The Horror of It All

by Adam Rockoff

  The poster image was so notorious that an urban legend sprang up around it. Supposedly, that tight little behind belonged to none other than Demi Moore. When I finally met Meir Zarchi, the writer/director of I Spit on Your Grave, at the premiere of the film’s 2010 remake, I asked him about this rumor. He smiled, placed a single finger to his lips, and nodded ever so slightly. Was it an admission? Or was Zarchi, surprisingly playful, just fucking with me? In the spirit of journalistic integrity, I guess I could press him for an answer. But I kind of like the mystery. And since I have the framed poster in my office, I enjoy sharing this tidbit with visitors who pretend to be just as interested.

  If the video store quickly became a secular temple, its congregants had an equally compelling reason to stay at home: cable television. Today, in a world where many of us make no distinction between shows on the broadcast nets, basic cable, pay cable, video on demand, and streaming services, it’s hard to remember just how revolutionary the concept of cable initially was.

  Even more than home video—which required at least a minimal degree of parental involvement, if only for the rental fee or a ride to the video store—cable was the gift horse that deserved a big sloppy kiss on the mouth. For the enterprising kid, nothing was off-limits. And I was nothing if not enterprising. Somewhere in the back of my parents’ entertainment center is a battered VHS tape that once contained the soft-core troika of The Sensuous Nurse, The Story of O, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I recorded these films in the dead of night over a period of months, since I was the only one in my family who knew how to work the timer on our VCR. The movies were captured in the SLP format, which allowed you to cram six hours of footage onto a standard two-hour VHS tape. Sure, the quality suffered, but blank tapes were an expensive accessory, and it was also much easier to hide my growing library of smut on as few tapes as possible.

  Some kids are entrepreneurial by nature. Whenever I read profiles of successful business figures their story always contains a fond remembrance about how they got their start peddling magazines, shoveling snow, hawking encyclopedias, or selling hair tonic (this last example is admittedly from the Brady Bunch). I was not one of these kids. My days were spent almost exclusively playing sports, watching horror movies, and trying desperately to get girls to notice me.

  However, because we had a few extra VCRs lying around the house, I had a short-lived plan to become a professional (and illegal, but at the time I didn’t know it) film distributor. I had figured out how to connect two VCRs together with A/V cables. This allowed me to record from one prerecorded tape onto a blank tape. My idea was to dub the highlights from my soft-core library (money shots without the money or the shooting) to create a greatest hits–like video that I could then sell to every red-blooded male in my elementary school for a little more than the price of tape stock.

  Unfortunately, my plan hit a snag when I failed to consider the amount of uninterrupted, and more importantly, unsupervised, time that I would need to complete the master tape. It would have to be one day when I was home sick from school. But this posed another problem. Some parents keep their kids home from school for nothing more than a hangnail. My wife actually got “mental health” days where her mother let her play hooky a few times a year just so she could clear her head. This would never have flown in my house. As loving as my parents were, they would have made me roll myself to school in my own iron lung. When I was around nine, I came down with synovitis, a harmless but temporarily debilitating condition in which the membranes lining the joints become inflamed. I couldn’t move my legs and was completely incapacitated. Naturally, my parents suspected I was faking and forced me to get ready for school. I swung down the hallway, doorknob to doorknob, like some kind of tree sloth, my useless legs dragging behind me.

  Over the next month, I managed to carve out a few hours during which I dubbed about a half a dozen scenes. I sold zero tapes. Vestron Video had no idea how close they came to obsolescence.

  In order to compete with the video store, cable systems needed some way to promote and differentiate their offerings. The implementation of a “channel menu” was years away and the venerable TV Guide about as compelling as a Bob Ross marathon. So these companies would send out a monthly, full-color supplement to highlight all their new films. Oftentimes, the poster art was featured along with a summary. I would literally spend hours poring over these listings—which is how I got the names of the films listed in my infamous second-grade essay. If I shut my eyes, I’m instantly transported back to 1982. There was Blood Beach, accompanied by the image of a screaming woman partially swallowed up by the sand itself. The tagline was sublime: Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Water—You Can’t Get to It. The Boogens also seemed interesting, and not just because the creatures looked and sounded like mucus. Little did I know that I should have recorded this low-budget gem for my defunct distribution company, as it would soon become one of the most sought-after out-of-print titles for collectors. Are You in the House Alone? might have been a bloodless TV movie about sexual assault, barely more graphic than an after-school special, but all I knew was that a good-looking teenager was alone in the house. The possibilities were limitless.

