th remake.
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post #24 of 65
11/27/10 at 4:53pm
Thread Starter 
The Jokester from SPOOKIES just friended me on Facebook. It's all coming together!
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post #25 of 65
12/3/10 at 7:13pm
Thread Starter 
Feast! http://chud.com/articles/articles/26...OOL/Page1.html
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post #26 of 65
12/3/10 at 8:11pm
Another home run, Joshua.

So how do we categorize tiny cast movies like Paranormal Activity or House of the Devil where the body count is one out of a cast of two?

Also, I posted this under the article heading, but it bears repeating: you need your own tarot card deck!
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post #27 of 65
12/3/10 at 9:15pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ratty View Post
Another home run, Joshua.

So how do we categorize tiny cast movies like Paranormal Activity or House of the Devil where the body count is one out of a cast of two?

Also, I posted this under the article heading, but it bears repeating: you need your own tarot card deck!
PA and HOTD are definitely Secluded.

Horror 101 trading cards is a great idea.
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post #28 of 65
12/4/10 at 4:59am
Quote:
Michelle Johnson
Your casting is generally awesome but this might be my personal fave. Michelle Johnson: so very, very lovely. And so very forgotten.

Am also a big fan of your photoshops (you had me at "Your Bronson is showing"). I simply cannot get enough of these articles. Bring on the Villains!
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post #29 of 65
12/6/10 at 7:11pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Disciple_72 View Post
Your casting is generally awesome but this might be my personal fave. Michelle Johnson: so very, very lovely. And so very forgotten.

Am also a big fan of your photoshops (you had me at "Your Bronson is showing"). I simply cannot get enough of these articles. Bring on the Villains!
Michelle Johnson's career is still going strong in my dreams.
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post #30 of 65
12/22/10 at 6:11am
Thread Starter 
Blamo! http://chud.com/articles/articles/26...HER/Page1.html
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post #31 of 65
12/22/10 at 6:46am
Just now catching up with these. Great work Joshua.
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post #32 of 65
12/22/10 at 7:25am
Favourite feature on CHUD.

I'm interested to hear more about why you don't consider NOES to be a slasher because for my money it most definitely is. An important distinction between NOES and, say, Dracula or The Mummy is that NOES puts story second. It's vaguely interested in the monster himself and treats the narrative as an excuse on which to hang a bunch of cool murders. I mean, you can argue that NOES is more of a classic monster movie but it's still one that has all the indications of being a slasher.
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post #33 of 65
12/22/10 at 1:32pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Evi View Post
Favourite feature on CHUD.

I'm interested to hear more about why you don't consider NOES to be a slasher because for my money it most definitely is. An important distinction between NOES and, say, Dracula or The Mummy is that NOES puts story second. It's vaguely interested in the monster himself and treats the narrative as an excuse on which to hang a bunch of cool murders. I mean, you can argue that NOES is more of a classic monster movie but it's still one that has all the indications of being a slasher.
As I say, it is an unusual case, and one that can certainly be debated. But I think the Slasher should be defined by his/her own characteristics, and how the film presents/treats the character, instead of how the film treats the kills - which is how the subgenre generally gets defined. The similarities between NIGHTMARE and other Slasher films doesn't have much to do with Freddy himself. Sexy teens and a focus on elaborate and gory kill scenes. But most modern horror movies share that similarity. I think part of Wes Craven's stroke of genius with Freddy was to take all these easy touchstones seen in Slasher films, and make a whole different kind of film. It was a clever cheat.

NIGHTMARE actually has a bit more in common with SAW (possibly I should have mentioned something about this in the article), as they both feature an all-powerful game master Villain, who instead of stalking his Victims on their turf, pulls them into his world for kill scenes that play more like vignettes (each tailored to the specific Victim).
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post #34 of 65
12/22/10 at 2:05pm
I'm merely auditing this class, so I don't carry much weight, but I was glad to see you take it back to Thirteen Women as well as Agatha Christie.

