Eli Roth's History of Horror (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Slashers Part 1 - full transcript
Slasher films killed in the '80s, but their violence, perceived misogyny, and endless sequels almost ended the genre. Supernatural killers Chucky and Freddy saved them from extinction.
[low humming tones]
[woman screaming]
? ?
- When you say
"slasher movies,"
that's when the killer
became the star.
- Don't go in there!
- "Halloween," it happens
to be the Cadillac
of slasher movies.
- You don't know what it is...
- [screams]
- That makes
Michael Myers go, "Her!"
- "Psycho" was the first time
I was aware of the editing.
- The assembly
of pieces of film...
- [screaming]
- To create fright.
- "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
is one of the most
important movies.
- That ratchets up horror
to a whole other level.
- That's the one
that defined me.
- Sometimes you just want
to sit down and watch Jason
take out a lot
of stupid teenagers.
- There are a number
of pictures where you're able
to actually take your deepest,
most antisocial impulses
for a walk.
- "Horror" became a dirty word
in the late '70s, early '80s.
- These films hate women.
- 55% of that audience
was women.
- They're the final girls.
That's who you identify with.
- [laughing hysterically]
[chilling string music]
? ?
[low tones ringing]
- There's the moment
in "Halloween"
where I'm standing behind...
[laughing] This house.
I don't know anybody yet.
I'm 19 years old,
and saying to myself,
"What am I doing?
How do I do this?"
And then you hear,
"All right, everybody.
"Here we go, we're rolling!
Cameras rolling!"
And I have to start screaming.
And I had never screamed
in my life.
Who screams?
Who screams?
[screams]
- [shrieks]
- [screams]
[continual screaming]
- [screams]
- [screams]
- [screams]
- [shouts]
- No!
- [screaming]
- I suppose,
for a lot of people
who grew up on
"Friday the 13th,"
"Halloween," "Scream,"
horror equals gore.
- [screams]
[blood squelches]
- You have the idea
that all horror films
are slasher films,
which is wrong,
and then you have the idea
that, uh, slasher films
are purely misogynistic
and that the only people
who watch them are men,
and that's also wrong.
narrator: The most
extreme form
of horror films--slashers--
have been vilified
since they first
came on the scene.
- [cackles]
narrator: But they have also
been tremendously popular.
The worst of them
can still be entertaining.
The best of them tell us
brutal truths about ourselves,
our fears,
and our secret desires.
? ?
- [shouts]
- [screams]
[hollering]
- 1974, Bob Clark comes in
with "Black Christmas."
- [spluttering]
[choir singing eerily]
- [choking]
- That is the first
POV of slasher:
girls in the sorority house
over the holiday...
- [groans]
- [screams]
- But that becomes
sort of the--the precursor
to John Carpenter,
who comes in with "Halloween."
[menacing music]
? ?
- "Halloween," technically,
is a slasher movie.
but it happens to be
the Cadillac
of slasher movies.
["Halloween" theme plays]
[suspenseful synth music]
- "Halloween" also made
horror films mainstream.
It was one of the ones that
people who "don't like
horror movies" still watch.
- [heavy breathing]
- "Halloween"
is remarkably effective,
like, from the opening
long take of a child
looking through a mask.
- A young boy
murders his sister
and is put away
in a mental institution.
And 16 years later...
he escapes
and comes back to the town
and to the scene of the crime.
- And over the course
of Halloween day,
Michael Myers slowly
lets his presence known
to Laurie Strode.
[knocking on door]
- Tommy, hurry up!
Tommy, please! [shouts]
- This is rare in a lot
of horror films--
actually, like,
a likeable lead.
You know,
in "Friday the 13th,"
you want both
of those actors to die.
[laughing]
You don't want
Jamie Lee Curtis to die.
You want Jamie Lee Curtis
to survive.
- I think it all had
to do with emotion.
John said very clearly
what he wanted.
He said, "I really want
her vulnerability."
It's why he cast me,
apparently,
and I didn't really
understand that at 19.
[menacing music]
And I learned what John meant
when I went
and saw the movie
in Hollywood at a theater.
There's the sequence
where Laurie Strode leaves
the babysitting house...
and there's this long walk
between the two houses.
And of course,
the entire audience
started screaming,
"Don't go in there!"
? ?
And that's when I understood
what John was going for
was that you cared enough
about her
that you would tell her,
"Don't do this."
[sinister music]
- So much of horror
is about mood, atmosphere,
and cinematic style.
John Carpenter
using the wide screen
and the Panaglide camera
starting with "Halloween,"
it's something
that makes the film
that much more effective.
[sharp tone plays]
- When I met John,
I was immediately impressed
that he wanted
to use the camera
to tell the story, rather than
just a recording device.
The Steadicam--
the Panaglide at the time--
was one of those tools
that John and I looked at
as being a key technique--
moving the camera fluidly.
? ?
- You didn't know
where Michael Myers was.
You know,
you saw him outside,
and then you'd be in
making out, you know,
on a couch, and it's like,
"Okay, he's out there
someplace."
- Like, you'll watch a lot
of these movies
and you're not scared anymore.
And when you think, of like,
Michael Myers, like,
I was freaked out for years.
Just the idea of some, just,
dude popping out of places...
and murdering
you real quick.
- [screams]
Oh!
[groans]
- Michael Myers
is the human being
that's actually a wolf
wearing a human face.
You know, the human
that just ain't human.
[sinister music]
- [gasps]
[whimpering]
[jarring screeching tones]
- What you saw in the sequels
was an attempt
to kind of shoehorn in, uh,
other characters
or other mythologies
just to make it
more interesting.
- In "Halloween II,"
they make it that Laurie
and Michael Myers
are brother and sister.
- That Strode girl?
That's Michael Myers' sister.
- He's not her brother.
She's not his sister.
That's just bull [bleep].
Nobody was coming
from that point of view
when they were making
the first one.
And what makes
the first one so good
is the fact that
you don't know what it is
that makes
Michael Myers go, "Her."
[menacing music]
- "Halloween" was one
of the first films
to really initiate
the final girl as a trope.
A main character
who's a woman
who is first a victim
and ultimately, a survivor
who fights back.
- [cries out]
- It's a formula
that really worked,
and it's become so common
that I think most people
don't even think about it.
- Go upstairs, get Lindsey,
and lock the bedroom door.
- I'm scared!
- Do as I say!
- The boogeyman...
- It's pure.
There's something very pure
and clean about it.
No! [struggling]
Innocence and danger
coming together
with that music
and that camera work
and the performances
is why I think we're still
talking about it today.
narrator: John Carpenter's
"Halloween"
launched the slasher boom
of the '80s.
Its influence
is still felt today.
But it didn't come out
of nowhere.
- [screaming]
- Good evening.
[eerie ambient music]
I have some news
that will delight you.
? ?
Murder is not dead.
- Starting with, uh,
Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"
in 1960,
we started seeing
a new approach to horror.
It was the, uh...the horror
that didn't come out of, uh,
some grotesque
radioactive anomaly,
but it could be
lurking next door.
A nice young man
like Norman Bates
could be the new Frankenstein,
the new Dracula.
- Do you go out with friends?
- [swallows]
Well, a--a boy's best friend
is his mother.
- Hitch always thought
it was a comedy.
He always claimed that.
- The content, as such,
was, I felt, rather amusing.
- My mother, um--
what is the phrase...
[tense music]
She isn't quite herself today.
- But it's very perverted
and very sick.
- There's hangers in the closet
and stationery with
"Bates Motel" printed on it,
in case you want to make
your friends back home
feel envious.
[chuckles]
And the, uh...
Over there.
- The bathroom.
- Yeah.
- One of the big things
that I think to this day was
still shocking about "Psycho"
was you killed the protagonist
40 minutes in to the movie.
- Yeah.
- Even knowing that
the shower scene
was coming, I was like,
"Wait, she can't be the one
who gets killed."
- "There's so much movie left."
["The Murder" playing]
- [screams]
No! [shouts]
- "Psycho" raised terror
to a level
that I had never seen, anyway,
because it was near realistic.
- No!
- Before "Psycho,"
that was not imaginable,
that level of terror.
? ?
"Psycho" and Hitchcock
brought terror
into your shower.
- "Psycho" was the first time
I was aware of the editing...
[eerie, quickening pulsing]
And how your mind
gets tricked,
and what you see off-camera.
- This process of frightening
is done by means
of a given medium:
the medium of pure cinema.
? ?
The assembly of pieces of film
to create fright.
