The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies (Mammoth Books)

by Peter Normanton

  The Bird with the Crystal Plumage marked Dario Argento’s ascent to the director’s chair, after penning several thrillers along with a number of war films and a spaghetti western. The inspiration for his movie, which would establish the stylistic elements of the giallo for the next decade, had taken shape in Fredric Brown’s novel The Screaming Mimi, written in 1949. Brown’s mystery tale had already been directed by Gerd Oswald for its Hollywood release as Screaming Mimi in 1958, but his feature would never have dared elicit the lurid display and then engage the violence of Argento’s film, an undertaking largely financed by his father. Ennio Morricone’s ominous score combined with Vittorio Storaro’s opulent cinematography that made abundant use of point-of-view stalking both served to overcome the obvious holes in the plot; and Argento engineered the suspense just as Alfred Hitchcock had before him to lead to what in its day was a quite shocking finale. The killer’s garb had been seen only a few years before in Mario Bava’s seminal Blood and Black Lace (1964), as had elements detected in the explicit murder scenes. However, few in his audience would have been aware of this, so dazzled would they have been by the ambition in Argento’s stylish technique that would one day become the hallmark for his mastery of the genre. This same audience would not have known there were those involved with the production who had wanted him removed from his position as director very early on in the shoot.

  Although The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was by no means as gruesome as Argento’s later masterpieces, edits of twenty seconds were demanded when it was submitted for release in the United States. Eight seconds were removed from the shots dwelling on the killer ripping the panties off one of the victims and a further twelve seconds were cut from the elevator scene showing a woman having her face slashed with a razor prior to its issue as The Gallery Murders. The BBFC approved this American R edit without any further changes and then, finally, after a thirty-year wait Argento fans in both Britain and the US got to see his debut in its uncut form.

  CHRISTMAS COMES BUT once a year; for some of these girls, however, it will never come again. A snow-covered college campus introduces the Bob Clark-directed Black Christmas, as an indistinct figure peers into the windows of a large sorority house where a Christmas party is being held. In a point-of-view shot, later used to equal effect by John Carpenter in his preface to Halloween, the audience is as close to the prowler as they ever could be as he moves from the periphery of the house to ascend a trellis before slipping into the former mansion through an attic window. Once in the house he clambers down the attic trap door and secretes himself somewhere upstairs, observing the joyous girls from the shadows of the stairway.

  The phone calls had initially seemed nothing more than a childish prank, but their tone has changed and while there is excitement at the party, these calls have started to unnerve this ill-fated gathering as they prepare for the festive holiday season. Barbie’s (Margot Kidder) invective shrieking down the phone acts only to incite the caller. His response is a calmly delivered death threat, made all the more chilling by the abrupt manner in which he puts down the receiver.

  The first victim is the innocent doe of the house, Clare (Lynne Griffin), who after a row with the abrasive Barbie retires to her room. She never gets there. The psychopath deviously lures her with a mocking meow made to sound like the house cat, then suffocates her in plastic wrap, before dragging her body away to conceal in the attic. Hidden away in the attic he sits Clare’s lifeless body in a rocking chair adjacent to the window, with the plastic bag still pulled tightly over her head. Just before making his leave he rests a doll in her lap, mumbling the name Agnes. Our killer it would appear has also been traumatized. Downstairs, life goes on with the other girls oblivious to Clare’s death. It is only when her father arrives to collect his daughter for the holidays we learn that no one has laid eyes on her since the quarrel with Barbie. It isn’t long before a young girl’s body is found by a search party investigating another disappearance.

  As these grisly events unfold, Jessica Bradford (Olivia Hussey) has to confront a dilemma in her own life, one that will have a major bearing on the outcome of this film. Having discovered she is pregnant she has to seriously consider an abortion, but boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea), whose behaviour is erratic throughout, is bitterly opposed to any such suggestion. His unhinged temperament makes him an increasingly likely suspect as one by one the girls in the house begin to disappear.

  When a sedated Jessica is left alone in the company of a guard, director Clark cunningly deceives the audience, letting them believe his film has reached its climax. The guard, however, is unconscious and those who have been at the centre of this drama are seen taking their leave, convinced the killer has been revealed. A deathly silence comes down on the house, as the attic door begins to open. The camera takes the audience up into the attic where the bodies of both Clare and the housekeeper have remained unnoticed. The killer now descends from the attic and is heard to utter the words “Agnes, it’s me, Billy!” Just before the credits begin to role a lone police officer is seen on the front porch as once again the phone begins to ring.

  Black Christmas, also briefly known as Silent Night, Evil Night on its US theatrical release, was inspired by a series of murders that occurred during the Christmas period in Quebec. For a long time forgotten by so many horror fans, this film bears many of the hallmarks of the slasher frenzy that would sweep across the film industry as the decade drew to a close. These would include a delightful cast of sorority girls, bawdy antics, sexual tension, dark comedy, an even darker house and a long knife, along with close-in shots that were designed to convey the killer’s perspective. Bob Clark succeeded in maintaining the tension, refusing to neither provide an explanation for the killer’s motives nor divulge his identity, which in more modern terrors would have resulted in a sequel. He also created a highly ambiguous finale that was to frustrate many of those when they first saw it, again demanding a follow up.

