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The Connventions of a Horror Film: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

This is the Theatrical trailer to Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003). This is remake of the orgianl 1974 film and is based on a true story set in Travis County, Texas during the summer of '73.

The trailer establishes where the film is set and when; "August 18, 1973" and "Travis county, Texas". Texas is consider as a "dessert " state. The location that they are in as the group of young adults are driving through is a very dessert area. There are no other cars on the road, no trees, no people (expect for a girl, who is alone). There is dust blowing up from the ground as they drive to connote that is avery dry and issolated area which no one can live in because it's so dry that crops can't grow. In this setting no one is around to help.

As I have mentioned before this is a remake of the orginal 1974 movie and is based on true events from the summer of '73. There is no past in the trailer that can tell us why the murder is killing people in a "massacre".

However, there is a old, "creepy looking" house in the middle of nowhere where we, as the audience, can gather that the murderer will be there ready to kill again.

The locations within the house vary from outside to basements. No matter where they go there always lurking in the dark, "What the hell was that?", and there reactions to hide from whatever it is are our primitive instincts of surival and also to create the terror that they are probaly feeling. In the trailer we can hear the fear in the dialogue of the group of protagonists and the screams that both the males and females make.

There is natural lightining when the group are driving through the dessert. This connotes that it is daytime a time when there is sussposed to be people out but in the trailer there isn't apart from the "hitchiker" (as the group call her), which is strange and makes us wonder one question. Why? Also there is natural light bursting through the windows in the house to connote that even though its daytime the killer is in the house and not fussed what time it is. He kind of gets a "kick" from this like most horror antagonists.  There is also low-key lightining to create shadows. This creates fear as one of the girls sees something in the shadows and not knowing whats there is probably one of the biggest fears there is. That is defiently shown on screen.

Within the mise-en scene there are lots of icongraphy that suggests that this is a horror film. I am going to talk about a few of the main ones. There is an old china doll in the trailer which suggests that the house was once a home to children and innocence before it was turned into a place of evil. Also most people find that china dolls are creepy because of the horror film Child's Play (1988). Also there is skelton to connote death, possibly a past death or a warning for the future.

In the film a group of teenagers are returning home from a concert in Mexico and drive through Texas. Then the meet the hitchiker who tells them "they're all dead". Who's dead? is the main question so the group goes to investigate which leads them into something that can only be described as "hell" and the home to leatherface. It's fight for surival for the group. In the end the girl Erin escapes with a baby while the killer, leatherface, is still alive. The narattor states at the end; "The crime scene was not properly secured by Travis County Police. Two investigating officers were fatally wounded that day. This is the only known image of Thomas Hewitt, the man they call Leatherface. The case today still remains open". There is a whole franchise of Texas Chainsaw Massacre; e.g. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II (1986), Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1990) etc. This is typical of American horror, which allows the killer the to surive, somehow, to be able to make sequels and therefore more money. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an example of this along with Hallowenn (1978) in which Mike Myers escapes and a trilogy was made.

The main characters are a group of 5 young America adults both females and males; Erin, Kemper, Morgan, Andy and Pepper. Let me begin with the 4 characters that are going to die (in order); Kemper, Andy, Morgan and Pepper. In the narrative the killer, leatherface, has no real motive to kill them. I will later come back to why he kills them in a bit.

At the beginning of the trailer we see Kemper and Pepper "making out" at the back of van. This shows us that they are the "sexual" couple of the group. Morgan and Andy are smoking in the car at the beginning of the movie. Kemper says that Erin "She didn't drink the tequila. She didn't smoke the weed." This suggests that they did drink large amounts of alhcool and "do weed". Also the group bought weed without Erin finding out.

Erin is our Final Girl as she is aware of her surrondings. She doesn't snoke, drink or do weed like the others. It seems that she is completely different to Pepper in the sense that she is not a sexual object for the male audience. She seems to be more concered about other things as she hints to her boyfriend Kemper, that she's been with for 3 years, that she wants to marry him. "Maybe I didn't go to Mexicio  to watch you get shit-faced for four days.... A tear-cut diamond ring that goes right here on my beautiful little finger."

The youth wear clothes that connote their character types, e.g. Erin wears a vest top and jeans with a hat while Pepper wears a tight top and skirt. This shows that Erin is sensible as she is wearing apporiate clothes as it's going to be hot as they go along in the car and that Pepper is a "slut". Remember that the characters are in Texas in 1973.

