The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies (Mammoth Books)

by Peter Normanton

  Cohen is now the Producing Director for Middlesex County, New Jersey’s Plays-in-The-Park, having enjoyed a wide-ranging career in both film and theatre. He has also written two books on theatre, The Community Theater Handbook and the The Theater Director’s Primer.

  ACHILD PLAYS WITH his ball and then returns home to be verbally abused by his mother. When the door closes, a scream can be heard from within the house. The blood-stained youngster smiles to the camera, having just killed his mother with a meat cleaver. Twenty years later the adult Karl escapes police custody, having butchered them as they transfer him between prisons. The last of the policemen is seen at very close proximity falling before the madman’s sharpened weapon. Karl, meat cleaver in hand, is now free to return to his murderous ways. His next victim is a woman whose car has broken down in the German countryside; true to the Italian splatter-filled misogyny of this bloodthirsty decade, he thrusts his blade into her breasts. His bloodlust doesn’t end here; a man’s penis is soon after chopped in half. In a change of weaponry, a gardener is decapitated with a hedge trimmer and so the gorefest continues with bodily dismemberment and a bloody display of intestines. All the while, the killer avers to being plagued by the vision of the devil he saw as a child. In the bizarre finale, his body degenerates to slime, and within minutes we witness his rejuvenation as a baby.

  As the budget suggests, Andreas Schnaas’ first film was an almost amateur project, but could take pride in being Germany’s first shot-to-video horror movie. An admirer of Lucio Fulci, Schnaas used what little money he had to pour on as much cheap gore as his bank balance could stand, but offered little in the way of a comprehensible storyline and never appeared concerned with the character development that afforded so many of its contemporaries such credence. Instead, he preferred to linger on the hack and slash of his killer’s slaughter, cutting up his victims and ensuring Steve Aquilina’s camera was as close as it possibly could be to the bloody display. The title alone would see it banned in many countries, but in the world of underground cinema Schnaas was to go on to gather a dedicated cult following. Against the odds, he continued Karl’s low-budget penchant for slaughter less than twelve months later in Violent Shit 2 – Mother, Hold My Hand but this wouldn’t see release until 1992. He then set to work on a third film hoping to conclude his disreputable series in 1993, but a lack of funds kept the film from release until 1999 when it appeared as Violent Shit III: Infantry of Doom, re-titled as Zombie Doom for its assault on the US market. With the copyright to these films now lying elsewhere Schnaas has no plans to revive this deranged psychotic.

  DURING THE MAKING of Visions of Suffering, Andrey Iskanov conspired with any accepted notions of surrealism, psychedelia and gore to create a film that remains unique and reflected just how the world of cinematic horror was once again beginning to change. As the opening frames roll onto the screen we are told, “A dream is a reality, rejected by our mind”, and so follows a celluloid voyage of visual splendour into a hallucinatory domain of unending nightmare, which at the last defies any attempt at explanation.

  Whenever it rains The Man in Glasses (Alexander Shevchenko) is plagued by the hideous nightmare of a person with a misshapen face trudging through dismal swampland grasping at black squid creatures as they descend from the sky. With the intensity of his dreams becoming increasingly alarming, he calls his girlfriend, but damages the phone. The Phone Repairman (Victor Silkin) arrives on the scene, a man whose dominion lies amidst those haunting ghosts who have the power to evoke these terrifying visions. These creatures are known as Vampires, and those who acquire knowledge of their existence are agonizingly punished and then left for slaughter. To ensure word about their activities doesn’t get to the ears of mortal man, the Vampires utilize the sadistic skills of The Man in Black (Igor Orlov).

