Horror Homeroom, Author at Horror Homeroom

Posted on February 10, 2016

The New Final Girl of 90s Horror: Part 2

Dawn Keetley

There is much to say about how the Final Girl changed in 1990s horror, so this post will inevitably be partial.

First of all, the Final Girl became intriguingly fused with AUTHORITY in the 1990s. In the slasher films of the 1980s, the authority figures were, for the most part, nowhere to be found when the killer started stalking and slaughtering teens. In fact, part of the ideological message of these films was to indict the authority figures (parents, police, doctors) who were either recklessly absent, incompetent, or were somehow involved in creating the problem in the first place. Why did officials at the psychiatric hospital allow Michael Myers to escape, anyway? Why are police and/or parents signally absent when it matters in Halloween (1978), Friday the 13^th (1980), and their many sequels?

Things changed with the groundbreaking The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991). Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is unambiguously a Final Girl, meeting all the characteristics, as I laid them out in Part 1 of this series. As fledging FBI agent, however, she is also the authority figure—and an effective one at that. She finds Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) and saves his latest victim while the rest of the FBI is miles away.

Posted on February 7, 2016

Deliverance (1972) and The Horror Film

Dawn Keetley

The frame above is from the end of John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972). Having made it home from his weekend trek into the terrifying “backwoods” of Georgia, where he faced the rape of his friend Bobby (Ned Beatty), the prospect of his own rape, and the death of his friend—where he saw a man killed and then himself killed a man, Ed (John Voigt) struggles to return to familiar domesticity. The film concludes with Ed jolting awake in terror from a dream in which a hand rises out of the water—the same water into which had disappeared the body of his friend as well as those of the two “hillbillies” he and Lewis (Burt Reynolds) killed.

A recent Twitter poll I conducted suggested that fans of Deliverance narrowly consider the film horror (53% to 47% out of 40 votes). I don’t think it’s quite so unclear. And the ending of the film is one of the principal reasons why I believe that Deliverance deserves an unambiguous place in the horror canon. For Ed, there is no closure, no safe return to normalcy. The ending suggests that he is permanently traumatized by his sojourn in the wilderness—that the horrors he saw, the horrors he perpetrated, will forever inhabit him.

Posted on February 5, 2016

Top Ten Infamous Female Characters

Gwen

As we all know by my history, I have trouble sticking to the rules. As usual I struggle to narrow my lists down to ten and I almost always have some genre jumpers. You will see that I stuck to American horror in order to set some useful limits for myself. As with any top ten list, this is completely subjective. I am listing in chronological order, some of the most memorable female antagonists that jump into my mind when I think of horror. My choices may not be the most remarkable for their leading roles, their murders, or their mayhem. Rather, they are true to the definition of infamous: well known for a bad quality or deed, disreputable, wicked, or abominable. No matter the size of their role, these women live in infamy in the dark corners of my mind.

Posted on February 3, 2016

Short Cuts: Morgan in Chains

Elizabeth Erwin

Perhaps because of my higher than usual comfort with horrific imagery, I’m usually not the best at anticipating what images will be labeled as triggering (a word I loathe but that’s for a separate post), and so my immediate reaction to this image as problematic was a surprise. Excited to be ahead of the curve for once, I immediately went to the interwebs to see how people were responding—only to be met with silence. It’s an obvious cliché but in this case the silence truly was deafening.

And so in today’s Short Cut, I want to spend a little time unpacking why I find the image troubling and posing a few questions I hope people will weigh in on. While I fully expect many will argue it is just one image and of little consequence, I truly believe that the popular culture we consume greatly influences our beliefs and perceptions, even if we aren’t fully aware of it.

I want to acknowledge from the outset that clearly this image does not exist within a vacuum. As viewers, we know that Morgan’s captivity is a consensual act negotiated between the two characters in an attempt to ward off The Wolves, who are violently attacking the community. We recognize that the intent of this moment is about subterfuge and not enslavement. For viewers in the moment, the distinction is clear.

Posted on February 2, 2016

Short Cut: Carrie’s Final Girl and the Precariousness of Survival

Dawn Keetley

Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) is the quintessential horror film, opening with a scene that showcases one of its central themes: what is repressed inevitably gets unleashed.

The opening famously features Carrie (Sissy Spacek) getting her first period in the shower at gym (yes, we’re in the terrain of real horror here!). The other girls (of course) mock her, throwing pads and tampons and screaming at her to “Plug it up.” Carrie does “plug it up”—in all kinds of ways—and what she plugs up gets spectacularly released in blood and death on prom night.

The most compassionate of Carrie’s high school acquaintances, Sue (Amy Irving), survives the blood bath, however (perhaps because of her kindness)—becoming one of the first Final Girls of horror (arguably preceded only by Lila from Psycho [1960], Sally from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [1974], and Jess from Black Christmas [1974]).