Big Hair, Bigger Scares

The Politics of 1980s Slasher Films

A Brief History

The 1980s were a time where the horror genre wanted to revitalize monsters of the past for a fresh audience

From exploitation and “splatter” films of the 1970s, the slasher is born

The horror genre becomes spectacle again, and much like the B movies of the 1950s, most are directed towards a teen audience

This can be seen by the return of the 3D gimmick and popularity of drive-in theaters

A Background on 80s Politics

Since the beginning of cinema, horror has always reflected whatever real life horrors were happening in our reality

In the 1980s, while the Reagan era had an undeniable effect on the horror genre, with movies like They Live and The Stuff, what seemed to be oddly prevalent in almost every slasher released in the decade was a theme of gender and sexual norms and, a surprise maybe to some, feminism

What Was Going On?

The politics in the 1980s called for a return of traditional American values

As we see in the formula for most film in the slasher genre, the masked killer stalks and kills teens who do not follow a specific moral code: do not have premartial sex, do not drink or do drugs, do not explore where you are not supposed to, etc.

Religious Tie-Ins

The themes of traditional values can be pointed back to Catholic values (remaining pure, no drugs)

As the documentary Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue points out, this depicts an Old Testament World, where you will be killed if you behave badly

Therefore, the masked killers who “punish” the sinning teens can be seen as the Hand of God

“This is God”- Freddy Krueger

“When we do something naughty, we are always caught and we are punished. Punishment is absolute” - Mother Superior, SIlent Night, Deadly Night

Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees - unstoppable forces of nature

It storms whenever Jason goes on his killing spree, either raining or extremely windy

Force of God - is God angry at the teens for partying?

How Does This Relate to Gender?

In all slasher films, there is the pivotal “Final Girl”. She is the only one strong enough to put up a good fight and eventually defeat the killer… for the time being

This character, with very few exceptions, is always female and almost always the sole survivor

What is also always prevalent, is that this survivor girl is always portrayed as the “good girl”.

As the documentary Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film describes, she is “virtuous and virginal”, someone who embodies the moral code structured by society that allows you to go further in life

In other words, she has passed the test of morality

Why Does the Final Girl Survive?

Whether it is Laurie, Nancy, Alice, or Ginny, the common theme for the final survivor is that she is more aware and less distracted than her friends to be able to focus on fighting and getting away

She is resourceful enough and disinterested in sex and partying to be able to keep herself alive

“She alone looks death in the face; but she alone also finds the strength either to stay the killer long enough to be rescued (ending A) or to kill him herself (ending B)” Clover, pg. 201

What is the Final Girl Afraid Of?

Because the final girl seems reluctant to engage in the partying and sexual activity her friends participate in, we can gage that she is someone who is perhaps afraid of social situations and there is often the underlying fear of sex, and intimacy

Often the final girl might have a backstory that gives her reason to fear being close with others

Debra Hill, producer of Halloween points out in the Nightmares documentary, that the virginal final girl will usually defeat the killer by penetrating him with a knife, ax, and a plethora of other pointed weaponsTherefore, she overcomes her fear of sex

Are Slasher Films Anti - Women?A common argument against slasher films is that they exploit and encourage violence against women

It seem this would be so from a quick glance: women are more often than not killed while fully naked, a lot of the times while swimming or showering

A lot of lower budget slasher films would feature adult film stars in the female roles (slasher films are typically considered one notch above pornography by the vast majority)

“the teenage horror film is a substitute for and a prelude to the ‘adult’ film” Clover, pg. 196

And some of the time, even the writers and directors of the films (typically male) seem to hold the women in the film in an objectifying gaze

In a conglomerate of interviews with 80s cult filmmakers, the writer of a movie called Blood Frenzy speaks of one of the actresses, Lisa Savage, as a better actress than he thought she would be, saying “I felt sorry for Lisa because I’d written such a ‘brainless bimbo’ role, figuring it would be played by some bubble-head Hal (the director) knew from porn” Borseti, pg.6

Arguments Against the Final Girl

Another argument against sexism can be directed at the final girl herself

A common thing to point out is that the final girl, while resourceful enough to eventually defeat the killer, still spends a lot of time running around screaming and being chased

And at the end of it all, she is usually traumatized and much more weakened than she had started out - take Chris from Friday the 13th Part III screaming and laughing hysterically as the cops take her away to safety

“Tortured survivor might be a better term than hero” Clover, pg. x

Argument Against the Final Girl cont’dShe is typically shown to be more tomboyish than her feminine counterparts, and therefore more knowledgeable about defending herself because she is more into “boyish” activities than “girly” ones

In her article “Her Body, Himself” film professor Carol J. Clover argues “slasher films present us in startlingly direct terms with a world in which male and female are at desperate odds but in which, at the same time, masculinity and femininity are more states of mind than body” Clover, pg. 188

This insinuates that the “masculinization” of a character is what makes them stronger than everyone else

Example: Alice’s transformation in Nightmare on Elm Street 4

Beginning of the Film End of the Film

But does this mean anything portrayed as weak should be classified as feminine?Could the final girl’s traits simply be embodying traits from both sexes?

