For my weekly presentation I'd like to tell you about one of my hobbies. And that is - watching scary movies. From the classic monsters series like Dracula and Frankenstein of the silver screen era, to the bloody nineties slashers with their merciless faceless killers I just enjoy them all. Apart from horrors I like to watch, what I call "crappy" films, although a lot of them are horrors :) Films that are BAD, just painfull to watch, movies that make you think-"What the heck were they thinking while making this"? I especially enjoy those that were suppose to be good but ended up like some of the worst pictures of all time. What about them? Why do I torture myself with those? Well What i love in them is the obvious cheese factor. The "Riffability" - that's a term which is used to describe movies potential to make jokes of it. Basicly it means that this movie is so bad that you can just sit and riff at it all the time. You must have heard someone do it - whenever you say something regarding the movie you're watching right now - that's "Riffing on a movie". It started a huge trend but i will talk about it later.
Ok i think we start this bloodfest with an introduction of a SLASHER genre. This is one of my favorite horror subgenres. I think that many of you will be suprised on how precise are the "rules" of a typical slasher. In one sentence a slasher movie tells a story of a killer preying on a group of teenagers.But first of all you have to remember that:
THE KILLERS are the real main heroes in slashers. There are certain rules which make a great slasher killer. First of all - his identity is unknown, be it due to him wearing a mask or just tricky camera work doesn't matter - he's shrouded in mystery.
Second they're killers with a cause - they always have an important backstory of the events that happened "before" the film. Those are often commemorated in the movie and give the killer their trademark motives like the choice of weapons or a place they choose to haunt. And the third final rule when making a Slasher villan... They have to be badass, unstoppable killing machines that would always come back to haunt you no matter what you do. You can drown them, shoot them, set them on fire, stab them, blow them to pieces - they WILL have their comeback one way or another.
As for the victims their are usually teenagers that do "bad" things. And by this I mean pre-marital sex, alcohol or drugs. Among them there's always one girl called - The Final Girl- she's different from her colleges, she dosen't drink neither smoke and... she's a virgin. And miraculously that's enough to win a golden ticket from god to be in a final fight with the movie's bad guy. She always wins but the win is Pyrrhic. She's scarred for life and sometimes...the killer comes back in a sequel. Or like Jason Vorhees from "Friday The 13TH" series in 12 sequels :)
THE FINAL GIRLS GALLERY - CAN YOU RECOGNIZE ALLTHE MOVIES? :)
And of course one final thing that define a slasher is violence. Brutal, graphic violence is what separates those movies from thrillers. Movie directors often compete in inventing more and more gruesome ways for teens to die and boast on how many barrels of artificial blood they used on the set. But those death scenes are the main course when it comes to slashers, that's what defines them and what makes you remember a certain movie. I could go on and on about it but i think I talked about most of things. So ok this concludes my slasher review. I will end with a clip of "TOP 13 FRIDAY THE 13 MOMENTS" njoy.Remember those are scenes from slasher series, if anyone dislikes when artificial blood sprays all over the place - DO NOT WATCH IT :)
Riffability is a term I never had contact with before, but I definitely kept finding myself laughing beause of construction of certain movies. Now I know the word which describes what I was doing.
ReplyDeleteIn case of what Im mentioning I didnt laugh because movies were funny and because creator intended them to be like this. It was because they were so darn terrible that it made the jokes live on their own. Exactly what Kacper mentioned.
Sometimes I felt a bit nerdy because I ended laughing while I was watching some "serious" IT movie and yelling "You cant hack this with a gameboy noob!!" I suppose in this case it was caused by me studying IT though and knowing enough to perhaps see some of the movie's glitches. Not that Im some super genious hacker. I wish...
So in theory this might be out of the riffability boundaries. Since not -everyone- would laugh at that movie. But it may not be the case. I guess some movies are just more riffable than others and in some cases riffability is narrowed to particular audiences? Might be worth pondering.
Also, must say I wouldnt mind seing expression of some movie creators that attempted to make a super scary scene which would amaze us totally and overexpose to awesomeness and then they would hear the viewer say...
THIS LOOKS LIKE KETCHUP HAHA!