[distorted screaming]
- That shower scene is one
of the most iconic pieces
of cinema
ever to be created,
so much so that it's--
it's burned in people's brains
who haven't even seen
the movie.
[screeching string notes]
- [gasps]
- People know that
Bernard Herrmann's score--
the... [imitates string notes]
You know,
kids grow up, like, doing
that with that sound,
not knowing what it's from.
[laughing] Like, talk about
having made a cultural impact.
[ominous string music]
- Bernard Herrmann's score
to the film was very dramatic,
very--very propulsive.
It's virtually impossible
for a horror composer
not to have to wrestle
with the "Psycho" score.
? ?
You cannot avoid it.
You have to deal with it.
? ?
- In 1960, I'm sure people
regarded the shower scene
in "Psycho"
as having gone too far.
[rustling]
Like, "Alfred Hitchcock's
gone too far this time."
But it's indelible, it's--
they're indelible images,
and they're, like,
forever, like, sort of
in your brain and, like,
people have bad dreams
thinking about those movies.
- John Carpenter, you know,
was greatly influenced
by "Psycho," even
to the point of casting
Janet Lee's daughter,
Jamie Lee Curtis,
in the lead role.
- Ironic that it's
the same genre...
same family.
Obviously, it was
the biggest...
thing in her life,
as I know that
"Halloween" is mine.
So when I jokingly say to you,
"'Halloween' Actress Dies"...
that's what it will say.
Nothing else.
Just like my mom.
"'Psycho' Actress Dies."
[eerie music]
- Because of Hitchcock,
people will accept cinema
first in a thriller...
in a way they won't accept it
in a love story,
in a way they won't accept it
in a period drama,
in a way they won't accept it
in almost--
most every other genre,
because Hitchcock
taught people
to be thinking of cinema first.
We're just naturally okay
with the camera taking off
and doing things.
[eerie string music]
- I think it's fair to say
that "Psycho"
was a turning point...
[screeching string notes]
Certainly in American
filmmaking--
and in Hollywood filmmaking,
because there was no one
more establishment
than Alfred Hitchcock.
[dark string music]
And there was no turning back.
There was no turning back.
narrator: "Psycho" influenced
every horror film to come,
and it paved the way
for a new kind
of movie monster...
- [screaming]
narrator:
The chainsaw-wielding
serial killer.
[chainsaw whirring]
[chainsaw revving]
[chainsaws whirring]
[woman screaming]
- If you think about
the landmarks
"Psycho" and "Halloween,"
clearly the bridge
between the two
is Tobe Hooper's
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
- Yeah.
- [hollering]
- [screaming]
- Out of every movie
that we've talked about,
that's the one
that defined me.
Like, that's everything
I wanted in a movie
and everything I ever wanted
to do in movies.
It was just disgusting
and nasty,
and that redneck thing...
- Relentless.
- That movie just changed
the way I thought about movies.
- Yeah.
- Instantly.
[chainsaw revving]
[girls screaming]
- We decided to re-watch
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"
like, a month ago.
I watched it eight times.
- [shrieking]
- "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
is one of the most
important movies, to me,
of all horror films.
- You walk into a movie called
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"
and you expect the worst.
And you get it.
[woman screaming]
[menacing music]
[slurping, woman screaming]
? ?
It was incredibly potent
and visceral...
- [sucking]
- There was an imagination--
a dark imagination--
that had no limits.
[male narrator
reading somberly]
- [laughs]
It just starts with that great,
like, dreadful,
somber narration
at the beginning of the story.
[narrator reading somberly]
- So right off the bat,
you're thinking, "Wow,
is this based on a true story?"
And then they flash
this date...
- It really feels like
you were dropped
into, uh, watching something
happen for real.
- This heat is just
driving me crazy,
I don't know if
I can take much more.
- Listen, the condition...
- "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
was the first one
where I thought
they were real people.
- Yeah.
- I never looked
at them as actors.
- [laughing]
- You don't see
any on-screen violence.
It's all implied.
- The hook...puts her
hanging on the meat hook.
- When he picks her up,
and he's holding her
over the hook...
- [shrieks]
[musical sting]
- And you came out
of that movie
certain that you remembered,
"Oh, yeah, remember, you see
the hook go through her."
But your mind just
put it all together.
- Stop.
[chainsaw revving]
[screaming]
- "Texas Chainsaw"
is inspired
by the Ed Gein story
from, uh, Wisconsin.
[dark music]
female reporter:
It was a crime that shocked
the small town of
Plainfield, Wisconsin.
[projector clicks and whirs]
Edward Gein,
accused of killing a woman,
then gutting her body
like a slaughtered deer.
- Tobe told me that he--
when he was a kid,
they would tell him the story
of this guy, Ed Gein.
reporter: He would use
those body parts and bones
to make lamp shades
and other furniture.
He would also wear
dead female body parts.
? ?
- And so they used
to use Ed Gein
as a cautionary tale.
"Don't be bad,
or Ed Gein will come for you."
? ?
- Someone once said
before Tobe Hooper,
there had been plenty
of films about psychopaths,
but when you saw
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"
it was the first time
you saw a film that seemed
like it had been directed
by a psychopath.
- Tobe, he had
a sweetness to him.
At the same time, he would
try to rip your head off
if you--if you even messed
with a frame of his movie.
- If you'll pardon my French,
they didn't give a [bleep]
about what people thought
about the movie
they were making.
[sinister music]
The conditions
of making that movie
were so primitive.
I mean, these guys,
they borrowed 16-millimeter
Aeroflex cameras
from the University of Texas
under the hottest,
worst conditions.
It was like 120 degrees,
and they were like,
"Let's go out there
and stir it up."
- It was not a pleasant
experience for anyone,
and it's reflected in the film.
- [screaming]
- I don't think
Tobe Hooper set out
to make a movie about Vietnam,
but he could not help
but reflect the rebellion
that was going on.
male reporter:
Subsequent investigation...
- The times were political,
and the times were,
you--you know,
steeped in Vietnam.
- Hit her, Grandpa!
- [screaming]
[wailing]
- "The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre"
is a very American story,
and--and in some ways, uh,
a capitalistic story.
- The place where they shoot
the cattle in the head
with that big air gun thing.
- Oh, that--that gun's no good.
- I was in there once
with my uncle...
- What
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
is really about
is a family
of dispossessed workers.
- With a sledge.
[laughing]
See, that was better.
They died better that way.
- Because of automation
and loss of jobs,
they no longer have
the means, you know,
to earn th--a living
for themselves.
- [stuttering] With the new
way, people put out of jobs.
- The oppressed working class
turn the tools
of their trade
back upon
their former employers--
the chainsaw,
the hammer, and so on--
but it's also tied in
with psychic repression,
because, like, people love
the meat on their plate
but don't want to think
about how it gets made.
And by substituting
the teenagers for the cattle
and the former
dispossessed workers
enacting revenge against them,
it's a kind of un-repression
both of meat itself
and of working-class labor.
[chainsaw revving]
- [hollering]
- And Tobe called that movie
"a $60,000 flare"
he shot up from Austin.
And I mean, it's in
the Museum of Modern Art now.
It's a classic,
but it's unmatched after that.
I mean, that ratchets up horror
to a whole other level.
[chainsaw whirring]
narrator: "Texas Chainsaw,"
"Halloween," and "Psycho"
opened the gates
for a new kind of horror.
["Friday the 13th"
theme plays]
But the slasher film
as we know it was truly born
with the most successful
horror franchise
of all time...
[sharp string music]
"Friday the 13th."
narrator: When you think
of "Friday the 13th,"
you think of dead teenagers...
- [screaming]
- [shrieking]
narrator: And the unstoppable
Jason Voorhees.
[sinister musical sting]
- Growing up when I did,
we all watched
"Friday the 13th"...
one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven.
Eight was horrible.
[whirring]
- [screaming]
- But in terms
of character names...
[darkly]
Jason Voorhees.
It--it was just evil.
? ?
- I believe
that I have murdered
more people on film
than any actor in history.
I played Jason in four
of the "Friday the 13th" films.
There's a lot more to playing
a character like Jason
than throwing the mask on
and, you know,
walking around threateningly,
because two of the major tools
an actor uses
are their facial expressions
and their voice.
So now, you take away
both of those
by making him silent
and putting a mask on him.
- [whimpering]
? ?
- [screams]
- So I always was conscious
of Jason never looking awkward
or off-balance or weak.
I would never look down
to see where I was walking,
because I thought
it weakened the character.
My favorite Jason kill--
which was my favorite
all-time kill for a long time--
was the sleeping bag
from "Part VII."