  Unaware his life is threatened The Man in Glasses gets through to his girlfriend and arranges to meet her in a bizarre nightclub known as Delirium, an institution with its own set of rules. However, in contacting his girlfriend he has foolishly given the Vampire breed his whereabouts; bloody carnage will inevitably follow. While there is little in the way of dialogue the camera’s lens allows us to see addicts with access to mind-bending drugs and the strangest people who freely indulge their inhumane desires. He seeks counsel from The Priest (Andrey Iskanov) only to learn he too is deeply troubled, by his faith and those indescribable dreams that invade his sleep when the rain begins to fall. Demonic creatures conspire to use these nightmares to escape their own hell-borne world and drag the incumbents to the terrors that lie in wait in their unholy realm.

  Iskanov’s film follows in the path of the Italian masters, preferring to immerse the viewer with imagery that seeks to disturb rather than presenting a coherent storyline, taking those who sit before its hypnotic gaze into a vision of drug-induced nightmare. The camera works to heighten the sense of disorientation while assaulting the senses as the dream eventually consumes our sense of reality.

  TELEVISION JOURNALIST DEBORAH Ballin’s (Lee Grant) strong-willed disposition thrives on controversy. However, her unrestrained defence of a woman accused of murdering her abusive husband leaves one of the studio’s cleaning staff seething. An emotional void exists in this man, a trait observed in so many slashers, past and present. As a child, Hawker (Michael Ironside) saw his browbeaten mother throw boiling oil into the face of his abusive father. All these years later, he continues to bear the emotional scars, intimated in a series of vague but unsettling flashbacks. To his twisted way of thinking, this outspoken woman must be silenced, once and for all. After following her home, he wastes no time in disposing of the maid Francine, then bides his time waiting for Ballin before making his vicious assault. Barely surviving the ordeal she is rushed to a hospital and is placed under the care of nurse Sheila Munroe (Linda Purl), whose boundless determination will add her to Hawker’s death list.

  When he learns Ballin is still alive, Hawker heads to the hospital with murder in mind. The tension mounts as this develops into a taut game of cat and mouse with the murderous psycho shadowing his victims through the deserted wards and corridors of the hospital. There is an insane pleasure insinuated in the terrorizing of his victims before subjecting them to the razor sharpness of his new weapon of choice, a handy scalpel. Hawker doesn’t face the customary gaggle of girls associated with the slasher of the last few years, screaming their heads off (literally in some cases) at the first sign of trouble; these women each have an inner strength, which is why they are now in this predicament.

  While there are many gaping holes in the plot, which to some extent detract from this film, Hawker as the silent assassin with his disconcertingly sado-masochistic tendencies is accordingly the creepiest of psychotic killers. As the eerie score seeps into the claustrophobia of the hospital’s endless corridors and empty wards, so stalks this misogynistic slayer. Jean Claude Lord’s film may resort to so many of the clichés associated with the slasher phenomenon of the period, but it also introduces a cast of strong women who are prepared to fight for their lives rather than the usual stock of teen fodder. Visiting Hours couldn’t be described as a gory piece, but Lord wasn’t averse to lingering over his death scenes and relished getting in as close as possible during the stabbings.

  THE HEAD OF a family (Humberto Yáñez) shuffles through an affluent shopping centre and falls dead to the floor. The passing shoppers try to ignore his dishevelled presence; he isn’t their problem and they know a cleaning crew will be called in to remove his body. In the mortuary, the pathologist finds a finger with a painted fingernail in the father’s stomach and reveals him as a cannibal. Up until this revelation, the police had had little interest in the case, but now they know if they can capture his family the headlines would be the making of them.

  In another part of the city, the eldest son, Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro) must assume responsibility for the surviving members of the family. He finds it difficult to follow the example set by his father in providing his family with their muc
h-needed ritualistic sacrifice. He fails miserably when he attempts to lure a suitable prostitute on his visit to the red light district, and his attempt to kidnap a homeless child is later thwarted. The family dynamic begins to endure a dramatic change as his mother and sister withdraw from life, dismissing his intended victims, and his younger brother becomes increasingly psychotic, looking to pick young men up in gay bars and bring them to the family dinner table. As the family return to their all-consuming quest and try to hunt down their prey, the police investigation gets closer to their home, one of the many slums of the city, and leads to a calamitous showdown.

