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Posted on June 5, 2021

The 21st Century Slasher Film: CFP for Special Issue #5

When Siskel and Ebert famously launched their offensive against what they labeled as “Women in Danger films,” they effectively positioned slasher films as anti-feminist, exploitative, and lacking all artistic merit. But in the intervening years, this once much maligned sub-genre has enjoyed increasing acclaim for its subversive potential and reflection of cultural norms. This special issue seeks to examine the elements of the “new slasher” that potentially explain this shift.

We invite submissions on any 21st century slasher film(s). Emerging and advanced scholars, popular writers, and fans are invited to submit abstracts on any aspect of the sub-genre. We are especially interested in abstracts that engage with slasher film conventions. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Slasher tropes reimagined
Performance and identity
The impact of critical acclaim upon horror’s association with ‘low-brow’ culture
Monstrous nature and its evolution
How camp and pastiche code audience reception
Reboots and audience expectation
Location and narrative dread
Horror sub-genre crossovers
Engagement with postmodernist theory
Reflection of societal taboo

We would especially like to include articles on: Freaky, Halloween, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Black Christmas, and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane.

Please submit abstracts of 500 words and a brief bio to Dawn Keetley and Elizabeth Erwin at horrorhomeroom@gmail.com and dek7@lehigh.edu by July 15, 2020. Articles will be limited to 2,500 words and should be written for a general audience. Completed essays will be due September 15, 2020. We welcome all questions and inquiries!

Posted on May 14, 2021

Announcing the Bloodcurdling Book Club Podcast!

Elizabeth Erwin

Listen, we love horror films, and we especially love talking about them on our podcast Horror Homeroom Conversations. But we also love ranting and raving over dark and disturbing popular fiction! And so, the Bloodcurdling Book Club was born.

This bi-weekly (we hope) podcast deep dives into one spine-tingling read per episode and we’re thrilled to kick things off with Cameron Roubique’s masterful Kill River (2015). Billed as a slasher film in book form, the story follows four campers who stumble upon an abandoned waterpark in the middle of the woods. What follows is a heart pounding game of cat and mouse with twists we did not see coming. But did it successfully capture the shlock and gore of 80s horror, or did it get lost in the nostalgia? Dawn and I delve into how Roubique’s story interacts with slasher conventions in some surprising and effective ways in this episode.

And because every slasher deserves a sequel, we’re also dropping a second episode that looks at Kill River 2 (2017), which follows the Final Girl back into suburbia and asks some uncomfortable but essential questions about what it really means to survive a traumatic event at a young age. We’re also including below a reading primer for anyone wanting to learn more about the slasher sub-genre and its conventions. If you enjoy these episodes, please let us know by rating and reviewing!

You can buy Cameron Roubique’s Kill River here (advertisement):

Suggested Reading on the Slasher Film

Anderson, Aaron C. Rethinking the Slasher Film: Violated Bodies and Spectators in “Halloween’’, `’Friday the 13th”, and “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. University of California, San Diego, 2013.

Christensen, Kyle. “The Final Girl versus Wes Craven’s” A Nightmare on Elm Street”: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema.” Studies in Popular Culture 34.1 (2011): 23-47.

Clayton, Wickham, ed. Style and form in the Hollywood slasher film. Springer, 2015.

Clover, Carol J. “Her body, himself: Gender in the slasher film.” Representations 20 (1987): 187-228.

Creed, Barbara. The monstrous-feminine: Film, feminism, psychoanalysis. Psychology Press, 1993.

Keisner, Jody. “Do you want to watch? A study of the visual rhetoric of the postmodern horror film.” Women’s Studies 37.4 (2008): 411-427.

Kendrick, James. “Razors in the Dreamscape: Revisiting” A Nightmare on Elm Street” and the Slasher Film.” Film Criticism 33.3 (2009): 17-33.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema.” Visual and other pleasures. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1989. 14-26.

