Movie Nites: Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The next two are slashers - Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre

There seems to be something hyper masculine (dare I say toxic?) in saying you can watch a slasher movie with no substance and think it's funny or something. Be different! Say it's bad. Because it is.

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017/10/178587/horror-movies-death-by-sex-slut-shaming


Halloween

Long awaited. I'd never seen these, but of course they've been referenced and spoofed into oblivion. Everyone who says they love horror loves these two movies.

And there's really nothing there.

The killer with the bleached Capt Kirk mask killed his sister when she was a teenager (why??) and he was an 8 year old or something. He's put in an asylum and breaks out 15 yrs later and stalks a girl in his hometown as old as the sister was (maybe?) for, again, I don't know what reason. There is no reason. Are they trying to say violence is perpetrated by the mentally ill? Violence is senseless and has no discernible cause? Violence is entertaining? No. Just no.

There's lots of stalking (girl sees, her friends tell her they don't see) then senseless gore and one girl's friends dropping like flies. I feel like this is playing on women not being believed in sexual assaults and their expertise and observations being generally given less weight than men's - but it'snot so much calling attention to it, but rather using it as a given as part of the story.

Maybe there's slut shaming too? The girl that wanted to have sex I think is the one the guy murdered, ripped up his sister's gravestone and put on her bed with her in it. The studious girl who appeared not to want sex is the one who lived. Hm.

Some movies you can debate whether or not it's feminist or good. I don't think that's the case with these.


Texas Chainsaw Massacre

This one was a bit stressful. Being in the middle of nowhere, all the friends you're with are murdered one by one, then you're tortured and nearly killed. Yay! 

Even the man at the gas station when she runs away and thinks she's safe the first time is in on it, is part of the murdery family of men. 

There's lots of screaming, if that floats your boat. Lots. Her face - lots of close ups of her screaming. And more screaming. Women feel this kind of terror a lot I think. Not only that, but are warned of it and blamed for it, so it's tiring. She does get away, I guess, in the end. So that's good. For the franchise at least?

I connected with this book and quote a lot more:

"Women have always been the most important part of monster movies. As I walked home one night, I realized why. Making my way down dark city streets to my apartment in Brooklyn, I was alert and on edge. I was looking for suspicious figures, men that could be rapists, muggers or killers. I felt like Laurie Strode in Halloween. Horror is a pressure valve for society's fears and worries: monsters seeking to control our bodies, villains trying to assail us in the darkness, disease and terror resulting from the consequences of active sexuality, death. These themes are the staple of horror films.

There are people who witness these problems only in scary movies. But for much of the population, what is on the screen is merely an exaggerated version of their everyday lives. These are forces women grapple with daily. Watching Nancy Thompson escape Freddy Krueger's perverted attacks reminds me of how I daily fend off creeps asking me to smile for them on the subway. Women are the most important part of horror because, by and large, women are the ones the horror happens to. Women have to endure it, fight it, survive it — in the movies and in real life. They are at risk of attack from real-life monsters. In America, a woman is assaulted every nine seconds."

― Mallory O'Meara, The Lady from the Black Lagoon: 

Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick

I used to have a recurring dream about being chased. Sometimes I was caught, and when I was, I screamed and nothing came out of my mouth. The whole thing was just pure heart-pounding terror. Even when you wake up, it takes time to calm down. I've felt nearly the same in a parking deck, walking alone after dark on a college campus, being in public after a creep makes it known he's watching you. I've made my schedule around making sure I'm in a populated area but not too populated or in order to make sure I'm not running in a forest in the dark. I really don't need to watch these things to know what it's like to feel scared. Maybe men do? I'd rather think they watch to develop empathy than revel in the misogyny of slaughtering women for being sexually active. I'm probably too optimistic.

Movie Nite: Carrie

October movie nite:

Carrie

The release date is November 3, 1976, so it's a year older than me. That's kind of fun. Also November 3 is Godzilla's birthday.

