The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies (Mammoth Books)

by Peter Normanton

  1978

  The year 1978 proved to be the next landmark for the horror movie. In its day Bob Clark’s giallo-styled shocker Black Christmas (1974) failed to set the world of film alight, but its point-of-view camera shots caught the attention of many young filmmakers, one of whom was John Carpenter. Carpenter was already carving a reputation as a low-budget director capable of tapping into audience expectation. His film Halloween changed the public’s perception of the horror movie and became the catalyst for the decade to come. The terror that emanated from the blade of Michael Myers, followed by the carnage of Friday the 13th (1980), was to have an unprecedented impact, and for the next few years these two films inspired an onslaught of knife-wielding maniacal killers. Halloween redefined the principles of hack and slash that had emerged in the gialli and acquired an intensity of structure with Black Christmas, and then Friday the 13th went that one step further making the ruthless slaughter even more imaginative.

  In this same year, for the second time in his career, George A. Romero unleashed a horde of rampaging zombies, this time in a shopping mall in Monroeville. This film was Dawn of the Dead. The scenes, along with the work of the inventive Tom Savini seen in this film, would send the kids across North America and the UK into a zombie frenzy. They also caught the eye of the Italians, in particular one Lucio Fulci, who in the year that followed moved into making horror movies and let loose his own breed of mindless excess in Zombie Flesh Eaters, which has also assumed the name Zombi 2, and in his boundless enthusiasm he enlivened the craze for Italian splatter. Did these creatures really represent our societal fears, or were they a reflection of Cold War paranoia, or was it something more sinister? It didn’t really matter because the kids came out en masse to view some of the most extreme films ever to see release to the silver screen, and they loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, this gory excess didn’t come without problems, for not everyone was quite ready for such a graphic onslaught.

  The Golden Age of the Slasher

  Between 1980 and 1984, those deranged men and women with a hankering for killing annoying teenagers were freed from the asylum and given licence to use a whole range of imaginative weapons. It was no longer just enough to stab the victim to death or strangle them; no, the kills had to go way beyond this to have any hope of maintaining the audience’s interest. With so many of these films coming out each and every month, the writers and directors had to come up with something new, or the kids were going to get bored and move on to something new. With Friday the 13th there came a whole raft of summer camp slashers and then there appeared the seasonal slashers who enjoyed their slaughter at Christmas while the lovesick saved it as a Valentine’s Day surprise. Those who were young enough carried out their heinous activities at school and the chosen few who wanted to further their education continued their butchery at the college campus. These years would give rise to the stalkers in the backwoods and in the wards and corridors of hospitals; nowhere appeared to be safe. Some of these monstrous individuals were carrying out their butchery to the sound of the disco beat, and now and again you just might hear the cheesy metal of the day. While the nutter with the chainsaw prowled through the dark, close in point-of-view camera shots became the order of the day, as the creators of these films encouraged the audience to empathize, or dare I say cheer for the killer. Along the way a host of red herrings would be thrown in, and a good writer and his director would keep you guessing right until the last and then introduce the twist that would leave you flabbergasted; if all went well the remaining girl would finally make her escape. Promiscuity was invariably punished, as was rank stupidity and bullying; only the good girl ever got to go home. There was a formula, but the creators of these films developed a knack for tossing in something new and for four glorious years we were addicted. The slasher never quite went away and if he had thought about slipping off back to the asylum, Wes Craven hauled him back again for a new generation in 1996 with Scream.

  The 1980s also saw the expansion of the movie franchise. It had already happened in the 1960s with Hammer’s monster movies, but when Alien, Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and George Romero’s “Dead” series appeared they became gargantuan money-making extravaganzas which spawned film upon film, as well as video games, toys and comic books.

  However, amidst all of this blood-splattered insanity there was a dark cloud forming on the horizon . . .

  The Video Nasties Campaign

  Towards the end of the 1970s and on into the early 1980s, home video suddenly became very popular. At the time there was no specific legislation covering the material that could be played in the family home, although the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 could still be invoked when necessary. The arrival of home video created a loophole in the existing legislation in that distributors were not legally obligated to submit video material to the BBFC. The public, especially younger viewers, could now get hold of a wide range of material, some of which was incredibly lurid. This included certain extreme horror movies, which in many cases had previously been drastically cut at the time of their original submission to the BBFC to ensure release to the country’s cinemas.