  In a similar way to John Carpenter in his seminal movie, Clark chose to avoid an excess of gore, even as his body count continued to grow. Rather, he used the element of tension, and carefully paced the scares through the shadows and goaded with the ominous presence of the killer hidden within. On its release, there were those who considered this a thriller, but the presence of a mysterious killer armed with a sharp knife and a gathering of vulnerable young girls made it worthy of the then popular giallo. Carl Zittrer’s score added to this impression of this Italian trend, as he skilfully augmented the sense of perturbation, later explaining that he tied forks, combs and knives to the strings of the piano with a mind to distorting the sound of the keys. The result remains very unsettling. The semblance to the giallo and the lack of blood may have for so many years consigned Black Christmas as a mere footnote in the history of the slasher movie. By 1980, the rulebook to the cinematic American slasher had almost been drawn up, but in 1974 makers of such films would have been very much inspired by the giallo of Italian lore. A case in point is the murder of the chaste Clare, who was the first to face the killer’s wrath in rather horrific circumstances; such a killing would have been inconceivable in either Halloween (1978) or Friday the 13th (1980). Meanwhile Jessica, who in both of the these films would have been condemned well before the finale for being sexually active and daring to consider an abortion, made it to the end, although it remains a matter of debate as to whether she actually survived.

  While Black Christmas now receives generally positive reviews, the critics of the day weren’t entirely disposed to this feature, which was seen as being clichéd and exploitative. The cliché at this point can have only been derived from gialli such as Mario Bava’s landmark A Bay of Blood (1971), because North American cinema had not attempted a film of this ilk and on such a scale. Bob Clark’s film went on to be nominated by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films as “Best Horror Film” in 1976, and in the same year in the Edgar Allan Poe Awards received a nomination for “Best Motion Picture”. In the Canadian F
ilm Awards for 1975 it won “Best Sound Editing in a Feature” and Margot Kidder picked up the “Best Performance by a Lead Actress”. On its release in Britain, the BBFC removed several expletives in addition to sexual references made during the obscene phone call scenes.

  A remake directed by Glen Morgan was released on December 25, 2006. This version was only loosely based on the original, opting for a more graphic portrayal and dwelled on the mystery surrounding Billy, thus removing much of the ambiguity in Bob Clark’s creepy finale.

  IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Moldavia a beautiful witch, Asa Vajda (Barbara Steele), and her lover Javuto (Arturo Dominici) are sentenced to death by her own brother. As they are hauled to the stake to burn for their sorcerous crimes, Asa swears revenge and curses her brother’s lineage. Her fate is sealed by an iron mask lined with sharpened spikes, which is locked firmly over her head and then forcefully hammered into her face. Blood is seen to ooze from the mask.

  Two hundred years later on a storm-ridden night, Dr Thomas Kruvajan (Andrea Checchi) and his assistant Dr Andre Gorobec (John Richardson) are observed crossing through this same region when one of the wheels of their carriage shatters. As the coach driver repairs the wheel, the doctors stumble upon the crypt where Asa has been laid to rest. As he attempts to thwart an annoying bat, Kruvajan breaks the panel enshrouding the dead witch’s tomb. Curiosity insists he remove the death mask, but as he does some of his blood drips onto Asa’s pallid face. Kruvajan has no knowledge of what he has done and returns with his assistant to the carriage. Here they are greeted by Katia (also played by Barbara Steele) who lives with her family in a nearby castle. Gorobec can’t help but be enchanted by her ravishing beauty.

  In the darkened shadows of the crypt, Asa is seen rising from the dead. She uses her malevolent sorcery to rejuvenate her lover and then makes her way to the castle still owned by Katia’s family, with evil in mind. After seducing Kruvajan to her vampiric domain, Asa turns her attention to the beautiful young girl. She believes that if she can drain Katia’s blood, she will gain eternal life. Gorborec must now do all he can to save Katia from the vengeful witch’s clutches. La Maschera del Demonio, also known as Revenge of the Vampire and The Mask of Satan, was Mario Bava’s first credited directorial work and is acknowledged to be one of the most beautifully photographed films in the history of horror cinema. Shot in black and white, Bava conjured with light and shade to create a Gothic masterpiece reminiscent of the Universal horror movies of two decades past. The influence of Italian director Riccardo Freda and the expressionist Fritz Lang were in evidence in so much of this film, and as the horse-drawn carriage pulls up who can deny the homage to F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). While Bava’s film does observe a coherent plot, his real interest lay in creating an air of dread and supplementing this with gloomy but captivating visuals. As an admirer of Russian fantasy and horror, he based his feature on the short story “Vij” written by the Ukrainian born Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol in 1865 and later released as the Soviet Union’s first horror film in 1967. However, the final screenplay, which endured so many redrafts during filming, owed precious little to the original. Indeed if Hammer hadn’t enjoyed success with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958) in Italy, Bava may never have had the chance to produce such an atmospheric classic. Black Sunday also heralded the arrival of sensuous horror icon Barbara Steele, in one of her most memorable roles. While she struggled with the Italian language, the young actress’s macabre beauty cast a spell over her audience and would see her rise to assume the role as the dark queen of horror for decades to come. Her introduction to the world of Italian horror came with a scene laced in sexuality, which was rife with more explicit violence and gore than anything so far committed to film. The opening sequence focusing on the iron mask being driven into Steele’s face resulted in the film being banned in the UK until 1968. Similarly there were problems in the United States when the distributor AIP had to remove over three minutes of footage detailing the burning “S” being branded into Asa’s flesh and the blood spurting from the infamous spiked mask, the eyeball staking of the vampiric Kruvajan, and the flesh peeling from Katia’s father’s face, all to make the film more acceptable. While Bava’s film was only moderately successful in Italy, it generated a huge turnover across Europe and America and received much critical acclaim before going on to influence a generation of horror filmmakers. Tim Burton would use its sublime imagery during the production of Sleepy Hollow (1999) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) also paid homage to several key scenes from Bava’s masterpiece.