The final girl does dress in more plain clothes and may not be interested in the same things as her female counterparts, but she is still female and usually has a crush on a boy at school and has close friends that are girls

Katey, the lone survivor in House on Sorority Row even drinks and parties with her female friends and still ends up defeating the masked killer

Embracing Femininity

Another way to interpret this change from feminine to masculine could be that the final girl is embracing the fact that she is female

She is embracing the parts of herself that were uncomfortable to her previously - once scared and timid of life, she is now taking charge of her future

Alice embraces motherhood and fights to protect her unborn child

Later in the 90s, Heather Langenkamp (real life actress from the first film) must embrace her role as Nancy Thompson in order for Freddy Krueger to enter into our reality so she can defeat him once and for all

Common Myths of the Slasher Film

As much as women may be exposed more in screen, the gender seems to make little difference to the killers

Both men and women are killed if they engage in sex or drugs

“In the slasher film, sexual transgressors of both sexes are scheduled for early destruction” Clover, pg. 199

One extremely common myth is that the women have far more drawn out and gratuitous deaths than the men

In reality, who gets the grosser deaths seems to be pretty evenly split

Examples:Friday the 13th (1980): Marcie gets an axe to the head and sinks to the ground, dying instantly, while her boyfriend Jack (yes, Kevin Bacon) gets an arrow head slowly stabbed through his throat and the camera lingers on him for some time, choking while his throat squirts out blood

Friday the 13th Part VII: Ben gets his head crushed in a very lingering shot with blood showering, while his girlfriend gets a party horn through her eye and dies quickly

Unlikeable CharactersMost slasher film, Friday the 13th in particular due to the franchise’s large body count, have a slew of characters that the audience is praying to see get killed and cheer once they ‘get it’. These characters are evenly male and female

Killer WomenHappy Birthday To Me reveals one of the final girl’s best friends to be the one who has been picking them off one by one

But most notable is no doubt the very first entry in the Friday the 13th franchise which features Pamela Voorhees, Jason’s mother, as the killer getting revenge on the camp that let her son drown while the counselors were busy having sex

Betsy Palmer, the actress who portrayed Ms. Voorhees, spoke in the Going to Pieces documentary about how she had a backstory for Pamela: that she had Jason out of wedlock and had been cast out by her father as a result

Sleepaway Camp: The Black SheepThe 1983 camp slasher flick Sleepaway Camp appears at first to be nothing more than a Friday the 13th rip-off

But the ending twist reveals to us that the killer had been a transvestite (not by choice) thirteen year old girl, who had really been a boy the entire time

Throughout the film, there are multiple hints to Angela’s repressed sexuality - one scene shows her looking lustfully at a fellow camper in her bunk who ends up being one of her cruelest tormentors

The killer, Angela Baker, becomes transgender in the sequels when she recieves a sex change from the mental institution

This shock value makes this film one of the most iconic in the genre

Critic’s ResponseSlasher and splatter horror were ripe for criticism from film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert

Often on their show they would speak about how this new wave of slasher films and their audiences “must hate women” (even though Final Girls are typically revered by horror audiences)

They then proceeded to spoil the ending of the film and publish the address of Betsy Palmer and invited their audience to tell her how awful her film was

Betsy Palmer in the Going to Pieces documentary says “I don’t think it’s against women, it’s an art form”

Ebert in the meantime had been a co-writer on a number of “sexploitation” films, though criticized the makers of slasher flicks for exploiting women

The Slasher Audience

It is undeniable that women have always been a draw in slasher films. The writer of Psycho, arguably the first American slasher film, had discussed how they had “wanted a star” to be the one who gets killed in the famous shower scene

“Scream Queens”, like Jamie Lee Curtis, become an aspect that draw larger audiences into new slasher films - Prom Night, Terror Train

Later on, stars like Courtney Cox, Neve Campbell, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Jennifer Love Hewitt will become essential in attracting large female audiences to slasher films

What Does the Horror Community Say?Actress Monica Silvera Nadon, from the aforementioned Blood Frenzy talks about how she and her friends all watched the movie together and had fun, laughing hysterically at her death scene

In Going to Pieces, actress Felissa Rose from Sleepaway Camp says most of her friends, who are women, love and relate to the characters of the classic slasher movies. “They feel empowered”

What Does the Horror Community Say?Amy Holden Jones, director of cult classic The Slumber Party Massacre says that she does not think the audience watches slasher films to see females harmed

She says they want the thrill of seeing her in jeopardy initially, and then cheer her on as they watch her “triumph and get revenge”

This formula is also used in exploitation “rape revenge” films where the film begns with a female being assualted before she resolves to exact brutal revenge on her attackers

The audience will “cheer the killer on as he assaults his victims, then reverse their sympathies to cheer the survivor on as she assaults the killer” Clover pg. 192

A Step Up for Women

As Going to Pieces points out, most of the horror from before the seventies would feature women constantly in danger as well - only they would faint and have to be rescued by their male co-stars

The 80s slasher brought in a new formula which featured women fighting back until the end, outliving their male co-stars and sometimes even recusing them from danger as well (or at least attempting to)

What is a “Woman’s Place”?The horror films of the 30s and 40s, where women take a far more submissive role, are hailed by critics and film historians, while slashers are seen as misogynistic and, as Siskel and Ebert put it, are a response to the women’s movement, telling women to “get back in their place”

The Silence of the Lambs would go on to be revered and win several Oscars, including Best Picture, when the plot primarily features a man who brutally murders women, before being stopped by a female character

“the slasher film lies by and large beyond the purview of the respectable (middle-aged, middle-class) audience” Clover pg. 187

Before Slashers After Slashers

The Slasher’s LegacyIn Carol J. Clover’s book Men, Women, and Chainsaws she describes how the audiences in the theaters when these movies were coming out were mostly male and mostly teenagers

While that may have been true at the time, things have definitely changed

Slasher’s Legacy TodayIn a 2017 study published by CivicScience, 60 percent of horror fans are women

The documentary Going to Pieces even shows young girls interacting at horror conventions

In the documentary, two female fans were interviewed at a horror convention, and on the topic of slashers, one said “they have a lot of great characters for women that are strong, that fight back, that kill… so I say the men, beware”