  It didn’t take long before the press caught wind of this emerging phenomenon. The Sunday People appear to have been the first to pick upon this proliferation of gruesome films in a spread they ran in December 1981, which is thought to have been the first time the provocative term “video nasties” was used. Several months later, on May 7, 1982, the Daily Star returned to this emotive theme, claiming that children were being exposed to “some of the most horrific and violent films ever made” and those scurrilous video distributors had found a way to bypass the BBFC’s authority. A few weeks later in an incendiary article, the Sunday Times on May 23 alluded to the threat of high street horror invading our homes. Its report described the activities at a video trade fair in Manchester and referred to the violent material that was on offer. With the country seriously affected by increasing unemployment and a downturn in the economy, as well as having endured rioting only a year before, these blood-curdling horror movies suddenly found themselves the scapegoat for the combined failings of society, the authorities and national politicians. Twelve months later, on June 30, 1983, the Daily Mail embarked on their campaign, running an article with the headline “Rape of our children’s minds” and continued only a day later with “Ban video sadism now”. The situation deteriorated when on August 4, 1983, the Daily Mail printed yet another article this time entitled “Taken over”, making claims that a child had been possessed by one of these evil videos. The effect was such that the media were able to provoke a moral panic, which within a short space of time became almost hysterical, and in due course the newspaper business increased their sales. Their reports never considered the possibility that blame might just rest with those parents who had little interest in the material their children were bringing into their homes.

  At this point, the legal profession exacerbated the situation when they used several high-profile cases to defend the misdemeanours of certain unsavoury individuals citing their watching of violent videos as the stimulus for their crimes. The advertising for these new-styled videos also became a cause for concern with the full-page advert for The Driller Killer (1979) fuelling the campaign still further. The sensationalistic promotions used for Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and SS Experiment Camp (1976) didn’t help their cause either.

  Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association also began to make her thoughts known, using both television and the press in her determination to preserve the nation’s culture. She labelled The Evil Dead (1981) as the “number one video nasty”, although she later admitted to never having seen it, or many of the other titles against which she was campaigning. As history would one day show, she wasn’t the only one who had jumped onto the bandwagon not to have savoured the pleasures of The Beyond (1981) and Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979).

  With mounting public pressure, the only piece of legis
lation that could be used to alleviate the situation was the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, which authorized the police authorities in the seizure of any material that could deprave and corrupt a significant proportion of its intended audience. As head of the obscene publications unit, Peter Kruger was authorized by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to apply for a warrant. The police now had the power to confiscate any videos they thought were in violation of the act and carry out the necessary prosecutions. There followed a series of raids on video retailers, but precise definition as to what the officers were supposed to be looking for was never drawn up. The raids eventually moved from video rental shops to the wholesalers and the distributors, which included Thorn EMI. All those who were arrested lived in fear of being fined anything up to £20,000 and facing two years in prison.

  During a series of trials across the country, seventy-two titles were placed on the offending list with thirty-nine of them being successfully prosecuted, all of which are listed later on (page 491), with the horror-related films referenced in the main part of this book. The DPP didn’t find the judicial process to be plain sailing. At the end of the trial at Snaresbrook in which the case against The Evil Dead was dismissed in November 1984, the presiding judge was very critical of the DPP and its persistence in bringing charges against the film. Judge Stable went on to award all of the defendant’s costs (Palace Pictures), which were in excess of £20,000, against the DPP. This prompted an enraged statement from David Mellor, the Minister of State who at the time was accountable for the criminal justice policy at the Home Office. The government, however, were reluctant to be associated with statutory censorship, so the British Video Association (BVA) alongside the BBFC looked to creating a principled system of self-regulation. However, these efforts became superfluous when Peter Kruger presented a video containing clips from several terrors such as The Driller Killer, Snuff, I Spit On Your Grave and Faces Of Death to members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, who were visibly shocked. Still plagued by the hysteria in the press, and with a June general election on the horizon, the Conservative government abandoned the idea of self-regulation. They made a promise to the electorate to “respond to the increasing public concern over obscenity and offences against public decency, which often have links with serious crime”, and proposed to introduce the necessary legislation.

  “The Parliamentary Group Video Inquiry” headed by sociology lecturer Dr Clifford Hill, which examined the viewing habits of the country’s children, initially found that more than one in three children under the age of seven had been subjected to one of the listed video nasties. However, subsequent analysis questioned the validity of the inquiry’s findings. There were many who spoke out against the inquiry, but the bill to curb the country’s video viewing proposed by Graham Bright was gathering support in the Commons. With few MPs prepared to defend the video nasties, the House of Commons passed Bright’s bill without a single dissenting vote, and the Video Recordings Act (VRA) of 1984 entered the statute book to become law on September 1, 1985. This new law meant that all video releases after September 1 had to comply with the act and be submitted for classification to the BBFC, bringing the home video market into line with cinema censorship. Those titles that had been released prior to the act had to be withdrawn from sale and similarly submitted to the BBFC within a three-year period. It became a criminal offence to supply any tape without a BBFC certificate, although it was still within the bounds of the law to own them. In addition, supplying “15” or “18” certificated videos to people of a younger age was also made an offence. Films that had been passed uncut for cinema release could be cut for video, and several films already edited for cinema had to endure further cuts prior to being issued to video. The certification process could become very expensive, which meant many distributors withdrew those films they considered would be unlikely to see passed. Other notable horror titles were submitted, resulting in heavy cuts, or in certain cases outright rejection. By December 1985, the panic was at an end, the Video Recordings Act made the DPP’s list of video nasties defunct, as it was now illegal to offer any tape for sale without the appropriate certification.