Leatherface (Thomas Hewitt) is the killer of the film. As the name suggests he wears leather faces of the people he has brutley killed. Horrible isn't it, but its true. We don't see in the trailer into the end to create suspense and fear. Who is he? Like I mentioned before there is no clear motive why he kills. The real motive is to surive. Him and his family are human eating cannibals.

There is a sheriff that appears in the trailer but seems to be useless as he asks "who's killing them?" But it seems that he is part of the Hewit family, who are the canibals, and the real monsters of the narrative as "they control Leatherface". So who really is the killer/ monster? Leatherface or his family? Or both? Is leatherface just a puppet on a string? On the left there is a image of the orginal Hewitt Family. Scary aren't they. In a way you could argue, is Leatherface a victim? The creation of his "disfunctional", "monsterous", "canibal" family.

In some sense the group of youths are abit stupid because the hitchiker killed herself before saying "we're all going to die. Anybody else after that would go far away and "call the cops." But not them they go to find what happened which is kinda brave. 

This film has the theme of good vs. evil. The group of youths have to escape from the Hewitt family who are trying to kill them. Unfortunely only 1 out of the 5 surives while the others fall into the cluthes of the evil Hewitt family. It seems like the family have escaped as the case still remains unclosed even today. This connotes that evil is never really destroyed and justice sometimes isn't done.

In some ways the film and trailer has connventions of both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde along with Dracula. Leatherface and his family show us that we all of us have some kind of madness inside us, which is evil, trying to force itself out to create terror. Also the Leatherface is driven to kill people by physchopathic family. He has some sort of lust or desire for it. Like he gets a thrill from it.

Sigmund Freud- "The Return of the Repressed" in Horror Films

Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939, was an Austrian who founded pyschoanalysis. His theory "the return of the repressed" was ll about repressed elements; memories, desires etc that have never really been abolished, returning effecting our behaviour that is compromise between defense and wish.

An example of this is Mike Myers from Halloween (1978). After Myers kills his sexualised sister he is placed into a mental hospital by his parents. There his desires to kill those who have been sexual are repressed deep inside in his mind. It isn't untill he escapes does that desire returns and flood right back to the surface.

The "discliples" of Freud describe monsters as embodying this theory, gratifying the dark desires that have been repressed for along time. Myers, as I have already mentioned is one of these "monsters", along with Count Karnstein, who is known for being "a wicked man" and a satanist & using black magic, and Frieda, who has "the devil inside of her"  and is transformed into a vampire, from Twins of Evil (1971) are another examples of this theory of Freuds. Both of these characters, Count Karnstein and Frieda, are vampires and therefore have a dark desire for blood which in a way they can't control. Its natural for them.

Below is the trailer for Twins of Evil.

The actions of the killer/ monster is between the notion of the repressed ideas and repressing ones. They are found in physconeurotic symptons that baer the imprint of the denfensive conflict from which they result from. However, some of the symptons can be positive, the wish-fulling search for sexual satisfacation.

An example of this can be Twins of Evil,  Count Karnstein uses black magic and a human (female) sacrifice to summon Countess Mircalla Karnstein, an ancestor of his, back from the dead. After sharing her bed does he bite her and change her to a vampire. Another example of this is Lust for a Vampire (1971), in which Mircalla, is a vampire called Carmilla Karnstein. She uses her sexual appearence to make a man fall in love with her and serve her. In Hammer Horror, the vampires are seen as sexual creatures.

This can be a spirtual belief that is persuded. An example of this, again be Twins of Evil. In it the brotherhood punish those who practice the dark arts (witches) and devil worshippers. Mostly these are girls (females were not completely trusted by males) who they burn alive like medieval and stewart practices. They have grown up in a culture where these is common and it has been repressed in their minds since they were children and it's released when they are adults. Also the cross, warns off vampires as is seen in vampire horror films.

Horror audiences enjoy this because it is a natural, human behaviour that we ALL do at one point or another and in the society that we live in today it can be seen through the media. 

In 1904, Freud's theory was tested  by Carl Gustav Jung on Sabina Naftulovna Spielrein, who was a mental patient where Jung worked. This story has been turned into a film called A Dangerous method (2012), starring Keira Knightly, Viggo Mortensen,  Michael Fassbender, and Vincent Cassel.

Spielrein became the first female pyschoanalysist in her own right.

Halloween (1978)

How does the start exemplify a common technical code convention of the horror genre?

At the start we, the audience, are placed into Michael's perspective. This is Point of View Camerawork. It makes us feel like we are the killer and there is a part of evil inside us, trying to get out.

How does the setting fit with the horror genre?

