Might be worth noting the very different style of film-making from today, how trailers may have changed over time, and the consistent use of 'Voice Over Man'...no film worth its name existed in the Golden Age of Slashers without that ominous low, gravelly voice intoning the impending doom of another bunch of stupid teenagers...
Separate blog posts will be made for one of our two focus films, Halloween, hence its exclusion here...
Trailer for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Trailer for Prom Night (1980)
Trailer for Friday 13th (1980) - deaths include going someone alone when there is a crazy axe murderer on the loose, teenage rumpy pumpy, and having rubbish early 1980s hair...
The current youth probably know him as the man in the EE adverts...the 1980s generation simply knew him as Kevin Bacon, the bloke who got the arrowhead through the throat in Friday 13th...
Trailer for Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
Trailer for My Bloody Valentine (1981)
Sequence from Slumber Party Massacre (1982) - a sequence notable for the following elements:
- Underage drinking - which will probably lead to certain death
- The inventive use of a fridge door to heighten the tension (think how this was also used in The Ring)
- Obvious health and safety issues concerning mixing dairy products with dead teenage girls
- The rarely used 'double scream' technique, which almost uncannily sound exactly the same
Sequence from The House on Sorority Row (1983) - re-made in 2009. Not mentioned in last week's lecture, but worthy of inclusion for its generic conventions, such as the university house location, drunken parties, a host of available 'up for it' females, and this young lady, in particular, who decides to investigate a noise in a darkened basement, at night, with just a torch - shouldn't think anything bad will happen, do you?
Sequences from one of the most famous of all the Slashers - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), directed by Wes Craven, who would later direct Scream (1996).
In the opening sequence we are introduced to the iconic character of Freddie Kruger (although his face is kept hidden from view) and his nightmare world. The strangeness of this dream-like state will be a familiar motif throughout the film, until the audience is unsure as to what is a dream and what might be reality.
The sequence which all men should celebrate - the moment where a very young and too-handsome-by-half Johnny Depp meets a particularly bloody end...don't look so pretty now, do you, mate?
Guess that's not a rubber duck she's got for company in the bath...
Trailer for Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) - probably best not to sit on this particular Santa's knee...
Trailer for The Stepfather (1987) - remade in 2009. Classic little chiller concerning the theme of 'who do you trust'? Under-rated at the time of release, but contains a social message regarding family values mixed in with some heart-stopping slasher moments...
Trailer for Fatal Attraction (1987) - another social message thriller, this time bound up in the AIDS crisis of the late 1980s, and a moral message of not to get involved with the wrong person, particularly if she seems to be an unhinged attractive woman with a taste for kitchen knives...the way Glenn Close delivers the line "I'm not going to be ignored, Dan" still sends cold shivers down my spine...
Trailer for Child's Play (1988) - where Toy Story meets Psycho
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