  Back in the early eighties, if you were a kid with an insatiable urge to know about the newest crop of horror movies, there were few options. There was no Internet. Bookstores were pretty much useless and the public library just as bad. At the most, it would carry a handful of books about the Universal Monsters and maybe a biography of Boris Karloff or Vincent Price. For current films, you were shit out of luck.

  Thankfully, there was the Route 1 Flea Market.

  Before it was razed in 1996 to make way for a Loews multiplex, this flea market was one of Central Jersey’s great landmarks. Ostensibly a place for low-income families to find good deals on tube socks, for a kid whose idea of high culture was professional wrestling, it was like an all-expenses-paid trip to Disney World. Where else could you possibly find Chinese stars, a rattlesnake paperweight, and a “Kill a Commie for Mommy” T-shirt within fifty yards of each other? Since neither of my parents would get within a half a mile of the place, I was fortunate to have a grandmother who would have done anything for her only grandson. Our weekends at the flea market are some of the best memories of my childhood. She would buy me a couple slices of pizza and then some rock candy or gummy worms to wash it down. While digesting, I would play endless games of Jungle Hunt and Dragon’s Lair. Before we left, we would always make a stop at the magazine stand. It was here that I was first introduced to Fangoria and its grislier sister publication, GoreZone.

  Fangoria had been around since 1979, when it was spun off as a fantasy film alternative to its science fiction–centric parent, Starlog. When the first few issues failed to gain traction with readers, editor Bob Martin shifted the magazine’s focus to horror films. Issue 7, with The Shining’s Jack Nicholson front and center, solidified Fango—as it’s affectionately known—as “the First in Fright.”

  Fango’s success was no accident. Its focus was tight, its layout beautiful, and its articles of a much higher quality than any of its competitors. It was also a fortuitous time to launch such an endeavor. Special-effects artists were just coming into their own as the real stars of horror films, and there was no better way to showcase the work of Tom Savini, Rick Baker, and Rob Bottin than a full-color spread in Fango. The slasher films of the time also ensured a steady stream of product to cover. But arguably, nothing was more important to the long-term health of the magazine than the decision to hire a young NYU grad in the summer of 1985.

  Tony Timpone was an unabashed horror fan whose dream job was to work for Fangoria. While still in school, he honed his craft writing for some of Forry Ackerman’s post–Famous Monsters of Filmland ventures. After breaking in through Starlog, Timpone rose quickly through the ranks of Fango, soon becoming editor-in-chief, a position he would hold with great distinction until 2010. Almost immediately, he put his stamp on the magazine. Forgoing an e
litist approach to the genre, Fangoria covered everything, from studio blockbusters and man-in-a-suit Japanese monster movies to Italian zombie films and underground American trash. Even if some readers didn’t appreciate this communal philosophy, it was impossible to dislike Timpone himself. His enthusiasm for horror movies was infectious; although I didn’t know him well, I distinctly remember his grabbing me at a Fango event in Chicago to rave about this new French film called Ils. Plus, he favored finely tailored suits in a genre better known for black T-shirts and denim jackets. I always admired the fact that he took his unofficial role as spokesman for the horror genre seriously enough to look the part.

  Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Fangoria is that it has remained horror’s magazine of record for over thirty years. This is even more impressive when one considers just how many other periodicals have come and gone over this same period. In fact, there is only one other horror magazine that has even approached—some people would argue it has now exceeded—the cultural cachet of Fango.