At the beginning, Loomis and his assianant are in a storm with heavy rain. In media terms this is called a pathetic phallacy. It is a typical weather in the horror genre. We can immediatley tell that something will happen. This is true of course if you have seen the film. In Halloween (1978), Myers esapes from the hospital and is on the loose. That is of course bad as he is a pyschopath and is going to kill; Annie, Bob and Lynda in particular.

The suburb is a common setting in horror. This is because there is nothing really to do there. It is a boring to grow up, espically for teens. You don't expect a killer to be in that area, but in Halloween there is of course.

What iconography of "innocence" do we hear and see early on?

At the start of Halloween night, the children are in their costumes trick-or-treating, which is an innocent tradition for young children to perform on Halloween night in American culture.

What was the main industry impact of Halloween?

The film Halloween was cheap to make as ineeded no big "stars" or special effects makng it immensly profitable. Along with others, Halloween was a formulaic film in any exploiation cycle in both production and context.

Name some "slasher" films which followed on from Halloween.

1979- Friday the 13th, Prom Night and Terror Train

1980- Bloody Valentine, Night School and The Burning

1981- Friday the 13th Part II, Graduation Day, Happy Birthday To Me, The Slayer and The Prowler

What are the 4 plot rules of the "slasher" film sub-genre?

• A traumatic event in the past creates the killer.
• The killer returns to returns to the site of the event. Normally, it's on the anniversary of the event.
• The killer stalks and kills a group of stupid and obnoxious teens of both sexes one by one.  
• The "final girl" surives. She is boyish and often virginal. Although she defeats the killer at the end, the killer is never really vanquished.

Give 3 ways Laurie is an andrgynous.

Laurie is more of a tom boy compared to her "girly girl" friends. She dresses like a boy; wearing jeans and not "seedy" clothes. Her name can be either male or female. She has a very deep, masculine voice.

What does the extract mean by "a reactionary sexual agenda"?

Sex should only be done in wedlock/ marriage. In Halloween, the sexual girl and boy end up dead, after having sex, in very horrorible ways. While Laurie is Myers' intentional victim she stays alive because of her virginity and is not sexualised.

How does the director, John Carpenter, counter the suggestion that Halloween had not a reactionary sexual agenda?

Carpenter says the reason those teens die is that they're not aware: they are distracted by alcohol and sex. Laurie is aware and throughout the film senses that somebody is "stalking" her. She has less on her mind like her studies and her job as a babysitter. She's not distracted by alcohol, sex and boys like Annie and Lynda.

Why does Myers kill his sister?

There is no real answer to why he killed her in the film. The doctor says he is "pure evil".

Representation of Gender In Horror

Males in the media are often shown to be dominant, strong, active, intellectual and independent with authority, while females are shown in an opposite light. They are portrayed as passive and obedient with a focus on their physical beauty which is defined by their sexuality and emotions.

In 1992, research was collected to see how the media represented gender. The results showed that men outnumbered women 2:1. Eden Lake (2008) backs this research up as the number of male characters dominated female characters 11:6. However, some horror films are progressive and challenge this rule. Halloween (1978), showed six main female characters whilst having seven main male characters.   

Jeremy Tunstall, The Media in Britain (1983), said that in the media women are represented in four forms; domestic, sexual, consumer and familial. In Halloween, Lynda, Annie and Judith are represented as sexual objects, Judith and Lynda are basically in the nude while Annie is just in a shirt when they are murdered.They all have sexual relations with their partners and as a consquence of this Mike Myers kills them because of his physcological view towards sex.  In The Shining (1982), Wendy is represented in two ways; one being that she is familial as she is Jack’s wife & Danny’s mother and two that she is portrayed being domestic as she is in the kitchen making Danny a sandwich.

Laura Mulvey talks about the male gaze in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (written in 1973 and published in 1975). She says that the camera looks at the women through the eyes of men; denying them any right to be a subject but instead an object for the male audience. This is called sadistic objectification which means that the male audience enjoys and takes pleasure out of the woman who is being objectified. In mainstream films it is normally the male protagonist who looks voyeuristically at the woman. Mulvey and others argue that mainstream films are part of the sexist ‘regime’ as it denies the woman any rights to be an individual in the film and society. It is humiliating and degrading for any woman to be represented as a ‘sex object’ for males to take pleasure from.