- [screaming]
[quickening string music]
? ?
- I put my heart and soul
into that character
and loved playing it.
- Name the killer
in "Friday the 13th."
- [breathing heavily]
Jason! Jason! Jason!
- I'm sorry.
That's the wrong answer.
[eerie music]
narrator: Jason is synonymous
with "Friday the 13th,"
but he's barely seen
in the original film.
The rest of the formula,
though, was in place.
- "Friday the 13th"
is a story
about a group
of camp counselors
who've come up
to set up a camp...
- Well, come on.
Let's go.
- I thought we had two weeks.
- And have been
sort of targeted
by a mysterious killer.
- No...
[sinister string music]
[breathlessly] No...
[gasping]
? ?
- One or two or three
of them get picked off,
and you say, "Oh, my goodness,
anybody could go at any time."
- [gasps loudly]
- Something's wrong with Ned.
- That was, I think,
part of the--the secret
to the suspense
that we were able to create.
["Friday the 13th"
theme plays]
[indistinct words echoing]
- It must be my imagination.
[chuckles]
[gasps, screams]
[jagged violin music]
? ?
- We needed somebody that knew
a lot more than we did
about how to pull off
a special effect.
You wanna stab
somebody with a knife.
How do you do it?
You can't just get
a rubber knife and--
and start... [laughs]
You know, going at people.
And we were fortunate enough
to run into a guy
named Tom Savini,
and he just couldn't wait
to get involved,
and he had such wonderful,
positive energy.
- Kevin Bacon was, uh, sitting
upright underneath the bed.
His--only his head
came through the bed.
- [chokes]
- So I'm actually pushing
the arrow through
the fake chest and neck,
and my assistant, uh,
was pumping the blood.
Now, while he was pumping
the blood, the tubing came off
the blood pump,
and during the take,
he grabbed it
and blew through it,
which caused the nice gurgling
of the blood.
[terrifying violin music]
So it was a happy accident
that made the effect,
you know, a l--so much better.
- What makes
"Friday the 13th" a classic
is the reveal of Mrs. Voorhees.
[sinister music]
- Steve!
[panting] Oh, Steve!
[musical sting]
Who are you?
- Well, I--I'm Mrs. Voorhees,
an old friend of the Christys'.
- Everyone's trying
to survive, uh,
as they're being knocked off
one by one
by a killer that they
don't know, and then you reveal
it's the mother
of this drowned boy.
- You see,
Jason was my son.
- A mother was driven mad
by her child drowning
and seeing the world ignore it
and go by
and think that they
can just restart
and go on with their lives.
The manifestation
of grief is actually
very poetic and relatable.
- [screams]
- We started to hear
some of the score
that Harry was writing for
the first "Friday the 13th,"
and this--this...
[imitates echoing sound]
Kept coming up.
["Friday the 13th"
theme plays]
[indistinct words echoing]
- You remember a scene
at the very end, uh...
where Mrs. Voorhees--uh,
Betsy Palmer, rest her soul.
Dear Betsy.
We hear, uh, her son go...
- "Kill her, Mommy.
Kill her."
- And that's what
kicked it off for me.
I went, "She hears
voices in her head."
I went up to
a microphone and went,
"K...ma..."
And then it came out...
[imitating echoing]
Kih...mah...
And it literally became
the signature
of that series,
the sound that--
what they call
"the Jason sound."
- [whimpering]
- Look what you did to him!
- [whimpers]
- [screaming]
- [yelps]
[grunts]
- I remember thinking
the movie was over.
You remember,
she was on the lake.
And I thought the m--
I legitimately was like,
"Aw, the movie's over.
[exhales]
She's at the boat."
- [growling]
[shrill violin music]
- [screaming]
- He jumped out that water.
I lost it.
I don't even know
how I fell for that.
To this day...
was the loudest
I ever screamed in my life.
- The boy, Jason.
- Jason?
- Nobody knew that was
going to become a franchise,
but it was certainly easy
to replicate.
[screeching string music]
[dark music]
- The--my biggest regret is
putting the bag over his head.
- [screaming]
- So then, doing "Part III,"
this guy we had hired
as a--as a 3-D expert
was also a hockey player.
And I was trying
to figure out--
you know, I wasn't gonna
do the bag again.
"What are we gonna do?"
And one day,
he walked into my office
with a goalie mask
and said, "How about this?"
[sinister music]
- [screaming]
- It was perfect.
It was, immediately--
that was gonna be great.
- [growling]
- [screaming]
? ?
- I don't understand
how, in the first one,
he's like an 11-year-old
who jumps out of the lake,
and then he's built like a--
a WCW wrestler.
- [screaming, whimpering]
- I don't understand
what happened
where he suddenly got
all jacked.
- [screaming]
[metal crinkling]
- You know,
after the first movies
and the subsequent sequels
became,
"Who are these,
you know, awful kids
"that we sort of hate
and we can't wait
for Jason to take them out?"
[dramatic riffing music]
- [screaming]
? ?
- [screaming]
- I've always thought that
the slasher films of the 1980s
didn't really work
as horror fiction.
But they worked pretty well
as slapstick comedies...
[jarring music]
- [strangled cry]
- And the reason
for that is, you know,
the characters are never
allowed to be anything
except one-dimensional types.
You've got a gang
of teenagers.
You've got the jock.
You've got the stoner.
You've got the slut.
You've got the virgin.
You never care about them,
you never fall
in love with them,
and so when
the serial killer starts
knocking them off
one by one...
You laugh instead of
recoil in horror,
because he's actually more
of a personality than they are.
[sinister music]
- [gasps]
- With the success
of "Friday the 13th"
and the success
of "Halloween,"
people just were--
producers were ravenous
to find material
and knowing that, "Oh,
well this is the formula."
[both gasp]
[haunting organ chord]
- One of the by-products of--
of the success
of "Friday the 13th"
and a few other movies
was that people on the outside
are looking in, saying,
"Oh, they killed ten people
"and they made
a lot of money.
"We'll kill 20 people,
and we'll make
a lot more than that."
[shattering]
narrator: By the early '80s,
slasher movies
glutted the market.
Audiences loved them,
but they also inspired
outright hatred.
- [shrieking]
narrator: Where some saw
harmless entertainment,
others saw a threat
to society.
[both screaming]
- Come on, baby.
Light my fire.
[rock 'n' roll playing]
- You bet I will.
- [laughing]
- I gotta tell you something,
the worst horror movie I ever
saw was [bleep] great, okay?
- Yeah, that's true.
- That's the way that I am,
because I go in there
and I say,
"What am I gonna see?
I don't know."
A movie that's PG-13
that's a horror movie,
it's gotta be scary in some way
that's really artistic.
[faint echoing scream]
- [gasps]
[eerie music]
Once you get to R
and once you get to Unrated,
you're saying, "I don't know
what I'm gonna see."
I got one word for you:
"Maniac."
[quiet, sinister music]
? ?
- "Maniac" is one
of my favorite movies,
and I had a feeling
you'd like it, which is why...
- "Maniac"--oh, of course.
- As a gift for you,
I brought you
a "Maniaction" figure.
- Holy [bleep]!
We did not
rehearse this, folks.
Look!
- [laughing]
A "Maniaction" figure.
- I'm so excited,
I almost dropped it!
It's a "Maniac" bloody scalp.
- It's--isn't that sweet?
- Yeah, it really is.
I mean, I don't know
how to thank you for that.
[woman screaming]
- [whimpering]
- "Maniac" is about a guy
named Frank Zito
who's a very...
ah, oddball character
who stalks young women.
And he scalps them
and he takes their scalps home
and he puts them
on these mannequins.
And it is here
he sort of struggles
with this relationship
he had with his mother.
- I will never...
[dark music]
let them take you away from me.
- It's a very minimalist look
at what happens
inside the mind
of a serial killer.
- You bitch!
- What...
- [grunts]
- What're you...doing...
- [grunts]
- [gagging]
Stop it!
What are you doing?
- I mean, the original
"Maniac" is mean,
but it's actually
really powerful and,
thanks to Joe Spinell's
performance,
kind of emotional.
- [sobbing quietly]
Why'd you make me do that?
[sniffles]
I didn't wanna do it.
- It really, like,
went too far.
You know, watching that movie,
you really felt like
the killing scenes
were really protracted
and really brutal
and really grim.
[quickening violin music]
- When that movie came out,
it was so controversial
You know, a lot of women
were protesting it
because this idea that it
was misogynistic, of course.
You know, it's like
all these movies get this label
of being misogynistic
because the victims
are primarily women.
- ...again.