  Rue Morgue magazine started as a pipe dream for founder Rodrigo Gudiño. He was working at the now-defunct Canadian music-industry magazine RPM when he had his eureka moment. The first black-and-white issue of Rue Morgue hit the street—literally, as Gudiño himself distributed free copies to passersby—a few days before Halloween 1997. The date was a good omen indeed; for the next few years, Gudiño poured everything he had into his fledging publication. Under his watchful eye, Rue Morgue drew upon the talents of the very best, and most opinionated, writers in the business. At one time or another, Chris Alexander, Dave Alexander, John W. Bowen, Jovanka Vuckovic, the Gore-Met, Paul Corupe, and Sean Plummer were (and in many cases, still are) regular contributors. Art directors Gary Pullin and later Justin Erickson abandoned the typical “film still” cover in favor of gorgeous illustrations reminiscent of Basil Gogos’s work for Famous Monsters of Filmland. Taking a page from the Fangoria playbook, Rue Morgue eventually moved into other areas, including conventions, film festivals, and most notably, its own film label, Rue Morgue Cinema.

  Today, I don’t know a single person who reads either Fangoria or Rue Morgue but not the other. They’re the Beatles and the Rolling Stones of horror magazines, despite what other upstarts may claim, or pretend, to the contrary.

  But let’s get back to Mrs. Glassman, that paragon of elementary education. After the incident with my horror essay, she placed a call to my parents. I understand that in today’s post-Columbine, post-Newtown world it doesn’t seem unreasonable that a teacher would act with a preponderance of caution. In fact, educators should be contacting parents to head off potentially dangerous students. But this was long before the issue of school violence was even a blip on the national radar. And trust me, Mrs. Glassman’s intention wasn’t to prevent an incident or help diagnose some psychological defect. Like everything else she did, she was simply exerting her unquestioned authority. Thankfully, my parents were smart enough to realize that not only had I not seen most of the films whose titles I transcribed from the cable guide, but the chance that they had a budding psychopath living under their roof was fairly slim. At the meeting, Mrs. Glassman blathered on about how much of my creative writing veered toward the darker side. My parents nodded respectfully. I just sat there, embarrassed, praying for this nightmare to be over.

  The only tangible effect this incident had was to strengthen my resolve to see these films. I watched Leatherface, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Frank Zito, Harry Warden, and Andrew Garth saw, hack, slash, and slice their way through hundreds of victims. But they never hurt a child.

  That indignity was reserved for Mrs. Glassman.

  * * *

  I. According to Corpun.com, a site whose stated purpose is the study of corporal punishment around the world, but which is clearly a comprehensive database for spanking fetishists. For those parents with children trying to determine where not to live, state-sanctioned abuse is legal in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.

  II. Technically, The Watcher in the Woods was first released in 1980, albeit briefly. However, the version most people are familiar with is the “official” cut, released theatrically in October 1981.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Slasherama

  In the fall of 1980, America’s best-known film critics, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, devoted an entire episode of their PBS series, Sneak Previews, to “a disturbing new trend at the movie box office.”

  This trend, of course, was the slasher film.

  I moved to Chicago in 1998, only a few months before Siskel’s tragic death, so I wasn’t particularly familiar with his reviews for the Chicago Tribune. I think it’s safe to say, however, that I wouldn’t have cared for him. Just as I didn’t care for Ebert, his cohost and rival at the competing daily, the Chicago Sun-Times. I didn’t like Ebert’s politics, his sense of self-importance, or, quite frankly, his taste in movies. That said, nobody should ever have to endure what he went through in the last few years of his life. The man faced his inevitable death with a combination of grace and strength that I always found inspiring.

  I’m not going to lie, it’s a lot of fun to dissect this particular episode because it perfectly illustrates just what pompous blowhards these two were. But it’s equally instructive to use as a primer to address the most prevalent and enduring criticisms of the slasher film. After all, there has never been a more disreputable genre. Porn, maybe. But even here, you have your radical feminists for whom the choice to fill every conceivable orifice with objects—both animate and inanimate—is the ultimate form of self-expression.

  Not so with slasher films. Everybody hates them—except those of us who love them.