Some horror challenges the male gaze and says ‘women are not an object for males, but can be a subject as well’. In Halloween, we are placed into the point of view of Mike Myers when he sees his sister in the nude apart from a pair of panties, when Annie is in the laundry room wearing only a shirt and when Lynda is naked in bed. Even though this part is sexist Laurie is the final girl who is never objectified and instead becomes a subject. The Shining has a similar approach; the vision of the woman in the bath has an interesting point to it as there is a long shot of her completely naked but after Jack kisses her, she turns in a corpse. It makes the audience think that they shouldn’t have seen her as an object. Eden Lake also undermines objectifying women. The boys in the gang look at Jenny through a pair of binoculars while she is in a bikini. This is clear evidence of voyeurism in films and it makes her into a sex object. However, instead of cutting to the boys it cuts to Jenny covering herself up as she is uncomfortable, making her the subject and not an object.

Carol Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws (1992), is well known for her concept and analysis of “the final girl”. It is Clover that suggests that the beginning of a horror film is in the perspective of the killer and as the story progresses we shift towards the final girl; identifying with her. Laurie in Halloween is a good example of a final girl. She is virginal unlike her two sexual friends who die. She is androgynous, a character that can be identified with by both female and male members of the film’s audience. Compared to her friends she is a tom-boy; she wears jeans and not ‘seedy’ clothes that show off too much skin, her name can be used either by girls or boys, and finally her voice is deep and masculine. While Laurie is Myers' intentional victim, she stays alive because of her virginity and is not sexualised.

In James Marriott’s book Horror Films, the term "reactionary sexual agenda" is used. This means the traditional views of sex should only be ‘performed’ within marriage and seeing as the teens are sexual they have to die. John Carpenter (the director) says the reason that the teens die is that they're not aware; they are distracted by alcohol and sex. Laurie is aware and throughout the film senses that somebody is "stalking" her. She has more on her mind like her studies and her job as a babysitter. She's not distracted by alcohol, sex and boys like Annie and Lynda. Clover’s “final girl” most of the time survives the killer and danger.

However, Eden Lake breaks that rule. Jenny after escaping the monstrous gang of teenagers she is killed, supposedly, by the fathers in the bathroom. Her death is portrayed in restricted narration as we only hear her screams while in Brett’s bedroom. In this film, twice the amount of male characters die or are punished than female characters.

Masochistic identification is a major part of narrative in horror. It allows the audience (young males) to identify with the female protagonist. In Carrie (1976), Carrie is relatable and boys can identify with her. She is a teenager teased after her first period by the girls in gym class who throw tampons and sanitary towels at her shouting “plug it up”. Males can relate to this as they probably have been teased before; “the popular boys pull down your pants in gym” as Stephen King puts it in his analysis of Carrie. Puberty can be a confusing and horrific time; Carrie believes that she is dying as she has no idea why she’s bleeding during her first experience of menstrual cycle. Clover states in her book that there is a “possibility the male viewers are quite prepared to identify not just with screen females but screen females in the horror-film world, screen females in fear and pain.”

In conclusion, the media can be sexist towards women as suggested in the 1992 research. Horror challenges this view by creating female protagonists like Laurie in Halloween who are as strong as any male. However in some areas, horror remains sexist like Eden Lake which features more men than women.

Narrative Theories

We applied the theories and ideas on narrative from the theorists Todorov, Propp, Strauss and Bordwell & Thompson to The Shining (1980).

Tzvetan Todrov is a Franco-Bulgarian philsopher, born in 1939. Todorov's theory was that every story began with an equilibrum; normality for the hero, which is then distrupted by an changing event which starts a chain reaction of events. The hero has to go on a quest or misssion to solve it and restore the world or diegesis to normality. Normally, the story ends with a reuniting of the hero with the heroine and a wedding. Normally, the new equilibrum is better than before.

In The Shining, Todorov's theory of the structure of the narrayive can be appiled. The normality is the family life; Danny, Wendy and Jack. The distruption is the insanity or madness that is "consuming" or "possessing" Jack. Is it the hotel that is evil and changing Jack? The pathway to the new equilibrum is Wendy and Danny trying to escape Jack. However, even though Jack is trying to kill them they are reunited and escape the hotel. Jack is frozen to death.

Vladimir Propp was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1895. he was an Russian and Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. Looking at 100s of different folk tales, he identified 8 key character roles and 31 narrative functions.

The 8 character roles are:

• The Villian(s)
• The Hero
• The Donor - who provides an object with an magical quality
• The Helper
• The Princess (who sought for help) - reward for the hero and object of the villian's scheme
•  Her Father - who rewards the hero
• The Dispatcher - sends the hero on their way
• The False Hero

He also said that each character type has an important function within the narrative. In The Shining we can appily his theory to the charcters.