Rather cruel, yes. I wonder how they are dealing with that. Must be quite a disappointment dont you think?
On a side note, in one of those movies called "Fly" or "Fly 2" blood really looked like ketchup or some sort of tomato pulp. Which was a good thing, stopped me from wanting to throw up for a while because I laughed when a lift squashed someone to marmalade.
Right, moving on to the next bit of presentation. SLASHER genre. I didnt even know something like that exists. I mean, horror was THE cathegory to me but come to think of it I should have expected some sort of division and specialisations. What Kacper said, I got really surprised its rules are so specific.
What surprised me even more is that I instantly managed to fit one movie under such description, although Im not entirely sure it counts since its a bit of a parody but oh well..
In my case what I thought of is "Scary Movie 1".
In this case a killer -definitely- prays on group of teenagers and in the end of the movie we realise that hey, he was indeed the hero! Funnily enough its the killer there who has his happy ending!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY77dHw4SA0 (sorry for strange language version but you have subtitles)
Again, since this movie is actually a...comedy I guess certain things may not fit. For example the killer, Doofy, being a badass? Hur hur... not to quote "Smell my finger...its my ass.."
But well, in theory it was a disguise. And hey, guy -was- unstopabble killing machine. Even if he tried to hide under the carpet at some point.
Lastly I just wanted refer to one rule Kacper mentioned. The Final Girl, scary movie clearly has one, and that would be Cindy! She manages to stay alive altho....shes kind of hit by a car in the end. Obviously its not a defeat though, she appears in the sequels! Those American doctors must have magic hands if they got her out of that.
So to sum it up, personally Im very surprised how strictly those movies follow rules! Perhaps any of you guys could come up with other movie examples that fit to the genere and point out key reasons why they fit to it? Hopefully not a comedy ones like I did!
I would start rambling on other subgenres of horror movies (if I found any) but theres a chance Kacper wants to cover them in next part of the presentation so I will be silent for now.
Thx for the reply! it's even longer than my whole post :D I know what you mean when you say you feel a bit nerdy. But i feel the same when I watch a movie where they "Hack the world" with gameboy or just play a game which I happen to know :P and they call it by other name or simply play it wrong. As for the so called riffability or simply riffing it have its roots in 70's show called "Mystery Science theatre 3000". It was a sitcom where a guy was imprisoned in a satellite orbiting the earth with his two robot pals. And an evil scientist who imprisoned him, send him cheesy movies to watch. Basicly the show was watching bad movies with guys audio commentary. It went for a long time, now is called RIFFTRAX you can find a lot of clips on youtube and on their website. But now they riff on mainstream films to. It has a cult following and a lot of people encourage by them , tried to do the same thing.
ReplyDeleteAs for SLASHERS, you were close:D. Because "Scary movie" is a comedy, which is parody of a movie "SCREAM". Which is a classic Slasher with a certain twist. it's actually one of the two most important slashers. The whole genre started with the release of john Carpenters "Halloween"(1978). And then it was like an avalanche of films. There was another tendency to set those movies during certain holidays and so literally almost every holiday had it's own slasher film. For example: Black Christmas, Bloody Valentine, Santa Slays, Silent night deadly night, Prom day, Sorority Row, Mothers day, Halloween, etc. :) i even planned to make a Polish slasher called "Śmigus dyngus" it's in pre-vizualization now :P ok where were we...so those movies were so popular and made so much money that everybody started to make them and so finally the y stopped being popula becouse there was simply to much of them. But after a while in the mid nineties came a movie that completely revitalized the whole genre - Scream and another slasher era began. The movie was funny becouse it was "self aware" of the slasher rules and so if you watched the movie you know that the killer - which is our heroines boyfriend - have sex with her and then tries to kill her becuse in his mind she's can't bneat him - the slasher villan - when she's not longer a virgin. You wanted to know more classic slashers. Well the great tree are: "Friday the 13", "Halloween" and "Nightmare on Elm street".
For example:
--Friday the 13th --
The movie ovcourse starts with retrospection of what happened long ago in Crystal lake.Tells a story of a killer - Jason Voorhees who was a deformed child that drown in camp crystal lake. The counsellors didn't payed enough attention and other children bullied him. So he came back from the grave to take revenge on everyone who ever visit crystal lake.He wears a hokey mask, and is simply an indestructible zombie killer.
