Historical Texts

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho released in 1960 provided early inspiration for the Slasher genre as it was nominated for four academy awards and is still regarded today as one of Hitchcock's best films and highly praised as a work of cinematic art by international critics. Psycho provided early inspiration although one of the first authentic slasher films was ‘Black Christmas’ alongside ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ both released in 1974.

Psycho (1960)

Scene: - Shower Scene

Analysis: - This scene is very stereotypical of the horror and slasher genre as it shows a woman being killed, the perceptions of women being weak, helpless etc have become fixed stereotypes accepted by the society over time although now directors are beginning to subvert these stereotypes by giving women more active roles and this could be due to the society believing in Femanist views which state men and women have equal rights.

The scene starts of with a close up shot of a woman in the shower which could be percieved as the male gaze as the woman in the shower is supposedly naked. Most of the shots are extreme close-ups, except for medium shots in the shower directly before and directly after the murder. The combination of the close shots with the short duration between cuts makes the sequence feel longer, more subjective, more uncontrolled, and more violent than would the images if they presented alone or in a wider angle.

There is no dialogue been said for the entire duration of the scene, the only source of sound is the screeching violins, violas, and cellos which is considered to be non-diegetic sound as it’s a soundtrack edited afterwards which the director believed intensified the scene. This is where the historian texts of this genre are different to the modern texts. In the modern films of this genre there is a lot of dialogue to express the characters feelings in tense situations. Women in TCM – the beginning are shown to be more strong whereas from this scene of Psycho it can be said that women in that era were portrayed as easy targets hence this shows that the genre has developed and the roles of women have subverted.

The shower scene features only three nearly subliminal frames of film showing penetration and the blood in the scene is in fact chocolate syrup, which shows up better on black-and-white film, and has more realistic density than stage blood. These features compared to the contempary texts show that the films of that era didn’t have huge budgets and the technology was not advanced either to show something as realistic as we see today hence this is another change which has occurred in this genre over time.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

This was one of the first films of the Slasher genre and later many sequels of this original story were made. The similarities between this historic text and the contempary text which I am analysing is that firstly the film starts off with a group of friends on a road trip and how everything planned for the future is ruined when they are captured by a cannibilistic family and there is also a final girl to survive out of the group although the only difference in the ending of the two films is that the final girl from the historian text survives and flees from the house of horrors whereas the final girl from TCM – the beginning is killed by leatherface showing victory of evil. The two films also had different directors, the 1974 version was directed by Tobe Hooper and the latest 2006 sequel was directed by Jonathan Liebsmen through their difference in approach and the changes in society the two films were different although being part of the same series.

Friday the 13th (1980)

This was an American horror film directed by Sean S. Cunningham, it was inspired by the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween. Although the film was not received well by the critics, it grossed over $39.7 million at the box office in the United States and went on to become one of the most profitable slasher films in cinema history; it was also the first movie of its kind to secure distribution in the USA by a major studio, Paramount Pictures.

The music was also an important element of the film as the decision was made that the music will only play alongside the killer so it would not "manipulate the audience" into thinking the killer was present when they were not. The music of the film was really effective as when something was going to happen, the music would cut off so that the audience would relax a bit, and the scare would be that much more effective.

The title of the film certainly appealed to the target audience as in that era people strongly believed in the superstition that number 13 is irregular and targets the completeness of 12.