If the recent release of Texas Chainsaw 3D had at least one positive effect it was to remind us how big a deal Tobe Hooper’s seminal, revolutionary slice of unadulterated terror is. John Carpenter has waxed lyrical about the influence of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre upon his work and the slasher genre in general, and generally speaking it is perhaps the most important. It is perhaps the high water mark of the stalk-and-slash formula. It was one of the first to utilize the group of teenagers getting stalked by faceless terror plot and has had the last word since then.
Considering its reputation as this notorious and horrific feature, that was famously banned in several locations around the world, there is comparatively little visceral bodily fluid spillage than the title so blatantly points towards. While its sequels and terrible remakes have ladelled on the gore, Hooper relies on building up a thick, uncomfortable atmosphere to put his audience on edge and keep them in a state of sheer terror for the lean 80 minute running time.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre also relies on one very simple attribute that not a lot of horror films have in their favour. It could potentially happen. The idea of the story being completely true is a lie but the ground that the film is based on is fact. Serial killings, corpse exhumation and other macabre weirdness were things very closely related to Ed Gein and Hooper plays on the audience’s knowledge of that case throughout the whole film to very powerful ends. But what makes Texas Chainsaw Massacre truly terrifying is the fact that there is no logic to what Leatherface and his family are doing, there is no explanation, there is no backstory and there is no exposition. It’s just simply terrifying.
Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others is one of the superlative examples of how to craft a horror film – an efficient, gothic thriller that earns its jump moments and most importantly, its twist ending. The Others stands as one of the rare efforts, especially within this genre, which benefits from its last-act reveal rather than blindly succumbing to its inevitability.
In fact, horror or otherwise, this chiller offers one of the most satisfying curveballs in cinema history and is one that has been duplicated many times since, but to far less positive results. The care taken at every turn, down to the smallest detail, truly serves to inflate the ending’s effectiveness, rather then having the ending rob the prior acts of some of its soul.
Cemented by a simultaneously towering and restrained performance from Nicole Kidman (which earned her a Golden Globe nomination) and propelled by the perpetually unsettling mood, The Others is lasting, not because of shock gore or memorable creatures or apparitions, but for its ability to chill. The Others is the rare example of how to truly haunt an audience.
[h2]8) The Shining[/h2]
An attestation to the late Stanley Kubrick and his superb The Shining, is in his almost complete ignorance of its source material. Taking the bare bones of Stephen King’s novel he filled in the blanks with unending shots, stunted dialogue, characters who cannot exist and a mysterious portrait by an artist who dips his brush into the inkwell of time.
Jack Nicholson, in arguably his best role to date, stars as Jack Torrance, an alcoholic writer who drags his family to a remote hotel, The Overlook (built on a Native American burial ground, of course) to act as the caretaker for the winter. The most rubbery face in cinema, Shelley Duvall stars as his wife Wendy who spends her time taking care of their son Danny, whose “shining” coincides with his father’s emergent mania.
Duvall was harangued by Kubrick during production, as captured mercilessly by Kubrick’s daughter, Vivian, in her must-see documentary Making The Shining. Watching the doc, it’s fascinating to see how Kubrick manipulated her into differing degrees of rubberiness despite her endless whining. The doc makes a mockery of every “making of” featured on DVDs for the last decade – and it was made by a 17-year old!
The UK marketing campaign’s tagline “The Terror is HERE!” got it spot on. The Shining is absolutely terrifying, but why? The film’s horror is borne from confusion surrounding identity and a displacement of objects and people in time. Waves of blood breach walls to flood corridors, characters appear to coerce Jack deeper into The Overlook’s twisted pathos only to disappear.
Oh and then there’s the teddy bear fellating a random man to the sound of the foley artist repeatedly banging on a pipe. While Shelley Duvall whimpers.
Without traditional cause and effect logic dictating the narrative, anything can happen in the haunted hotel – which makes the oddities Kubrick chose all the more intriguing. Prior to production he sat down the entire cast and crew and screened David Lynch’s Eraserhead to set the tone for what was to come. Lynch’s influence is present as an almost parody of mood.
Thirty years on and the film continues to stir up theory, debate and crackpot conspiracy notions so much so, an entire documentary, titled Room 237, is dedicated to it; and the feature itself was re-released this last Halloween in the UK with extra footage added.
The Shining stands alone as a true haunted house flick. The film’s success is grounded in its insistence on being anything but a traditional horror film. Now, if you can just figure out what the bloody hell is going on.
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