- [moans]
- I don't feel like the film's
misogynistic at all.
As a matter of fact,
I feel, as a woman,
it really represents
a realism to me.
It's--it's--it's like
a cathartic experience
in a way,
because women live in
that sort of world every day,
where we have to be hyperaware
of who's around us
and what could happen.
[eerie music]
narrator: "Maniac" ends
with a group of women
taking brutal revenge
on the killer.
- [moaning in fear]
- And this...
narrator: Today, many horror
fans and film scholars
consider it a classic,
but in the '80s,
"Maniac" helped set off
a moral panic.
[women shrieking]
- [grunts loudly]
- Horror became a--
a dirty word, I think,
in the late '70s, early '80s,
and I think that the reason
for that was the--
the explosion
of slasher movies.
[themes overlapping
and building]
? ?
- A new breed
of "shriek merchants"
has exploited
the once honorable genre
of the terror film.
- It was a very cheap form
of horror entertainment,
and those slasher films
got a lot of bad press
for brutalizing women,
for violence, for the gore,
and--and the people making
legitimate horror films
were afraid that they were
gonna be tainted, uh,
by the legacy of a lot
of these slasher knock-offs.
- I think a lot of people
have the wrong idea.
They identify these films
with earlier thrillers
like "Psycho,"
or even a more recent film
like "Halloween,"
which we both like.
These films aren't
in the same category.
These films hate women.
- [shrieking]
[flesh squelches,
shrieking stops]
- But don't you find that
in a really effective
horror movie,
blood stains the critics' eyes?
Like, once you get
blood in your eyes...
- Yes, yes.
- You can't wash it out.
They can't see anything else...
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Other than the kill,
and they also feel like
if they like the movie,
that they're endorsing
that for real--
or that kind of violence.
- Yeah.
- So--so most often,
those reviews just become
a soapbox to be like,
"Look, I'm a good person.
"I'm a good person.
I don't like
this sort of thing,"
but the truth is, we love it.
It's like it's--
it's the enjoying fantasy,
enjoying a scary story.
It's like, it's--
it's no different
from "Grimms' Fairy Tales."
[suspenseful organ music]
- The slasher films celebrate
the female character
because they're
the final girls.
The people who--who survive
the slasher movies
are the final girls,
and that's who
you identify with,
and that's the smart one.
The women are the ones
who are smart.
It's the sex-crazed guys
bringing their girlfriends
to have sex that,
you know, get slaughtered.
- [gasps]
- Most of the feminists
who were against horror
were not really
watching these films
or analyzing them, you know?
They were just sort of, like,
"Pornography is bad.
Horror films are bad."
You know?
So they weren't actually
engaging with the genre.
- These women in danger films
all really boil down
to just one same image,
one disturbing image:
a woman screaming
in abject terror.
- Usually it's the people
who don't actually
know anything about the topic
that are the loudest
complainers about it.
- And unfortunately,
the audiences that go to them
don't seem to like women
too much, either.
- In the '80s,
"The New York Times" conducted,
um, a poll with theatergoers
to find out who was seeing
these slasher films,
and they found out
that 45% of the audience
was made up of adolescents.
55% of that audience was women.
[women screaming, wailing]
- [gagged screaming]
narrator: "Maniac,"
its slasher cousins,
and the Reagan
assassination attempt...
[gunshots]
Triggered a crackdown
on realistic violence
and gore.
- [screaming]
- By 1984,
the golden age
of slasher films was over,
but audiences
still wanted their scares.
- [shrieks]
- So film makers created
a new kind of monster.
[sinister music]
- Okay, show her.
- [gasps]
Well, is it a Good Guy or not?
- It is.
It is!
Wow.
- A Good Guy!
- One of the first
experiences of horror
was, uh, "Child's Play."
- Hi, I'm Chucky,
and I'm your friend
to the end.
Hi-de-ho!
[laughs]
- [giggling]
- When I first saw that,
I was about four--
four or five.
So it was just this little
doll and it was cute
and then all of the sudden,
it just came alive.
And it's--it's always
those moments
where the camera is moving...
[suspenseful music]
- [panting softly]
- [gasps]
- But you don't--it's kind of
the POV of the doll
that just, like...
it--it just drove me crazy.
- [shouting]
[screams]
- And I can be honest.
To this day,
I'm still affected by that.
- Nobody believes you
about Chucky.
[inhales deeply] Unless you
start telling the truth...
right now...
they're going to
take you away from me.
- It's about a mother trying
to hold her family together,
defend her--her son
against this, you know--
against the charges
of being a--a murderer.
I mean, a seven-year-old boy?
Horrible.
And the boy may be mad.
He keeps insisting
that his little--
that his doll
is talking to him.
- Come on, Chucky,
say something!
Tell me!
- Hi, I'm Chucky,
and I'm your friend to the end.
Hi-dee-ho!
[laughs]
- [grunts]
[sinister music]
- To me,
horror is always about
violating the sacred.
Take a child--
something that we all look at
and coo over and look after
and dote on--
and make them...
the most evil [bleep]
out there.
And a child's toy
is sacred too.
These are things
we grow up with, and you--
you--you basically cast
horror's black shadow, uh,
over all this sacred,
righteous stuff.
- [deep voice]
You stupid bitch!
- [screaming]
- You filthy slut!
I'll teach you
to [bleep] with me!
- No! No!
- In the 1980s,
advertisers had started
to target children directly.
- Brought to you exclusively
by Play Pals,
makers of Good Guys
and other fine toys.
- It's like children
had become
these little
consumerist monsters
who could, you know,
coerce their parents
into getting them more
and more stuff
that they didn't need.
- Well, what do you think?
- I want a Good Guy
to go with it.
- I know you do, Andy,
but I didn't know about it
in time this month
to save up for it.
- I remember
my mother telling me
a crazy story
about fighting someone
in a dark alley
for a Cabbage Patch Kid.
- ? I got my doll,
I got my doll! ?
- We can see this line between
the "direct to children
as consumers" advertising
on the one hand
and the potential consequences
of what that brings
into the home on the other.
- [bellowing]
- [exclaims in fear]
[screams]
- [growling]
- I was asking for--
for them to create a doll
that had never been
created before
to do things on film
that had never
been done before.
This is a breath before CGI.
There was no way out.
It was all on camera,
live or die.
[sinister music]
And we built the apartment
up--the apartment set--
four feet off the ground.
We punched holes
through the set
behind the doll
so you couldn't see the wires
directly behind it.
- [hollering]
- [groans]
- [shouts]
- I mean, I used
every trick in the book
to try to maintain...
the illusion that the doll
was alive and moving.
- Hi.
It's me, Chucky.
What do you think?
[ominous piano chords]
- Mommy...
- I mean, think about it:
you're being chased
by something this big
with a knife!
You know, I mean...
[stammering]
You know, how do you sell that?
- [hissing]
- [screams]
- Well...did, didn't we?
- Chucky is a piece
of horror history.
Chucky's face sits
on that horror
Hall of Fame board
right next to the guy
in the hockey mask,
right next
to the Michael Myers mask,
Freddy's glove...
he's in there.
- [screaming, groaning]
narrator: "Child's Play"
was violent,
but no one would mistake it
for the grim realism
of "Maniac."
[terrifying music]
- [screams]
- [grunts]
- [screams]
narrator: Chucky was
following a trail blazed
by one of the most
famous characters
in the history of horror...
- [cackling]
- Freddy Krueger.
- You know,
"Nightmare on Elm Street"
came out in 1984,
and I remember
seeing that movie
and I was so excited
about the fact that,
"Ooh, there's a new twist
to this sub-genre,"
that now the rules of--
of any sort of world
don't apply.
narrator: In part two,
we'll see how
"A Nightmare on Elm Street"
brought slashers back
from the grave...
- Freddy is in the imagination
of the person he's haunting...
- [screams]
- And the imagination
is larger than life.
narrator: Dive into
the psychosexual darkness
of "Candyman"...
- You have to be able
to deliver the scares,
and you have to be able
to make people talk about it
long after you've gone.
narrator: Watch as "Scream"
turns the genre inside-out...
- [screaming]
- I thought I was in
a documentary
about a serial killer,
and they're playing this,
you know, for laughs.
narrator: "The Silence of
the Lambs"
makes grisly horror
respectable.
- Love your suit.
[saw buzzing]
narrator: And 21st-century
anxiety leads
to the no-holds-barred terror
of "Saw" and "Hostel."
- [muffled hollering]
- People who don't
see these films take them
way more seriously
than the people who do.