  The Video Recording Act forced many smaller independent distributors out of business, as they were obliged to pay exactly the same certification fees to the BBFC as the giants of the industry, and for many of them their entire catalogue was made up of this extreme brand of horror.

  Terror for a New Millennium

  As with any other form of cinema, horror has continued to evolve. The past ten years have seen the grainy violence of the 1970s and the graphic displays of the 1980s replaced by torture porn, the Oriental lust for snuff movies and the arrival of the French Extreme. While these films have been criticized for their gratuitous content, they are only emulating the stance of their predecessors in pushing back the boundaries of acceptability. In certain instances characterization has been replaced by a dehumanizing mean spirit, but when we look back to the average eighties slasher these were far from being concerned with the development of a likable three-dimensional cast; let’s be honest, most of them were brought in for the slaughter. In recent years the butchery has become more pronounced and the teams of special effects experts have worked to keep up with the demand for this excess. Through it all, however, there has been one set of filmmakers who have kept going and refused to give in: the low-budget guys, the men and women who do it for next to nothing and continue to live the dream. A few of them will make it and open doors for more change, but most of them will just do it for personal satisfaction and the need to share their vision.

  Would you believe it, a splatter-free movie!

  Sorry folks, a little low key, only one or two bloodthirsty scenes.

  Maybe just enough blood to keep the gore-monger entertained.

  If you want blood, you got it, but your mamma wouldn’t like it; an abundance of slicing and dicing, with a steady flow of blood and guts.

  Chop, chop, chop! Now they’re really beginning to pour on the gore in an utterly deranged crescendo of butchery – the décor’s wall-to-wall splatter!

  Prepare for the feast, for it’s what you’ve always craved – a symphony of gore made all the more bloody by a cascade of splatter! If they’re not already eye-gouging and gut-munching, heads will surely roll.

  WHEN DANNY BOYLE and Alex Garland first proposed to revive George Romero’s apocalyptic vision it was considered something of a risk, but in keeping with their credentials they introduced something new to an already saturated subgenre. This wasn’t just a regurgitation of the ideas of Romero and his contemporaries; in setting their deranged mob amidst the streets of London, they redefined the mindless zombie of the past thirty years and gave these creatures a unique resurrection.

  In the chaos of the film’s opening scenes, animal rights activists force their way into a highly secret research facility with a view to freeing the captive chimpanzees. Unknown to them the primates have been infected with a virus designed to trigger an uncontrollable rage. Ignoring the pleas of a scientist, the activists, oblivious to the ferocity of the contagion, free the animals. Within seconds, the entire room is thrown into a murderous frenzy. Twenty-eight days later in an abandoned London hospital, Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakens from a coma. In the hope of trying to make sense of what is going on he takes to the streets to find the city is completely empty. His first encounter with the marauding zombie-like infected is very sudden and comes in the tranquil surrounds of a church, where he knows immediately his life is at stake. The meticulously orchestrated tension played out in the church erupts into a frantic chase with the maddened horde hot on his tail. Rescue comes from fellow survivors, Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley), who lead him to a place of relative safety. Jim now learns the horrifying truth. A virus has spread at an alarming rate across the length and breadth of the country transforming everyone in its wake into a psychotic rabble. And so followed the collapse of the whole of the British Isles. Theirs becomes a tale of s
urvival, as a small party head north to Manchester, believing the soldiers based there have a serum that will combat the infection. The journey takes them across a country ravaged by the rabid infected, where the general populace do not have access to guns.

  When the survivors reach Manchester, they are escorted under armed guard to a fortified mansion commanded by Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston). They soon learn West’s solution to the infection is to leave these deranged creatures to starve. Their situation becomes appreciably graver when they discover the surviving women are to be used to breed a new human race. In the hours before their escape, Sergeant Farrell (Stuart McQuarrie) suggests that Britain could have been quarantined to contain the epidemic within these shores. When Jim later sees the vapour trail of an aircraft, he starts to believe the sergeant could be right.