Nolan, Justin M., and Gery W. Ryan. “Fear and loathing at the cineplex: Gender differences in descriptions and perceptions of slasher films.” Sex Roles 42.1 (2000): 39-56.

Nowell, Richard. Blood money: A history of the first teen slasher film cycle. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.

Petridis, Sotiris. Anatomy of the Slasher Film: A Theoretical Analysis. McFarland, 2019.

Rieser, Klaus. “Masculinity and monstrosity: Characterization and identification in the slasher film.” Men and Masculinities 3.4 (2001): 370-392.

Rockoff, Adam. Going to pieces: the rise and fall of the slasher film, 1978-1986. McFarland, 2011.

Trencansky, Sarah. “Final girls and terrible youth: Transgression in 1980s slasher horror.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 29.2 (2001): 63-73.

Wee, V. (2005). The Scream Trilogy,” Hyperpostmodernism,” and the Late-Nineties Teen Slasher Film. Journal of Film and Video, 57(3), 44-61.

Posted on December 10, 2020

Freaky: His Body, Herself

Dawn Keetley

Directed by Christopher Landon and written by Landon and Michael Kennedy, Freaky (2020) is a thought-provoking and fresh incarnation of the slasher formula. It’s bloody, wonderfully directed, serves up great performances by its leads, and is chock full of references to other slashers. In short, Freaky is a fantastic experience.

As is evident from the title, Freaky offers an R-rated take on Mary Rodgers’ classic children’s novel, published in 1972, Freaky Friday, in which a mother and her 13-year-old daughter wake up one morning to find they have switched bodies. In Freaky, an escaped psychopath on a killing spree, the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn), stabs heroine Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) with an ancient Aztec knife called “La Dola.” They wake up the next morning to discover they have swapped bodies. The plot follows Millie’s attempts to persuade her best friends Nyla (Celeste O’Connor) and Josh (Misha Osherovich) along with crush Booker (Uriah Shelton) that, even though she looks like Vince Vaughn, she is in fact a teenage girl. Once she’s accomplished that, the friends set out to reverse the ritual and restore Millie to her body before it’s too late. Meanwhile, having quickly adjusted to Millie’s body, the Butcher continues on his killing rampage—targeting, in particular, all of Millie’s many high-school nemeses.

Posted on August 31, 2020

“Blood Opera”: A Celebration of Stretch Brock

Sara McCartney

Imagine a Final Girl. She’s probably a teenager, virginal, with a hint of androgyny in her haircut, her outfit, or her name. When theorist Carol Clover identified the trope of the Final Girl, she noticed these commonalities, but there was one who was a little bit different. Stretch Brock (Caroline Williams), Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’s DJ heroine, is no teenager and no virgin. In his response to Clover, Jack Halberstam called her “the most virile, certainly the most heroic, and definitely the most triumphant final girl.”[i]

Posted on April 10, 2020

Is CATS (2019) a Slasher in Disguise?

Guest Post

When the trailer for Cats (2019) premiered, so many tweets and parodies followed, but the one that stuck in my head was the one calling it a new horror movie. Then the movie actually came out and the audience was distracted by the special effects disaster as it showed in theaters to crowds appreciating it as they did The Room and Rocky Horror Picture Show. Now that it’s available to stream and we are all practicing social distancing, I finally got a chance to enjoy it. And I did enjoy it, because Cats is a straight up horror movie. That trailer was accurate. Again, remember I am talking about the film. ( I can’t speak to the stage production.) I understand that the addition of some plot was needed in order to bring Cats from stage to the big screen. Well, that plot is textbook slasher film, my friends.

Understand that I am jumping into the Cats canon blind. Instead, it feels like I am five Friday the 13ths in here. Yes, I understand they are cats and that each cat has something special about it. Some cats are more special than others. There is singing and dancing, which was very enjoyable. A bad cat appears, a problem is presented and solved. The choice is made and the movie ends. Read more