- [screaming]
- We wanted to make something
that was super scary,
and we'd inadvertently
become known as the kings
of torture porn.
- [screaming]
- [cackling]
[woman screaming]
? ?
- When you say
"slasher movies,"
that's when the killer
became the star.
- Don't go in there!
- "Halloween," it happens
to be the Cadillac
of slasher movies.
- You don't know what it is...
- [screams]
- That makes
Michael Myers go, "Her!"
- "Psycho" was the first time
I was aware of the editing.
- The assembly
of pieces of film...
- [screaming]
- To create fright.
- "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
is one of the most
important movies.
- That ratchets up horror
to a whole other level.
- That's the one
that defined me.
- Sometimes you just want
to sit down and watch Jason
take out a lot
of stupid teenagers.
- There are a number
of pictures where you're able
to actually take your deepest,
most antisocial impulses
for a walk.
- "Horror" became a dirty word
in the late '70s, early '80s.
- These films hate women.
- 55% of that audience
was women.
- They're the final girls.
That's who you identify with.
- [laughing hysterically]
[chilling string music]
? ?
[low tones ringing]
- There's the moment
in "Halloween"
where I'm standing behind...
[laughing] This house.
I don't know anybody yet.
I'm 19 years old,
and saying to myself,
"What am I doing?
How do I do this?"
And then you hear,
"All right, everybody.
"Here we go, we're rolling!
Cameras rolling!"
And I have to start screaming.
And I had never screamed
in my life.
Who screams?
Who screams?
[screams]
- [shrieks]
- [screams]
[continual screaming]
- [screams]
- [screams]
- [screams]
- [shouts]
- No!
- [screaming]
- I suppose,
for a lot of people
who grew up on
"Friday the 13th,"
"Halloween," "Scream,"
horror equals gore.
- [screams]
[blood squelches]
- You have the idea
that all horror films
are slasher films,
which is wrong,
and then you have the idea
that, uh, slasher films
are purely misogynistic
and that the only people
who watch them are men,
and that's also wrong.
narrator: The most
extreme form
of horror films--slashers--
have been vilified
since they first
came on the scene.
- [cackles]
narrator: But they have also
been tremendously popular.
The worst of them
can still be entertaining.
The best of them tell us
brutal truths about ourselves,
our fears,
and our secret desires.
? ?
- [shouts]
- [screams]
[hollering]
- 1974, Bob Clark comes in
with "Black Christmas."
- [spluttering]
[choir singing eerily]
- [choking]
- That is the first
POV of slasher:
girls in the sorority house
over the holiday...
- [groans]
- [screams]
- But that becomes
sort of the--the precursor
to John Carpenter,
who comes in with "Halloween."
[menacing music]
? ?
- "Halloween," technically,
is a slasher movie.
but it happens to be
the Cadillac
of slasher movies.
["Halloween" theme plays]
[suspenseful synth music]
- "Halloween" also made
horror films mainstream.
It was one of the ones that
people who "don't like
horror movies" still watch.
- [heavy breathing]
- "Halloween"
is remarkably effective,
like, from the opening
long take of a child
looking through a mask.
- A young boy
murders his sister
and is put away
in a mental institution.
And 16 years later...
he escapes
and comes back to the town
and to the scene of the crime.
- And over the course
of Halloween day,
Michael Myers slowly
lets his presence known
to Laurie Strode.
[knocking on door]
- Tommy, hurry up!
Tommy, please! [shouts]
- This is rare in a lot
of horror films--
actually, like,
a likeable lead.
You know,
in "Friday the 13th,"
you want both
of those actors to die.
[laughing]
You don't want
Jamie Lee Curtis to die.
You want Jamie Lee Curtis
to survive.
- I think it all had
to do with emotion.
John said very clearly
what he wanted.
He said, "I really want
her vulnerability."
It's why he cast me,
apparently,
and I didn't really
understand that at 19.
[menacing music]
And I learned what John meant
when I went
and saw the movie
in Hollywood at a theater.
There's the sequence
where Laurie Strode leaves
the babysitting house...
and there's this long walk
between the two houses.
And of course,
the entire audience
started screaming,
"Don't go in there!"
? ?
And that's when I understood
what John was going for
was that you cared enough
about her
that you would tell her,
"Don't do this."
[sinister music]
- So much of horror
is about mood, atmosphere,
and cinematic style.
John Carpenter
using the wide screen
and the Panaglide camera
starting with "Halloween,"
it's something
that makes the film
that much more effective.
[sharp tone plays]
- When I met John,
I was immediately impressed
that he wanted
to use the camera
to tell the story, rather than
just a recording device.
The Steadicam--
the Panaglide at the time--
was one of those tools
that John and I looked at
as being a key technique--
moving the camera fluidly.
? ?
- You didn't know
where Michael Myers was.
You know,
you saw him outside,
and then you'd be in
making out, you know,
on a couch, and it's like,
"Okay, he's out there
someplace."
- Like, you'll watch a lot
of these movies
and you're not scared anymore.
And when you think, of like,
Michael Myers, like,
I was freaked out for years.
Just the idea of some, just,
dude popping out of places...
and murdering
you real quick.
- [screams]
Oh!
[groans]
- Michael Myers
is the human being
that's actually a wolf
wearing a human face.
You know, the human
that just ain't human.
[sinister music]
- [gasps]
[whimpering]
[jarring screeching tones]
- What you saw in the sequels
was an attempt
to kind of shoehorn in, uh,
other characters
or other mythologies
just to make it
more interesting.
- In "Halloween II,"
they make it that Laurie
and Michael Myers
are brother and sister.
- That Strode girl?
That's Michael Myers' sister.
- He's not her brother.
She's not his sister.
That's just bull [bleep].
Nobody was coming
from that point of view
when they were making
the first one.
And what makes
the first one so good
is the fact that
you don't know what it is
that makes
Michael Myers go, "Her."
[menacing music]
- "Halloween" was one
of the first films
to really initiate
the final girl as a trope.
A main character
who's a woman
who is first a victim
and ultimately, a survivor
who fights back.
- [cries out]
- It's a formula
that really worked,
and it's become so common
that I think most people
don't even think about it.
- Go upstairs, get Lindsey,
and lock the bedroom door.
- I'm scared!
- Do as I say!
- The boogeyman...
- It's pure.
There's something very pure
and clean about it.
No! [struggling]
Innocence and danger
coming together
with that music
and that camera work
and the performances
is why I think we're still
talking about it today.
narrator: John Carpenter's
"Halloween"
launched the slasher boom
of the '80s.
Its influence
is still felt today.
But it didn't come out
of nowhere.
- [screaming]
- Good evening.
[eerie ambient music]
I have some news
that will delight you.
? ?
Murder is not dead.
- Starting with, uh,
Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"
in 1960,
we started seeing
a new approach to horror.
It was the, uh...the horror
that didn't come out of, uh,
some grotesque
radioactive anomaly,
but it could be
lurking next door.
A nice young man
like Norman Bates
could be the new Frankenstein,
the new Dracula.
- Do you go out with friends?
- [swallows]
Well, a--a boy's best friend
is his mother.
- Hitch always thought
it was a comedy.
He always claimed that.
- The content, as such,
was, I felt, rather amusing.
- My mother, um--
what is the phrase...
[tense music]
She isn't quite herself today.
- But it's very perverted
and very sick.
- There's hangers in the closet
and stationery with
"Bates Motel" printed on it,
in case you want to make
your friends back home
feel envious.
[chuckles]
And the, uh...
Over there.
- The bathroom.
- Yeah.
- One of the big things
that I think to this day was
still shocking about "Psycho"
was you killed the protagonist
40 minutes in to the movie.
- Yeah.
- Even knowing that
the shower scene
was coming, I was like,
"Wait, she can't be the one
who gets killed."
- "There's so much movie left."
["The Murder" playing]
- [screams]
No! [shouts]
- "Psycho" raised terror
to a level
that I had never seen, anyway,
because it was near realistic.
- No!
- Before "Psycho,"
that was not imaginable,
that level of terror.
? ?
"Psycho" and Hitchcock
brought terror
into your shower.
- "Psycho" was the first time
I was aware of the editing...
[eerie, quickening pulsing]
And how your mind
gets tricked,
and what you see off-camera.
- This process of frightening
is done by means
of a given medium:
the medium of pure cinema.
? ?
The assembly of pieces of film
to create fright.
[distorted screaming]
- That shower scene is one
of the most iconic pieces
of cinema
ever to be created,
so much so that it's--
it's burned in people's brains
who haven't even seen
the movie.
