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Posted on August 31, 2015

Elizabeth’s Favorite Wes Craven Moments

Like many, the news of Wes Craven’s death last night left me stunned. As someone who writes about the cultural impact of horror, it is difficult to overstate Craven’s contribution to the genre. Leaving behind a catalog of work that provokes and challenges, Craven was a visionary who understood that the only way to truly understand what it is that scares us, is to look into the darkness unblinkingly. By continually manipulating horror tropes to keep pace with audience expectation, Wes Craven’s body of work stands alone for both its diversity and its longevity.

Here are my choices for the top three not-to-be missed Wes Craven moments.

Posted on August 26, 2015

Barbra’s Androgyny in Night of the Living Dead (1990)

Elizabeth Erwin

In a previous post, I wrote about how Barbra’s ability to see in Night of the Living Dead (1990) aligns her with the monster. Upon rewatching Tom Savini’s remake, I was struck by how the characters as a whole disrupt the audience’s expectation of behavior attributed to females. To understand how Barbra employs a uniquely androgynous form of killing, we must consider her in relation to the other women who occupy the house. Unlike Helen who has Harry, and Judy Rose who has Johnny, Barbra is not sexually linked to any male in the house. This sexual independence marks her, like a monster, as abnormal. Also entering the equation is how each female is situated to represent an aspect of the feminine.

Posted on August 18, 2015

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) Review

Elizabeth Erwin

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer | 98 min | 1986 | John McNaughton | X[i]

Synopsis: Henry is an unrepentant serial killer who forms a murderous bond with another man.

Review: Michael Rooker’s chilling tour de force performance is perhaps the greatest serial killer characterization ever committed to film.

Grade: A

Viewing Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is not for the faint of heart. Stark and unyielding, the film is a deeply unsettling look into the mind of an unrepentant murderer. The film centers on pathological murderer Henry, who discovers a kindred spirit in his roommate, Otis. The two engage in vicious murders as Henry schools Otis on the finer points of evading capture. Their relationship is tested when Otis’ sister Becky comes to visit and becomes enamored of Henry. Based on the life of Henry Lee Lucas, the film is both a psychological exploration as well as an explicit foray into gore.

Posted on August 12, 2015

Menstruation in Popular Culture: Part 1

Elizabeth Erwin

The spectre of menstruation in horror films has long been problematic. From the shameful and mocked first period of the titular character in Carrie (1976) to its role as the trigger that leads Ginger to sexually assault a boy in Ginger Snaps (2000), menstruation in horror is often used as a visual identifier of the threat women and their sexuality pose to society. With that in mind, I have been interested in looking at how this threat plays out on television and whether the perceived horror is any different from that found within horror films.

Posted on August 1, 2015

Horror Rewatch: The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Elizabeth Erwin

Love it or hate it, there is no denying the impact The Blair Witch Project had upon the horror genre with its 1999 release. Not only did the marketing campaign utilized by its distributor take a page from the Hitchcock playbook in building up audience expectation, but it also reframed the horror trope of “recovered footage” as a means of accessing the horror. As the story of a group of filmmakers who embark on an ill-fated journey into the woods in an attempt to discover proof of a witch, this film is most remembered for its shaky hand-held visuals and reliance upon its audience to create a sense of horror using their own imaginations.
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