I think I had seen this one before. It wasn't nearly as scary as I remembered. By far the best out of the several campy and several slashers we've seen this month. You probably can't go wrong with Stephen King. It was spooky, had a plot, and had some magic to mix things up a little. It didn't kill the women for having sex like some others, so That's a plus. Did it equate women with being witches emitting  a polluting substance as this article brings up? Maybe. I'll entertain that. I think greater was the comment on religion - that Carrie's ignorance that caused her shame was caused by her mother's abuse and religious beliefs. So, I don't know on balance whether this was necessarily a feminist flick. It could go either way.

Leaving the question of whether or not the movie is particularly feminist or not for a moment, my daughter had seen it done in some form in this show she likes, Riverdale. It's everywhere in pop culture. It was kind of fun to show her the original. 

It's got telekinesis and stuff and a little horrible religion messing people up. I like the way the people the mother evangelized to really didn't pay much attention. Mixing up the magic and religion is a pretty good choice - it makes you think about believers and manipulation and related things. She gets her period at the beginning and is kind of an outcast, so those are always good themes as well. Coming of age and feeling like an imposter are themes with a lot of material. Getting your period comes with a lot of those things represented in a person grappling with finding out they have a power and need to develop it - extra responsibilities, the need to learn a lot of things very quickly, extra dangers, etc. And as I type, it's interesting that I'm comparing a supernatural power to getting one's period because I've always thought of it as the opposite of a power. Maybe my thinking is influenced by the patriarchal culture.
It's always been an unfair burden, something that holds me back physically and or emotionally, gets in the way, has to be managed and planned for whether you want to or not so you don't bleed everywhere or get pregnant. The fact that the telekinesis came with her fist period was an interesting and maybe not insignificant plot point. 

I had imagined it as a bit scarier than it was. The scariest thing is actually the lighting and camera angle at the school dance (at which the iconic pig blood scene occurs). It captures school in a fairly exaggerated but familiar way. There's only one murder and it's not like a rampage - it's rather justice that no one else seems to be able or willing to deliver. I didn't even really remember the Jesus voodoo doll thingy from the first time around, but it was featured prominently in the doll and the abusive mother's death. I guess that's why I liked the movie, the most vulnerable person was sort of protected instead of picked off and tortured more like in a slasher movie. Well, except for the fact that she died. So, again, not sure it's particularly feminist, but it's got more going on than your average slasher/thriller.

A few other things worth noting that critics have brought up is the mother being the source of the harmful patriarchal religious abuse, so it's kind insult to injury like women are inflicting this on themselves; men are answering for nothing. And tied to that, treating menstruation as a shameful thing - and again the mother didn't educate her because of enforcing the extreme patriarchal religious view of women as sinful, dirty beings. It's hard to say for sure, but worth discussing.

Movie Nite: Teenagers From Outer Space

October Movie Nite

Teenagers From Outer Space

Really 50s. Ridiculous. An alien named Derek lands on Earth and wants to stay. It's complicated! - his dad's the supreme leader of his planet where they don't have families so they can't just fry him on the spot for desertion of his space duties He moves in with a teenage (I'm assuming) girl and her grandfather. The name was really funny, I don't know why. Because they're supposed to be named Mork? After he reached town, it was all Donna Reed or Father Knows Best - for a little bit.

But the killer alien - I don't remember his name - kills with such impunity and coldness and sterility, it feels very much like a comment on the fear and war and the new bomb technology. Maybe a fear of science as a result? It gets more points than a slasher movie for that bit.


This is one of the parts of substance:

Captain: Morrow! Go below and bring up the young gargon specimen. Now the decision depends on its reactions.Derek: Wait, Captain. I have found evidence of intelligent beings on this planet!
Thor: Of what concern of foreign beings?
Derek: Of none to you, Thor! Just as you were so unconcerned when you destroyed this small creature, so bravely!
Thor: It was no more than an insect.
Derek: But it had life. And that life you had to take to satisfy your endless hunger for killing.


The romance is as unimpressive and sexless as the 50s. She has two boyfriends and nothing really happens. Maybe we can excuse her because they're trying to stop Derek's alien friend from zapping everyone's meat off their skeletons.