[screeching string notes]
- [gasps]
- People know that
Bernard Herrmann's score--
the... [imitates string notes]
You know,
kids grow up, like, doing
that with that sound,
not knowing what it's from.
[laughing] Like, talk about
having made a cultural impact.
[ominous string music]
- Bernard Herrmann's score
to the film was very dramatic,
very--very propulsive.
It's virtually impossible
for a horror composer
not to have to wrestle
with the "Psycho" score.
? ?
You cannot avoid it.
You have to deal with it.
? ?
- In 1960, I'm sure people
regarded the shower scene
in "Psycho"
as having gone too far.
[rustling]
Like, "Alfred Hitchcock's
gone too far this time."
But it's indelible, it's--
they're indelible images,
and they're, like,
forever, like, sort of
in your brain and, like,
people have bad dreams
thinking about those movies.
- John Carpenter, you know,
was greatly influenced
by "Psycho," even
to the point of casting
Janet Lee's daughter,
Jamie Lee Curtis,
in the lead role.
- Ironic that it's
the same genre...
same family.
Obviously, it was
the biggest...
thing in her life,
as I know that
"Halloween" is mine.
So when I jokingly say to you,
"'Halloween' Actress Dies"...
that's what it will say.
Nothing else.
Just like my mom.
"'Psycho' Actress Dies."
[eerie music]
- Because of Hitchcock,
people will accept cinema
first in a thriller...
in a way they won't accept it
in a love story,
in a way they won't accept it
in a period drama,
in a way they won't accept it
in almost--
most every other genre,
because Hitchcock
taught people
to be thinking of cinema first.
We're just naturally okay
with the camera taking off
and doing things.
[eerie string music]
- I think it's fair to say
that "Psycho"
was a turning point...
[screeching string notes]
Certainly in American
filmmaking--
and in Hollywood filmmaking,
because there was no one
more establishment
than Alfred Hitchcock.
[dark string music]
And there was no turning back.
There was no turning back.
narrator: "Psycho" influenced
every horror film to come,
and it paved the way
for a new kind
of movie monster...
- [screaming]
narrator:
The chainsaw-wielding
serial killer.
[chainsaw whirring]
[chainsaw revving]
[chainsaws whirring]
[woman screaming]
- If you think about
the landmarks
"Psycho" and "Halloween,"
clearly the bridge
between the two
is Tobe Hooper's
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
- Yeah.
- [hollering]
- [screaming]
- Out of every movie
that we've talked about,
that's the one
that defined me.
Like, that's everything
I wanted in a movie
and everything I ever wanted
to do in movies.
It was just disgusting
and nasty,
and that redneck thing...
- Relentless.
- That movie just changed
the way I thought about movies.
- Yeah.
- Instantly.
[chainsaw revving]
[girls screaming]
- We decided to re-watch
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"
like, a month ago.
I watched it eight times.
- [shrieking]
- "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
is one of the most
important movies, to me,
of all horror films.
- You walk into a movie called
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"
and you expect the worst.
And you get it.
[woman screaming]
[menacing music]
[slurping, woman screaming]
? ?
It was incredibly potent
and visceral...
- [sucking]
- There was an imagination--
a dark imagination--
that had no limits.
[male narrator
reading somberly]
- [laughs]
It just starts with that great,
like, dreadful,
somber narration
at the beginning of the story.
[narrator reading somberly]
- So right off the bat,
you're thinking, "Wow,
is this based on a true story?"
And then they flash
this date...
- It really feels like
you were dropped
into, uh, watching something
happen for real.
- This heat is just
driving me crazy,
I don't know if
I can take much more.
- Listen, the condition...
- "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
was the first one
where I thought
they were real people.
- Yeah.
- I never looked
at them as actors.
- [laughing]
- You don't see
any on-screen violence.
It's all implied.
- The hook...puts her
hanging on the meat hook.
- When he picks her up,
and he's holding her
over the hook...
- [shrieks]
[musical sting]
- And you came out
of that movie
certain that you remembered,
"Oh, yeah, remember, you see
the hook go through her."
But your mind just
put it all together.
- Stop.
[chainsaw revving]
[screaming]
- "Texas Chainsaw"
is inspired
by the Ed Gein story
from, uh, Wisconsin.
[dark music]
female reporter:
It was a crime that shocked
the small town of
Plainfield, Wisconsin.
[projector clicks and whirs]
Edward Gein,
accused of killing a woman,
then gutting her body
like a slaughtered deer.
- Tobe told me that he--
when he was a kid,
they would tell him the story
of this guy, Ed Gein.
reporter: He would use
those body parts and bones
to make lamp shades
and other furniture.
He would also wear
dead female body parts.
? ?
- And so they used
to use Ed Gein
as a cautionary tale.
"Don't be bad,
or Ed Gein will come for you."
? ?
- Someone once said
before Tobe Hooper,
there had been plenty
of films about psychopaths,
but when you saw
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"
it was the first time
you saw a film that seemed
like it had been directed
by a psychopath.
- Tobe, he had
a sweetness to him.
At the same time, he would
try to rip your head off
if you--if you even messed
with a frame of his movie.
- If you'll pardon my French,
they didn't give a [bleep]
about what people thought
about the movie
they were making.
[sinister music]
The conditions
of making that movie
were so primitive.
I mean, these guys,
they borrowed 16-millimeter
Aeroflex cameras
from the University of Texas
under the hottest,
worst conditions.
It was like 120 degrees,
and they were like,
"Let's go out there
and stir it up."
- It was not a pleasant
experience for anyone,
and it's reflected in the film.
- [screaming]
- I don't think
Tobe Hooper set out
to make a movie about Vietnam,
but he could not help
but reflect the rebellion
that was going on.
male reporter:
Subsequent investigation...
- The times were political,
and the times were,
you--you know,
steeped in Vietnam.
- Hit her, Grandpa!
- [screaming]
[wailing]
- "The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre"
is a very American story,
and--and in some ways, uh,
a capitalistic story.
- The place where they shoot
the cattle in the head
with that big air gun thing.
- Oh, that--that gun's no good.
- I was in there once
with my uncle...
- What
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
is really about
is a family
of dispossessed workers.
- With a sledge.
[laughing]
See, that was better.
They died better that way.
- Because of automation
and loss of jobs,
they no longer have
the means, you know,
to earn th--a living
for themselves.
- [stuttering] With the new
way, people put out of jobs.
- The oppressed working class
turn the tools
of their trade
back upon
their former employers--
the chainsaw,
the hammer, and so on--
but it's also tied in
with psychic repression,
because, like, people love
the meat on their plate
but don't want to think
about how it gets made.
And by substituting
the teenagers for the cattle
and the former
dispossessed workers
enacting revenge against them,
it's a kind of un-repression
both of meat itself
and of working-class labor.
[chainsaw revving]
- [hollering]
- And Tobe called that movie
"a $60,000 flare"
he shot up from Austin.
And I mean, it's in
the Museum of Modern Art now.
It's a classic,
but it's unmatched after that.
I mean, that ratchets up horror
to a whole other level.
[chainsaw whirring]
narrator: "Texas Chainsaw,"
"Halloween," and "Psycho"
opened the gates
for a new kind of horror.
["Friday the 13th"
theme plays]
But the slasher film
as we know it was truly born
with the most successful
horror franchise
of all time...
[sharp string music]
"Friday the 13th."
narrator: When you think
of "Friday the 13th,"
you think of dead teenagers...
- [screaming]
- [shrieking]
narrator: And the unstoppable
Jason Voorhees.
[sinister musical sting]
- Growing up when I did,
we all watched
"Friday the 13th"...
one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven.
Eight was horrible.
[whirring]
- [screaming]
- But in terms
of character names...
[darkly]
Jason Voorhees.
It--it was just evil.
? ?
- I believe
that I have murdered
more people on film
than any actor in history.
I played Jason in four
of the "Friday the 13th" films.
There's a lot more to playing
a character like Jason
than throwing the mask on
and, you know,
walking around threateningly,
because two of the major tools
an actor uses
are their facial expressions
and their voice.
So now, you take away
both of those
by making him silent
and putting a mask on him.
- [whimpering]
? ?
- [screams]
- So I always was conscious
of Jason never looking awkward
or off-balance or weak.
I would never look down
to see where I was walking,
because I thought
it weakened the character.
My favorite Jason kill--
which was my favorite
all-time kill for a long time--
was the sleeping bag
from "Part VII."
- [screaming]
[quickening string music]
? ?
- I put my heart and soul
into that character
and loved playing it.
- Name the killer
in "Friday the 13th."