  RELEASED IN ITALY as Sei Donne Per L’Assassino, Mario Bava’s film opened with a prowling camera homing in on the brutal murder of the gorgeous model Isabella (Francesca Ungaro) in the grounds of a fashionable “haute couture” house in the city of Rome. What followed would bear so many of the hallmarks of the infamous Italian giallo, rather than the Edgar Wallace-styled murder mystery for which the German backers had hoped. Such detective tales had proven very popular, but Bava’s film would become recognized as one the earliest and most influential of this uniquely Italian genre. Poor Isabella met her death as a thunderstorm played out a raging drama in the skies over the city. These scenes, laced with the lurid sexuality only recently observed in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), would have you believe the temptation in her beauty provoked this darkened figure who on this occasion was disguised by a mask rather than the customary black leather gloves of the gialli that followed. The case is assigned to the self-assured Inspector Silvestri (Thomas Reiner), who soon uncovers a web of drugs, corruption and blackmail in this seemingly respectable establishment. His investigation very soon draws up a list of likely suspects. Among them are the owner Massimo Morlacchi (Cameron Mitchell), the wealthy Ricardo Morellin (Franco Ressel), who turns out to have been having an affair with Isabella, the dress designer Cesar Lazzarini (Louis Pigot), and Isabella’s boyfriend Frank (Dante Di Paolo) an antique shop owner who supplied cocaine to some of the models.

  As the events unfold, we learn Isabella was not the victim of a sex-crazed killer; rather, her fate was sealed when she started to detail a series of improprieties at the fashion house in the pages of her diary. The same mysterious figure dressed in black now makes another appearance, this time in the darkened antique shop owned by her former antique dealing drug-peddling boyfriend Frank. On this occasion, the shadowed figure seizes a clawed mallet and strikes at another model, Nicole (Ariana Gorini). Convinced she now has the diary, he hits her squarely across the face. Stunned by the blow she continues to struggle, but alas, to no avail, she falls to become his second victim. And so the torture and murder continues as this sinister figure leaves in his wake an ever-growing body count of scantily clad beautiful young girls, but fails to locate the incriminating diary. In the course of his scurrilous activities, he shows himself to be an expert with a sharpened blade in addition to asphyxiation by pillow, but his most dastardly moment comes when a model’s face is forced down onto a scalding furnace.

  As would have been expected of a time-served cinematographer of such eminence, although Bava never considered himself as such, the balance created between the light and shadow coupled with the distinctive colour filters elevated the photography in this movie, placing it above so much of the highly competent film making of the period. This visual splendour would have his feature lauded as “decorative horror”, but there were those, including American International Pictures, who had serious misgivings as to its lurid portrayal and the explicit nature of the murder scenes. Reviews at the time were mixed; it was only when film historians began to re-appraise Bava’s work that the significance of Blood and Black Lace in the evolution of the giallo was finally recognized.

  THE CAMERA DRAWS its focus on a female student showering behind a semi-transparent curtain. As she dries herself, an intruder stealthily makes his way upstairs and then, brandishing a meat cleaver, explodes into the bathroom. In a series of cleverly re-enacted shots made to resemble Hers
chel G. Lewis’s Blood Feast (1963), he begins to hack wildly at her exposed body causing a flow of blood to splatter across the room. The poor girl is left for dead as the killer takes off with her severed arm. A prologue then tries to suggest there is an element of truth to this tale, telling of a series of grisly murders, perpetrated at a mid-western college in the fall of 1985.

  The slaughter continues as the killer beats another girl to death with her friend’s severed head. The local sheriff now steps in to solve the case, but with the murders beginning to escalate his hopes of succeeding in the forthcoming election seem increasingly remote. The only clue is an amulet found at the scene of each of the murders. Tina, the sheriff’s daughter who works as a librarian, traces the amulet to an eighteenth-century coven of witches. Down through the ages this cult has continued in its quest to seek retribution on those who accused its ilk of witchery in 1692. Almost mirroring Lewis’s Blood Feast, the cult is convinced that with the ritualistic assemblage of the body parts of their victims, their revenge will be complete and a demonic god will arise as their champion.