  The show begins with Ebert introducing the episode’s topic. Siskel jumps right in, saying, “To put it bluntly, what you see in most of these films is a lot of teenage girls being raped or stabbed to death. Usually both.” Now, I don’t want to quibble about semantics and nitpick every single word, but for a self-proclaimed journalist, Siskel’s reporting certainly leaves a lot to be desired. What films is he talking about? I have to imagine he did at least a little research before the show, if only enough to formulate an opinion about how awful these films are. But I also imagine I’ve seen a lot more slasher films than he has and I can’t think of a single one in which the killer rapes a woman, much less rapes and then stabs her to death. But according to Siskel, this “usually” happens. I guess he could be referring to I Spit on Your Grave—a film Ebert particularly detested—but not only is the victim not stabbed, she survives the assault and enacts her own even more brutal revenge. Maybe he’s talking about Last House on the Left, a film in which the victims are indeed raped and then stabbed, and of which, ironically, Ebert was a huge fan. But Last House was released in 1972, nearly a decade before the slasher’s heyday. More likely, Siskel just doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

  Ebert then chimes in to note that one of the things all these films have in common is “that they portray women as helpless victims.” Like his partner, he must have done some research. But also like his partner, he’s dead wrong. While the term “final girl” might not yet have entered the pop culture lexicon, the conceit was certainly familiar. In almost all these films the lone survivor is a woman, and specifically a headstrong resourceful one who either defeats or escapes the killer. Alice in Friday the 13th. Marti from Hell Night. Anne from Graduation Day. Hell, Jamie Lee Curtis alone faced down the masked maniac in no less than three slasher films (more if you count all the Halloween sequels she appeared in). I would hardly call any of these women “helpless victims.”

  For a moment, let’s pretend that all the victims in slasher films are helpless women, and let’s even take it a step further and admit they’re usually quite attractive. Is this such a bad thing? Critics would say yes. They would argue that slasher films promulgate the pri
mitive idea that independent women must be punished for asserting their sexuality. And punished in the most severe manner possible. As evidence, they point to the fact that in many slasher films the virginal girl is the sole survivor (never do they acknowledge, as stated before, that this practically negates the argument that these girls are helpless), while her more promiscuous friends meet a gruesome end.

  In Going to Pieces I argued that this phenomenon is rooted not in an ultraconservative mind-set, as the theory usually goes, but a practical one. It’s certainly no secret that filmmakers realized almost immediately the benefits of spicing up their horror with a little T & A. After all, who comprises the audience of most slasher films? Teenagers. And what do young adults want to see? If I have to spell it out, it’s been a long time since you’ve been a teenager. Since you’re never more vulnerable than when you’re naked, and particularly when you’re bumping uglies, it only makes sense that sex and violence are two sides of the same coin. Dario Argento articulates this point perfectly, if not particularly delicately. “I like women, especially beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man.”I Is it wrong to prefer the vicarious thrill the on-screen slaughter of a beautiful woman provides? Who knows? But the damsel in distress is an age-old archetype. And I have to imagine that’s for a reason. The dude in distress, not so much.

  Another fallacy promulgated by the focus of the show, is that in slasher films, women are the predominant victims. This observation has been regurgitated so often by critics of the genre that horror apologists such as myself have instinctively tried to explain the reasons for it, just as I did above. But here’s the kicker . . . despite everything we’ve been told to the contrary, women are not disproportionately represented as the victims in slasher films. Not by a long shot. As the eminent statesman Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” In his book Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle, Richard Nowell includes the following appendix: “Victim Gender in Teen Slasher Films, October 1978–April 1982.” The grand total: seventy-seven male victims, representing 59.7 percent of the deceased. Female victims number fifty-two, or 40.3 percent. Whatever one may think about Nowell’s often impenetrable prose, Blood Money is meticulously researched and sourced. But if you’re not convinced, if you still find it impossible to believe that the irredeemably misogynistic slasher film is really an equal-opportunity executioner, let’s go to another source. In Justin Kerswell’s The Slasher Movie Book, a much more accessible—not to mention beautifully designed—tome, he includes a similar sidebar. Unlike Nowell, Kerswell is no academic. He is, however, the creator of Hysteria Lives!, one of the oldest and most comprehensive slasher-themed sites on the web, so I’m equally predisposed to accept his findings. He determines that in the 175 slasher films made between 1978 and 1984, generally accepted as the golden age of slasher films, 558 of the 1,046 on-screen deaths were male, while only 488 were female. Now, even if you find the gender discrepancy in both Nowell and Kerswell’s findings negligible, which it’s really not, it’s absolutely impossible to make the case that females bear the brunt of the violence. But why let the truth get in the way of a good argument?