- [breathing heavily]
Jason! Jason! Jason!
- I'm sorry.
That's the wrong answer.
[eerie music]
narrator: Jason is synonymous
with "Friday the 13th,"
but he's barely seen
in the original film.
The rest of the formula,
though, was in place.
- "Friday the 13th"
is a story
about a group
of camp counselors
who've come up
to set up a camp...
- Well, come on.
Let's go.
- I thought we had two weeks.
- And have been
sort of targeted
by a mysterious killer.
- No...
[sinister string music]
[breathlessly] No...
[gasping]
? ?
- One or two or three
of them get picked off,
and you say, "Oh, my goodness,
anybody could go at any time."
- [gasps loudly]
- Something's wrong with Ned.
- That was, I think,
part of the--the secret
to the suspense
that we were able to create.
["Friday the 13th"
theme plays]
[indistinct words echoing]
- It must be my imagination.
[chuckles]
[gasps, screams]
[jagged violin music]
? ?
- We needed somebody that knew
a lot more than we did
about how to pull off
a special effect.
You wanna stab
somebody with a knife.
How do you do it?
You can't just get
a rubber knife and--
and start... [laughs]
You know, going at people.
And we were fortunate enough
to run into a guy
named Tom Savini,
and he just couldn't wait
to get involved,
and he had such wonderful,
positive energy.
- Kevin Bacon was, uh, sitting
upright underneath the bed.
His--only his head
came through the bed.
- [chokes]
- So I'm actually pushing
the arrow through
the fake chest and neck,
and my assistant, uh,
was pumping the blood.
Now, while he was pumping
the blood, the tubing came off
the blood pump,
and during the take,
he grabbed it
and blew through it,
which caused the nice gurgling
of the blood.
[terrifying violin music]
So it was a happy accident
that made the effect,
you know, a l--so much better.
- What makes
"Friday the 13th" a classic
is the reveal of Mrs. Voorhees.
[sinister music]
- Steve!
[panting] Oh, Steve!
[musical sting]
Who are you?
- Well, I--I'm Mrs. Voorhees,
an old friend of the Christys'.
- Everyone's trying
to survive, uh,
as they're being knocked off
one by one
by a killer that they
don't know, and then you reveal
it's the mother
of this drowned boy.
- You see,
Jason was my son.
- A mother was driven mad
by her child drowning
and seeing the world ignore it
and go by
and think that they
can just restart
and go on with their lives.
The manifestation
of grief is actually
very poetic and relatable.
- [screams]
- We started to hear
some of the score
that Harry was writing for
the first "Friday the 13th,"
and this--this...
[imitates echoing sound]
Kept coming up.
["Friday the 13th"
theme plays]
[indistinct words echoing]
- You remember a scene
at the very end, uh...
where Mrs. Voorhees--uh,
Betsy Palmer, rest her soul.
Dear Betsy.
We hear, uh, her son go...
- "Kill her, Mommy.
Kill her."
- And that's what
kicked it off for me.
I went, "She hears
voices in her head."
I went up to
a microphone and went,
"K...ma..."
And then it came out...
[imitating echoing]
Kih...mah...
And it literally became
the signature
of that series,
the sound that--
what they call
"the Jason sound."
- [whimpering]
- Look what you did to him!
- [whimpers]
- [screaming]
- [yelps]
[grunts]
- I remember thinking
the movie was over.
You remember,
she was on the lake.
And I thought the m--
I legitimately was like,
"Aw, the movie's over.
[exhales]
She's at the boat."
- [growling]
[shrill violin music]
- [screaming]
- He jumped out that water.
I lost it.
I don't even know
how I fell for that.
To this day...
was the loudest
I ever screamed in my life.
- The boy, Jason.
- Jason?
- Nobody knew that was
going to become a franchise,
but it was certainly easy
to replicate.
[screeching string music]
[dark music]
- The--my biggest regret is
putting the bag over his head.
- [screaming]
- So then, doing "Part III,"
this guy we had hired
as a--as a 3-D expert
was also a hockey player.
And I was trying
to figure out--
you know, I wasn't gonna
do the bag again.
"What are we gonna do?"
And one day,
he walked into my office
with a goalie mask
and said, "How about this?"
[sinister music]
- [screaming]
- It was perfect.
It was, immediately--
that was gonna be great.
- [growling]
- [screaming]
? ?
- I don't understand
how, in the first one,
he's like an 11-year-old
who jumps out of the lake,
and then he's built like a--
a WCW wrestler.
- [screaming, whimpering]
- I don't understand
what happened
where he suddenly got
all jacked.
- [screaming]
[metal crinkling]
- You know,
after the first movies
and the subsequent sequels
became,
"Who are these,
you know, awful kids
"that we sort of hate
and we can't wait
for Jason to take them out?"
[dramatic riffing music]
- [screaming]
? ?
- [screaming]
- I've always thought that
the slasher films of the 1980s
didn't really work
as horror fiction.
But they worked pretty well
as slapstick comedies...
[jarring music]
- [strangled cry]
- And the reason
for that is, you know,
the characters are never
allowed to be anything
except one-dimensional types.
You've got a gang
of teenagers.
You've got the jock.
You've got the stoner.
You've got the slut.
You've got the virgin.
You never care about them,
you never fall
in love with them,
and so when
the serial killer starts
knocking them off
one by one...
You laugh instead of
recoil in horror,
because he's actually more
of a personality than they are.
[sinister music]
- [gasps]
- With the success
of "Friday the 13th"
and the success
of "Halloween,"
people just were--
producers were ravenous
to find material
and knowing that, "Oh,
well this is the formula."
[both gasp]
[haunting organ chord]
- One of the by-products of--
of the success
of "Friday the 13th"
and a few other movies
was that people on the outside
are looking in, saying,
"Oh, they killed ten people
"and they made
a lot of money.
"We'll kill 20 people,
and we'll make
a lot more than that."
[shattering]
narrator: By the early '80s,
slasher movies
glutted the market.
Audiences loved them,
but they also inspired
outright hatred.
- [shrieking]
narrator: Where some saw
harmless entertainment,
others saw a threat
to society.
[both screaming]
- Come on, baby.
Light my fire.
[rock 'n' roll playing]
- You bet I will.
- [laughing]
- I gotta tell you something,
the worst horror movie I ever
saw was [bleep] great, okay?
- Yeah, that's true.
- That's the way that I am,
because I go in there
and I say,
"What am I gonna see?
I don't know."
A movie that's PG-13
that's a horror movie,
it's gotta be scary in some way
that's really artistic.
[faint echoing scream]
- [gasps]
[eerie music]
Once you get to R
and once you get to Unrated,
you're saying, "I don't know
what I'm gonna see."
I got one word for you:
"Maniac."
[quiet, sinister music]
? ?
- "Maniac" is one
of my favorite movies,
and I had a feeling
you'd like it, which is why...
- "Maniac"--oh, of course.
- As a gift for you,
I brought you
a "Maniaction" figure.
- Holy [bleep]!
We did not
rehearse this, folks.
Look!
- [laughing]
A "Maniaction" figure.
- I'm so excited,
I almost dropped it!
It's a "Maniac" bloody scalp.
- It's--isn't that sweet?
- Yeah, it really is.
I mean, I don't know
how to thank you for that.
[woman screaming]
- [whimpering]
- "Maniac" is about a guy
named Frank Zito
who's a very...
ah, oddball character
who stalks young women.
And he scalps them
and he takes their scalps home
and he puts them
on these mannequins.
And it is here
he sort of struggles
with this relationship
he had with his mother.
- I will never...
[dark music]
let them take you away from me.
- It's a very minimalist look
at what happens
inside the mind
of a serial killer.
- You bitch!
- What...
- [grunts]
- What're you...doing...
- [grunts]
- [gagging]
Stop it!
What are you doing?
- I mean, the original
"Maniac" is mean,
but it's actually
really powerful and,
thanks to Joe Spinell's
performance,
kind of emotional.
- [sobbing quietly]
Why'd you make me do that?
[sniffles]
I didn't wanna do it.
- It really, like,
went too far.
You know, watching that movie,
you really felt like
the killing scenes
were really protracted
and really brutal
and really grim.
[quickening violin music]
- When that movie came out,
it was so controversial
You know, a lot of women
were protesting it
because this idea that it
was misogynistic, of course.
You know, it's like
all these movies get this label
of being misogynistic
because the victims
are primarily women.
- ...again.
- [moans]
- I don't feel like the film's
misogynistic at all.
As a matter of fact,
I feel, as a woman,
it really represents
a realism to me.