The final girl - classic good girl archetype, she's the only one that survives the camp massacre, everyone else, especially those who were nutty are slaughtered.
I could go on with those examples forever but i have to wrote another blog entry :P we can discuss this further
I don`t prefere such types of horrors which was mentioned in this post. That movies are stupid for me, of course sometimes I like to laugh, sometimes a lot of the ketchup is realy funny. But if I may choose, I choose realy good horrors. Good horror for me means realistic horror, that horrifies me, that makes bitting of my heart faster, sometimes I even have to hold on to something, then I am shivering and jump up :)
ReplyDeleteSuch first movie which I can recall for me, was Texas Chainsaw Massacre, It was really frigtening end realistic, I felt like I was in the movie inside, It mede huge influence on me, that I needed dozen minutes to recover and back to reality :) and i was realy scared go sleep like a child :)
Another good horror for me is Saw, but only just Saw, not sequles, mayby last Saw VI is quite good, but in other hand, this one is type of horror that I dont like to. It is type that i call Disgusting, like other examples Hostel, there is so much violence i perversion in the most disgusting way what is possible...
But such disgusting horros I see that it is new trend in the cinem.
Mateusz, do you mean you dont like Slasher genre movies in general or just those silly ones at which we can laugh at? Riffable ones.
ReplyDeleteIf you dont like Slashers in general, fair enough. But if you just dont like some of the silly ones then its worth noting some of slashers can be really good, have a nice fable and actually make you "jump". Its not like Slasher = Funny. Quite the opposite. I just gave a bit erm, special example in my previous post. Dont let it fool you.
I know what you mean when you talk about good quality horrors though. Theres nothing better than feeling the chill going down your spine while you wonder what is behind those black door. Of course its pretty much matter of taste too. Not everyone likes getting scared to death! Or getting scared at all.
One way or another, when it comes to horrors we are way past time where ketchup kind of liquids were used as artificial blood. These days such movies can be terribly realistic and in fact Im pretty sure than soon enough when we get to watch a horror we will have about 50% chance for getting crazy and landing at the hospital in a white jacket. Or...at least forced to sleep with a light on for the rest of our lives!
Theres that movie called The Mirrors. I once tried to watch it but pretty much failed....turned it off before I passed the middle and I was watching it in the middle of the day...brrr scary. I know I may sound like a coward but what can I say, I have darn good imagination. Sometimes it has its bad sides!
I think I watched one of Saw movies by the way. Was it the one in which one guy had a key hidden behind his...eyeball and had to get out to..hmm, well you know.
As for Hostel, heard about it. Havent had a chance to watch it though. But considering my imagination (or cowardice!) perhaps its better hehe
And as for disgustment bit, well I suppose you cant avoid that in movies where most of people are bound to die in the most horrible ways you can imagine.
It starts to look like some sort of a race among movie creators. Who comes up with the most horrible scene. But well, I guess it is a race.
Horrors are business for many.
Well I personally love slasher movies :) I especially like old-school horrors from the 80's. Titles like “Nightmare from Elm Street”, “Friday the 13'th” really bring a tear to my eye. There's nothing like the atmosphere surrounding those productions with their gallons of fake blood, rubber entrails etc.
ReplyDeleteAlso let us not forget comedy-horrors like “Braindead” or “Return of the Living Dead” where sick violence and bloodshed was combined with good humour :)
There was a time in my life when I liked to watch some gore movies (I think it was about time when first part of Saw came out). Now I can't stand watching them, it may be the reason of "increased awareness" and studies when I was able to watch some realy good films. Last B-movie I saw was "Grindhouse: Planet Terror" by Rodriguez. I kind of like it because I found it rather as parody and little "springboard" from deeper movies. But definitely I'm fan of subtlety in motion pictures so cut off legs rather don't delight me:)
ReplyDeleteI prefer comedies to scary movies. 'Scary movie' part 1,2,3,4 that's my kind of humour and type of film. I don't know why actually, but I'm not very demanding. Maybe it's because stupid american comedies are easier to watch?:)
ReplyDelete