Psycho to me is NOT a slasher, aside from it being more of your "Stumple Upon" type film, but due to the patented Audience-Alliance Shift that occurs over at the swamp. You're tricked into rooting for Norman Bates for the bulk of the film. And not in a "rooting for Freddy Kruger" kind of way.

Points off for calling them the Sawyer family while referring to the first Texas Chain Saw Massacre. For me, that's like calling Laurie Michael Myers' sister while talking about the original Halloween. YMMV.
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post #35 of 65
12/22/10 at 2:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joshua Miller View Post
As I say, it is an unusual case, and one that can certainly be debated. But I think the Slasher should be defined by his/her own characteristics, and how the film presents/treats the character, instead of how the film treats the kills - which is how the subgenre generally gets defined. The similarities between NIGHTMARE and other Slasher films doesn't have much to do with Freddy himself. Sexy teens and a focus on elaborate and gory kill scenes. But most modern horror movies share that similarity. I think part of Wes Craven's stroke of genius with Freddy was to take all these easy touchstones seen in Slasher films, and make a whole different kind of film. It was a clever cheat.

NIGHTMARE actually has a bit more in common with SAW (possibly I should have mentioned something about this in the article), as they both feature an all-powerful game master Villain, who instead of stalking his Victims on their turf, pulls them into his world for kill scenes that play more like vignettes (each tailored to the specific Victim).
See that's interesting, and I see the SAW comparison. I just have trouble thinking of NOES as anything other than a fantasy-tinged slasher because structurally it's so similar to the most basic of them, particularly the sequels which make the comparison even easier to draw. Is it Freddy not being human that sets him apart for you? Because other than that he's quite similar to the common "Super Slasher" you describe.
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post #36 of 65
12/22/10 at 2:29pm
Mostly because of its more fanciful elements I saw NOES as more in the Grand Guignol tradition than as part of Halloween's slasher formula.
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post #37 of 65
12/22/10 at 2:38pm
More great stuff.

I would argue, and maybe Phil can address this as well, that Michael Myers is already a Super Slasher in the original Halloween, at least by the halfway point. Dr. Loomis repeatedly references Michael as "IT" and as "pure evil", not to mention all the "boogeyman" references. Michael also seems to be able to teleport at will, even in those daytime scenes. No, he's not a straight-up zombie, a la Jason, but I'd say he's definitely supernatural from the outset.
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post #38 of 65
12/22/10 at 3:12pm
I wouldn't say he's supernatural, but through editing, and Loomis' own melodramatic nuttiness, the film tries to lend credence to the idea that Michael might possibly be a supernatural creature. The distinction being the point of the film in the end; that "Evil", the mythological idea of it as an actual presence, is something conjured and spread as folklore as a way to make sense of the horrors that can exist within our society.
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post #39 of 65
12/22/10 at 3:16pm
The idea of Michael as a "Super Slasher" is only introduced in the final sequence, as an intentional final twist of Carpenter's. He's grunting and panting and rather deliberately "ordinary" for the film's running time. Dude's driving a station wagon.
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post #40 of 65
12/22/10 at 3:21pm
Even the final twist in my eyes is really just Carpenter saying that you can put this one down but somewhere out there, someone just like him, capable of the same terrible things, is being born. I'd like to think that without the sequels, you could really just imagine that it is Loomis' own obsessive ideas of what Michael is that won't allow him to see and accept the bullet-ridden corpse lying down there on the ground.
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post #41 of 65
12/22/10 at 3:22pm
This is how I read Halloween, too. Michael is simply evil. How and when it happened doesn't matter more. He's like a healthy 20 year old dying from a massive heart attack. That's why he worked for me better than any other slasher. Which is the biggest reason I hated the bullshit backstory in either the sequels or Zombie's nonsense.
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post #42 of 65
12/22/10 at 3:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Dude's driving a station wagon.
The banality of evil!
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post #43 of 65
12/22/10 at 3:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ratty View Post
The banality of evil!
Exactly! You almost got him as a slasher wearing a Gerald Ford mask, for Pete's sake.
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post #44 of 65
12/23/10 at 3:12pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Points off for calling them the Sawyer family while referring to the first Texas Chain Saw Massacre. For me, that's like calling Laurie Michael Myers' sister while talking about the original Halloween. YMMV.
I hope this won't effect our relationship, Phil. I will miss your touch.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evi View Post
See that's interesting, and I see the SAW comparison. I just have trouble thinking of NOES as anything other than a fantasy-tinged slasher because structurally it's so similar to the most basic of them, particularly the sequels which make the comparison even easier to draw. Is it Freddy not being human that sets him apart for you? Because other than that he's quite similar to the common "Super Slasher" you describe.
Pretty much. When we're looking objectively at a franchise things are always different, but I was trying to focus on where the characters began (as far as narrowing my classification). That's why the FRIDAY remake kinda bugged me. It felt liked a Stumbled On movie instead of a Slasher film, because the Platinum Dunes folks were looking at Jason from the perspective of an established franchise character - who eventually was just chillin' out in the woods stabbing whoever he saw - but they ignored how that made the character seem to anyone for whom FRIDAY THE REMAKE was their first experience with ol' hockey mask.