It's interesting that the reporter boyfriend isn't jealous - maybe some progressive thought there? Or maybe just the real life relationship between the two guys snuck into the fiction.

 

The writer/producer was in the film as the reporter/boyfriend of the girl Derek was in love with and was actually the boyfriend of the man who played Derek. Fun background info.

This next exchange was kind of cheesy, but maybe tries to say in words what they should've shown - how love feels and that you can love those who seem different by your culture's standards because we're all the same - as in the Twilight Zone's People Are the Same All Over and Third From the Sun.

Derek: Betty, when you learn where I'm from, well... you will not understand but, I hope it will not make any difference between us because...Betty Morgan: I don't care where your from. I don't understand all this, but somehow I feel that I've always known you. That we've never been apart!

Another kind of irrelevant but fun fact:The grandfather, Harvey Dunn, had missing fingers and in real life made cards to explain. 

The story of my finger cut off July 18, 1908: "Caught in a cogwheel of a printing press at the Press and Dakotan office, Yankton, S. D., while working around the press. Attending physician Dr. Moorehouse. I did not sue for damages. I can write just as well now, if not better, than before the accident. The stub of the finger has the tendency to melt in summer and freeze in winter. I swear this is a true statement to the best of my knowledge." Sincerely yours, Harvey B. Dunn.

Movie Nite: Plan 9 From Outer Space

We were going to watch one horror movie every night in October, but I think we're averaging every other. 

Plan 9 From Outer Space

The UFOs were as bad as promised.

And Vampira!!!

I kinda fell asleep a little. 

And this is pretty bad... because only detectives can makes very basic inferences:

LT. HARPER Well don't forget Mrs. Trent claims to have seen them too. She didn't have anything on her breath. 
LARRY She was hysterical. 
LT. HARPER Well true, she was frightened, and in a state of shock. But, don't forget that torn nightgown and the scratched feet.
LARRY Yeah I hadn't thought of that. I guess that's why you're a detective lieutenant and I'm still a uniformed cop.

But there are a few interesting things! -- besides the legendary badness of the film. The aliens want to destroy earth people because we made terrible weapons - probably the big bomb scare theme - and they want to destroy us before we destroy them. Compared to the slasher films, I appreciate the noble goal here. In fiction writing, they always say to show, don't just tell, so possibly the guy could've taken a few classes before launching this, but I like the idea.

In another part, the alien mentions God and the human is shocked. In a way, it's a comment on how people from other cultures assume they're different, but they have more in common than they think. I like that theme generally, like several in the old Twilight Zone series.

The major funder was a Baptist preacher and converted a lot of the cast, as I learned in the Vampira book I read recently. Tor Johnson, while being baptized with most of the crew, pretended to drown. Maybe they didn't take the conversion all that seriously? Would've been funny either way. 


The book in question:

Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror - my notes on Goodreads:
There isn't a huge cache of info on Vampira it seems. Even so, Poole manages a good bio as well as description of where she fit in the cultural changes and how she may have influenced.

What stood out to me was that she was a strong figure who instead of doing the submissive pin up routine, looked at the audience and embodied a women's right to pleasure - and pain if she wants - just by a scream.

She seems to have had lots of bad luck where others got breaks, made a few no so great choices (the lawsuit, for one), and was a little too strong for her era. Like the James Dean stunts. I feel like that would have been fine for today, but it kind of soured people on her at the time.

She's kind of an underdog or forgotten legend. She was pretty revolutionary - or ahead of her time in some ways. There was a bit about how she wanted to choose the next Vampira. She wanted a black or Latina woman, but the network said no to avoid "controversy."

She was under contract four a role in a work by William Faulkner. She was in the Village in the 40s, though her words are forgotten rather than celebrated like her male cohorts, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs. Ackerman, it's said, borrowed from her without attribution. It's amazing that she had so much influence and so little reward.

Quote from the beginning: "Here, the marginalized learn the importance of performance for survival. They understand themselves as different from the dominant power structure and know a direct challenge rarely ends well. So they role-play and subvert, often through the medium of anarchic humor."