It's--it's--it's like
a cathartic experience
in a way,
because women live in
that sort of world every day,
where we have to be hyperaware
of who's around us
and what could happen.
[eerie music]
narrator: "Maniac" ends
with a group of women
taking brutal revenge
on the killer.
- [moaning in fear]
- And this...
narrator: Today, many horror
fans and film scholars
consider it a classic,
but in the '80s,
"Maniac" helped set off
a moral panic.
[women shrieking]
- [grunts loudly]
- Horror became a--
a dirty word, I think,
in the late '70s, early '80s,
and I think that the reason
for that was the--
the explosion
of slasher movies.
[themes overlapping
and building]
? ?
- A new breed
of "shriek merchants"
has exploited
the once honorable genre
of the terror film.
- It was a very cheap form
of horror entertainment,
and those slasher films
got a lot of bad press
for brutalizing women,
for violence, for the gore,
and--and the people making
legitimate horror films
were afraid that they were
gonna be tainted, uh,
by the legacy of a lot
of these slasher knock-offs.
- I think a lot of people
have the wrong idea.
They identify these films
with earlier thrillers
like "Psycho,"
or even a more recent film
like "Halloween,"
which we both like.
These films aren't
in the same category.
These films hate women.
- [shrieking]
[flesh squelches,
shrieking stops]
- But don't you find that
in a really effective
horror movie,
blood stains the critics' eyes?
Like, once you get
blood in your eyes...
- Yes, yes.
- You can't wash it out.
They can't see anything else...
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Other than the kill,
and they also feel like
if they like the movie,
that they're endorsing
that for real--
or that kind of violence.
- Yeah.
- So--so most often,
those reviews just become
a soapbox to be like,
"Look, I'm a good person.
"I'm a good person.
I don't like
this sort of thing,"
but the truth is, we love it.
It's like it's--
it's the enjoying fantasy,
enjoying a scary story.
It's like, it's--
it's no different
from "Grimms' Fairy Tales."
[suspenseful organ music]
- The slasher films celebrate
the female character
because they're
the final girls.
The people who--who survive
the slasher movies
are the final girls,
and that's who
you identify with,
and that's the smart one.
The women are the ones
who are smart.
It's the sex-crazed guys
bringing their girlfriends
to have sex that,
you know, get slaughtered.
- [gasps]
- Most of the feminists
who were against horror
were not really
watching these films
or analyzing them, you know?
They were just sort of, like,
"Pornography is bad.
Horror films are bad."
You know?
So they weren't actually
engaging with the genre.
- These women in danger films
all really boil down
to just one same image,
one disturbing image:
a woman screaming
in abject terror.
- Usually it's the people
who don't actually
know anything about the topic
that are the loudest
complainers about it.
- And unfortunately,
the audiences that go to them
don't seem to like women
too much, either.
- In the '80s,
"The New York Times" conducted,
um, a poll with theatergoers
to find out who was seeing
these slasher films,
and they found out
that 45% of the audience
was made up of adolescents.
55% of that audience was women.
[women screaming, wailing]
- [gagged screaming]
narrator: "Maniac,"
its slasher cousins,
and the Reagan
assassination attempt...
[gunshots]
Triggered a crackdown
on realistic violence
and gore.
- [screaming]
- By 1984,
the golden age
of slasher films was over,
but audiences
still wanted their scares.
- [shrieks]
- So film makers created
a new kind of monster.
[sinister music]
- Okay, show her.
- [gasps]
Well, is it a Good Guy or not?
- It is.
It is!
Wow.
- A Good Guy!
- One of the first
experiences of horror
was, uh, "Child's Play."
- Hi, I'm Chucky,
and I'm your friend
to the end.
Hi-de-ho!
[laughs]
- [giggling]
- When I first saw that,
I was about four--
four or five.
So it was just this little
doll and it was cute
and then all of the sudden,
it just came alive.
And it's--it's always
those moments
where the camera is moving...
[suspenseful music]
- [panting softly]
- [gasps]
- But you don't--it's kind of
the POV of the doll
that just, like...
it--it just drove me crazy.
- [shouting]
[screams]
- And I can be honest.
To this day,
I'm still affected by that.
- Nobody believes you
about Chucky.
[inhales deeply] Unless you
start telling the truth...
right now...
they're going to
take you away from me.
- It's about a mother trying
to hold her family together,
defend her--her son
against this, you know--
against the charges
of being a--a murderer.
I mean, a seven-year-old boy?
Horrible.
And the boy may be mad.
He keeps insisting
that his little--
that his doll
is talking to him.
- Come on, Chucky,
say something!
Tell me!
- Hi, I'm Chucky,
and I'm your friend to the end.
Hi-dee-ho!
[laughs]
- [grunts]
[sinister music]
- To me,
horror is always about
violating the sacred.
Take a child--
something that we all look at
and coo over and look after
and dote on--
and make them...
the most evil [bleep]
out there.
And a child's toy
is sacred too.
These are things
we grow up with, and you--
you--you basically cast
horror's black shadow, uh,
over all this sacred,
righteous stuff.
- [deep voice]
You stupid bitch!
- [screaming]
- You filthy slut!
I'll teach you
to [bleep] with me!
- No! No!
- In the 1980s,
advertisers had started
to target children directly.
- Brought to you exclusively
by Play Pals,
makers of Good Guys
and other fine toys.
- It's like children
had become
these little
consumerist monsters
who could, you know,
coerce their parents
into getting them more
and more stuff
that they didn't need.
- Well, what do you think?
- I want a Good Guy
to go with it.
- I know you do, Andy,
but I didn't know about it
in time this month
to save up for it.
- I remember
my mother telling me
a crazy story
about fighting someone
in a dark alley
for a Cabbage Patch Kid.
- ? I got my doll,
I got my doll! ?
- We can see this line between
the "direct to children
as consumers" advertising
on the one hand
and the potential consequences
of what that brings
into the home on the other.
- [bellowing]
- [exclaims in fear]
[screams]
- [growling]
- I was asking for--
for them to create a doll
that had never been
created before
to do things on film
that had never
been done before.
This is a breath before CGI.
There was no way out.
It was all on camera,
live or die.
[sinister music]
And we built the apartment
up--the apartment set--
four feet off the ground.
We punched holes
through the set
behind the doll
so you couldn't see the wires
directly behind it.
- [hollering]
- [groans]
- [shouts]
- I mean, I used
every trick in the book
to try to maintain...
the illusion that the doll
was alive and moving.
- Hi.
It's me, Chucky.
What do you think?
[ominous piano chords]
- Mommy...
- I mean, think about it:
you're being chased
by something this big
with a knife!
You know, I mean...
[stammering]
You know, how do you sell that?
- [hissing]
- [screams]
- Well...did, didn't we?
- Chucky is a piece
of horror history.
Chucky's face sits
on that horror
Hall of Fame board
right next to the guy
in the hockey mask,
right next
to the Michael Myers mask,
Freddy's glove...
he's in there.
- [screaming, groaning]
narrator: "Child's Play"
was violent,
but no one would mistake it
for the grim realism
of "Maniac."
[terrifying music]
- [screams]
- [grunts]
- [screams]
narrator: Chucky was
following a trail blazed
by one of the most
famous characters
in the history of horror...
- [cackling]
- Freddy Krueger.
- You know,
"Nightmare on Elm Street"
came out in 1984,
and I remember
seeing that movie
and I was so excited
about the fact that,
"Ooh, there's a new twist
to this sub-genre,"
that now the rules of--
of any sort of world
don't apply.
narrator: In part two,
we'll see how
"A Nightmare on Elm Street"
brought slashers back
from the grave...
- Freddy is in the imagination
of the person he's haunting...
- [screams]
- And the imagination
is larger than life.
narrator: Dive into
the psychosexual darkness
of "Candyman"...
- You have to be able
to deliver the scares,
and you have to be able
to make people talk about it
long after you've gone.
narrator: Watch as "Scream"
turns the genre inside-out...
- [screaming]
- I thought I was in
a documentary
about a serial killer,
and they're playing this,
you know, for laughs.
narrator: "The Silence of
the Lambs"
makes grisly horror
respectable.
- Love your suit.
[saw buzzing]
narrator: And 21st-century
anxiety leads
to the no-holds-barred terror
of "Saw" and "Hostel."
- [muffled hollering]
- People who don't
see these films take them
way more seriously
than the people who do.
- [screaming]
- We wanted to make something
that was super scary,
and we'd inadvertently
become known as the kings
of torture porn.
- [screaming]
- [cackling]