Really I wouldn't say that calling Freddy a Super Slasher is wrong. It's about where one chooses to draw a line in the sand. Is Martin from MARTIN a vampire? He does vampire things and the movie follows classic vampire tropes? For the purposes of Horror 101 I decided to draw the line in the sand with being a mortal human, re: Slashers.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Dude's driving a station wagon.
Love it.
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post #45 of 65
12/23/10 at 3:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joshua Miller View Post
I hope this won't effect our relationship, Phil. I will miss your touch.
Baby, I ain't goin' no place.

Quote:
That's why the FRIDAY remake kinda bugged me. It felt liked a Stumbled On movie instead of a Slasher film, because the Platinum Dunes folks were looking at Jason from the perspective of an established franchise character - who eventually was just chillin' out in the woods stabbing whoever he saw - but they ignored how that made the character seem to anyone for whom FRIDAY THE REMAKE was their first experience with ol' hockey mask.
That's interesting; never considered that before.
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post #46 of 65
12/25/10 at 11:24pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Baby, I ain't goin' no place.
Put a candle in the window, Phil. I'll be comin' home soon.
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post #47 of 65
12/25/10 at 11:43pm
How exactly would changing the Friday remake to being about the reopening of Crystal Lake not make it a 'Stumbled On' film? I mean it would still pretty much be about a masked killer killing people encroaching on his territory.
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post #48 of 65
12/26/10 at 4:56am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by BubWilliams View Post
How exactly would changing the Friday remake to being about the reopening of Crystal Lake not make it a 'Stumbled On' film? I mean it would still pretty much be about a masked killer killing people encroaching on his territory.
It may seem negligible on the surface, but the vengeance motive I think is important in the original series, and in the remake it is essentially gone. You can say Jason is killing people out of vengeance for witnessing his mother's death, but it is just wanton killing at the point we join the story. In the original series, Jason actually stalks Alice to her home (away from Crystal Lake) and murders her, clearly for killing his mother, and then is continuing his mother's work in Part 2 before his motive morphs into just wanton slaughter in the later sequels.
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post #49 of 65
1/20/11 at 3:24pm
Thread Starter 

Class back in session... http://www.chud.com/31663/horror-101-the-horde/

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post #50 of 65
1/20/11 at 5:02pm

Hurray!  Never thought I'd be happy for school to start again.  That Brody pic is wallpaper-worthy. 

 

Would The Faculty be the rare example of the slaying of a Queen freeing a Horde?  It's kind of a bullshit ending, but there it is. 

 

I'd love to see your next "semester" be about romantic comedies and all of their idiotic permutations. 

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