• Jack is the villian as he tries to kill is family, but at the same time you could argue that the hotel itself is evil as it makes Jack go insane. 
• The Donor is the chef as he gives the warning that you shouldn't enter room 237. Along, with Tony, the voice in Danny's head, he helps out by going to save the family. Sadly he ends up dead.
• Danny and Wendy are both the heroes and victims of the film as they are both being chased by Jack, who is trying to kill them but defeat Jack and escape. Along with these two, Tony is also a hero as he warns Danny that Jack is out to murder them.    

Claude Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology". He looked at narrative in terms of binary oppositions. In this film there is:

The hotel in situated in the mountains. It's
very issolated.

• Past and Present
• Cause and Effect
• Good and Evil
• Natural and Supernatural
• Normal and Abnormal
• Community and Issolation
• Sanity and Madness

The image of the girls isn't real. It is the past. The girls
were murdered by their father, 10 years ago.

The hotel is in the mountains and is closed making it very issolated from anyone; Wendy has use the radio to contact the police. The hotel isn't quite sure where it is in time as their of visions from 1920s and 70s mixed into the present day making time seem confused.



David Bordwell  is an American film theorist and film critic. He works with his wife, Kristin Thompson who is also a film theorist and author whose research interests include the close formal analysis of films, the history of film styles, and "quality television", a genre akin to art film.

Their theory is that narrative is "a chain of cause and effect occuring in time and space." The plot of The Shining is over the course of 6 months, which would make the film very long if we saw every single second of the 6 month so like all films time is taken out in chunks. This is called the Elipsis of time. 

In The Shining duration of time varies; screen duration is 115 minutes, plot duration is 6 months while the story duration is 60 years. Time seems to be confused and mixed up with bits of the past appearing in the present. It seems there's a collapse in time.

A good example of this is the present and past of both Jack and Grady. Grady killed his family in 1970 but however, the apiration or vision of him seems to be from the 1930s. Confused. Well so was the audience. Jack in the present is from 1980, yet the photo at the end shows Jack at the 4th of July ball at the hotel in 1921.

It is very confusing. I have a little theory about Jack. In the bathroom Grady tells Jack "your the caretaker. You've ALWAYS been the caretaker." It seems to me that some how Jack was the caretaker back in the 20s. I might b
Possibly, the intertiles of 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday' etc are a countdown to the anniversary of the murders commited 10 years earlier by Grady.

I personally believe that Thompson and Bordwell's theory is best way for us to understand the narrative structure of The Shining as it shows that the story is spread over a long peorid of time in which nothing is for certain because time is mixed up.

Horror Trailers

 Let Me In (2010)

 

I liked the performance of Chloe Grace Mortez as Abby. At 1.15 she is starring at the camera, breaking the fourth wall, and it looks really scary. Also there is a section when a man is walking through a dark alley which I really loved. There is non-diegetic sound of a heart beating and as carries on walking we see Abby scared and alone. The editing separates each "sequence" with a fade to black to the next sequence to the beat of the heartbeat. Then she pounces killing him. During this we see Owen asking Abby "What are you?" and her answering "I need blood owen". We then release what she is.

Prom Night (2008)

I liked how at the begining it seemed normal but just as the prom queen is about to be annoced the lights switch off. I particuarly liked at the end after the girl get strangled at 1.33 that the non-digetic heart increases; speeding up and louder to represented the girls' heartbeat as they try to escape the killer on the night they will never forget.

Black Swan (2010)

I really, really loved this film. It is probably in my top 20 films of all time. It is different to the other two films as it is a physchological thriller but in the film Nina (Portman) slowly loses her mind and finds her "dark Swan".

There is so many things I like about the trailer. At 1.12 Nina's reflection turns and looks at her, it's a tiny bit spooky, as the reflection is the reflection of Nina's dark side. As she turns to Nina the lights go off like she is controlling them. Mirrors are a good feature as they show both side the good, white swan, and the bad, the black swan.

As Nina and Lily pass each other in the block of flats there is a sense that something is not right ; that they are opposites, Nina's the white swan while Lily's the black swan. In that shot they look so much a like. It's scary.

From 1.21 to 1.41 there is soo much going on. I love the shots and the pace; it really creates exictment and suspense. This part of the trailer made me really want to see the film when I first saw it.

Just before the name of the movie appeared, Black Swan, and after the names Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis there are two shots that I adore. They sum up the fact that the darkness within us can consume us. First there is shot of Nina pulling something out of her back and then another shot of her starring at the thorn with her red eyes. I just think it is great shots.

Theis film has great performance, cinematography, directing, story/plot and characters and all that is potrayed in the trailer.