  Rather than concerning himself with the bloodthirsty nature of the revived cannibal phenomenon, which had been covered admirably by Cannibal Hillbillies (2003) and Germany’s Barricade (2007), Jorge Michel Grau on his promising directorial debut concentrated on the collapse of an already dysfunctional family in the poverty stricken labyrinthine slums of Mexico City. Unlike the cannibal frenzy of the 1970s and early 1980s, which had very quickly become stale in repeatedly laying emphasis on the plight of its victims, We Are What We Are observed the domestic drama of a family of killers as they endeavoured to survive in the ruthless streets of this modern-day city. In what is acknowledged as being the country’s first cannibal movie, Grau offered a powerful examination of Mexico’s corrupt authorities and the country’s increasingly divided society, one that appears more inclined to the wealthy and the influx of foreign tourists with money to spend. The poor seem to have been forgotten, which in this instance allowed this family to satiate their craving for human flesh. The reasons for their cannibalism are never fully explained; we can only wonder if their desperate economic circumstances have driven them to this grisly way of life. Theirs is a realistically violent world, a theme Grau wants to return to as he anticipates his next two projects in what should be, given his immense ability, a series of films that match the beauty in this film’s cinematography and its compelling storyline. While, as would be expected, there is plenty of gore in this film, the scenes of cannibalism are often shot from a distance and the hand-held close-in shots appear obscured, thus detracting from the grisly delights many fans of this sub-genre would relish, but this ironically makes Grau’s film so much more disturbing.

  CARLOS SCOTT’S WEDDING Slashers is a highly amusing tribute to the slasher movies of two decades past. In an introductory flashback a young couple are journeying to Vegas, having eloped to get married. They never manage to get there; the love struck couple are killed by a figure wearing a gas mask and cloak, who is not quite on a par with the previous year’s Reeker. He eulogizes on love and then delivers a blow to the bride’s head, splitting it clean open.

  Jenna has always dreamed of finding the perfect man and gliding up the aisle. However, whenever she meets the man of her dreams he has a habit of ending up dead. This time she knows it will be different; Alex is just perfect and the wedding date has been set. On the eve before the big day, doubt begins to set in, and who can blame her when the best man is murdered at the bachelor party and some of the girls in the bridal party begin to disappear. Her family, we soon discover, are overly protective of their beloved daughter and will do anything it takes to dispose of her lovers. She was convinced she had escaped their possessive clutches, but they have arrived on the scene to hack their way through the entire wedding party. As you can imagine there’s not much in the way of romance and it looks extremely doubtful that the happy couple will make it all of the way to the service.

  For these eighty minutes, there are plenty of gory scenes on show, which probably drained the hopelessly diminutive budget. Heads are severed, eyes popped out, throats are cut as the carnage rages out of control. As with its precursors, the acting left much to be desired, but it did give the boys just what they wanted; blood, guts and a plethora of topless shots.

  ACCOMPANIED BY AN expedition led by Lacombe (Gil Vidal), the Polish count Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) journeys across the Himalayas in search of the legendary Yeti. Soon after arriving in Katmandu, Waldemar and a scout (Victor Israel) trek into the mountains and come upon a cave. In the confides of the cave Waldemar is captured by two flesh-eating sorceresses who reduce the intrepid adventurer to become little more than their sex slave. Their foul machinations eventually result in his transformation into a werewolf. As the full moon rises, he is set loose to wreak havoc and slaughter anyone or anything that comes into his path. After his disappearance, his fellow explorers attempt to follow his trail, but many of the party are killed by bandits led by Temuljin, and those who survive are incarcerated by a Mongol chief named Sherkan-Kan (Luis Induni). Then we are introduced to the evil Wandesa (Silvia Solar), who tries to cure Waldemar of his lycanthropy, but is unable to prevent the final battle between the werewolf and the Yeti.

  The Werewolf and the Yeti has also gone by the names Night of the Howling Beast, La Maldición de la Bestia, Hall of the Mountain King and Horror of the Werewolf and sees the return of Paul Naschy’s (born Jacinto Molina Alvarez) heroic adventurer Waldemar Daninsky, who once again falls to the werewolf’s curse. The unrelated “Hombre Lobo” movies began life in 1967 with The Mark of the Wolfman and followed with the now lost The Nights of the Wolf Man (1968); this would be the eighth production in this series of twelve films and probably the most ludicrous. Director Miguel Iglesias had acquired a reputation in Spain for his exploitation movies and for the ninety-four-minute running time provided a colourful piece of comic book-styled entertainment, combining terror, action, nudity and a copious flow of blood and guts as members of the expedition suffered beheading and impalement. Horror fans would have to wait until the finale for the battle they craved but those who were in it for the sleaze would see the hero turned into a sex slave by nymphomaniac witches and the cruel flagellation of Waldemar’s doe-eyed lover by the perverse Wandesa. The effects were cheap but these scenes still brought this film to the attention of the DPP and the BBFC almost two years after being made available on video in October 1982. It joined the list of video nasties in August 1984 and remained there throughout the hysteria. Its ban under the Video Recordings Act of 1984 has yet to be revoked and the original video is now considered a rare treasure.

  WHILE MARRIED, ENRICO “Henry” Rossini (Fabio Testi) is teaching at a private all girls Catholic school in London; he is also having an affair with one of the students (Christina Galbó). As they drift down the Thames on a romantic outing, his girlfriend suddenly becomes hysterical, insisting she has seen a knife. At first, Henry is dismissive of her claims, but the following day the body of another student is discovered at the same spot. The investigating officers led by Inspector Barth (Joachim Fuchsberger) are faced with a trail of murder, as Enrico becomes the main suspect, owing to his close relationship with several of the girls under his tutelage. When more of the schoolgirls turn up dead at the hands of this black-gloved killer, Enrico and his trusting wife take it on themselves to find the culprit, in the hope of clearing the philandering teacher’s name.

  While not as stylish as many of the gialli of the period, Massimo Dallamano’s Cosa avete fatto a Solange? contained all of the elements the genre held so close to its heart: suspense, murder, sex, religion and a series of disturbing flashbacks. Dallamano, who had been the cinematographer on Sergio Leone’s A Fist Full of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965), based his tale on Edgar Wallace’s The Clue of the New Pin, first published in 1923. The death scenes were not especially grisly, but Dallamano made up for this with a skilful piece of storytelling, introducing teasing red herrings and carefully laying the clues as he guided this feature on its way towards a series of shocking revelations. His film blended two of the European sub-genres of the period, the giallo and the West German krimi, which had begun life in 1959 under the influence of the Danish movie company Rialto Film, but by 1972 had waned in popularity. As with Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood (1971), What Have You Done to Solange? was given an extensive release in the United States, which had a major impact on the early ye
ars of the following decade’s obsession with the slasher. This was also the beginning of the “schoolgirl gialli”, which trailed seemingly innocent adolescent girls as a series of deluded predators with strangely moralistic predilections stalked them in the shadows. The outcome would invariably reveal a young girl with a scandalous secret. As the camera’s roving eye caught glimpses of the showering girls, the element of teenage sleaze was diminished when the audience realized the female cast were all at least eighteen years of age. As this new strain of gialli evolved, so too would the sleaze factor; but not in Dallamano’s movie.

  Alongside Dallamano was his tireless cameraman Joe D’Amato, no more than a dozen films into the two hundred or so features upon which he would come to work. Under the supervision of his experienced director, he assisted in creating the eerie air that has come to characterize this feature, which would later be reproduced in his own creations Buio Omega (1979), Antropophagus (1980) and Absurd (1981). This was augmented by Ennio Morricone’s haunting score that suffused the melancholy in the wake of these terrible murders, each of which was left to the audience’s imagination.