Whilst for the villain, killing her becomes the mission, for her, survival is everything. In some slasher franchises, like Halloween, and later in Scream, "the final girl" is also the real protagonist of the films. (Clover's key, groundbreaking argument, is that slashers actually encouraged male viewers to relate to women, rather than being inherently misogynistic, as had been assumed by critics before). She is never the pretty cheerleader, more likely the cheerleader's friend, and is the character the audience, regardless of gender, empathises with the most.
Strode was the defining "final girl" – a term coined by scholar Carol J Clover in her seminal book on slasher films Men, Women and Chainsaws, which refers to the last woman standing in a slasher, who is usually a paragon of innocence, rejects sex and drugs, and is coded as somewhat androgynous. Halloween's director John Carpenter had had a conversation with Black Christmas's director Bob Clark, about what would happen in a hypothetical sequel to his film: "it would be the next year and the guy would have actually been caught, escape from a mental institution, go back to the house, and they would start all over again," Clark said. It pulled visually from giallo (the featureless mask that villain Michael Myers wears harkens back to Bava’s Blood and Black Lace and the film starts with the favoured giallo technique of a murder being committed from the killer’s point-of-view) while being directly inspired by Black Christmas. Although there were precursors, including Texas Chainsaw Massacre, about students who stumble onto a cannibal family, and Black Christmas, about an unseen killer terrorising a group of female students in their sorority house, both released in 1974, Halloween was the first fully formed, perfectly executed example of the genre. Directors like Mario Bava and Dario Argento combined the murder-mystery narrative structure of crime novels with hyper-stylised murders that were equally gruesome and gorgeous.īut it wasn’t until 1978 that the slasher experienced its first Golden Age, with the release of Halloween. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic in the 1960s and 1970s, the roots of the slasher were forming in Italian giallo cinema – which took inspiration from cheap Italian crime novels (whose covers were usually bright yellow, hence the term ' giallo ', which translates to 'yellow') – and added gruesome murders and increased body counts. These include a focus on a mysterious, brutal killer motivated by a traumatic event, whose identity remains a mystery until the end, and for his victims, the fact that sex invariably equals death, and that you never go to investigate a dodgy situation alone. That set off the 'jealous mother' and 'mother killed the girl'! Now after the murder, Norman returned as if from a deep sleep.Horror has been evolving since the very beginning of cinema but the slasher stands out as a type of horror film that is governed by structure, and a set of rules that have become so recognisable they are often parodied.Ītlhough the slasher didn't experience its first peak period until the late 1970s, it arguably started with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), which established some of the rules that slasher films would continue to abide by 70 years on. Fred Simon: When he met your sister, he was touched by her. Therefore, if he felt a strong attraction to any other woman, the mother side of him would go wild.ĭr. And because he was so pathologically jealous of her, he assumed that she was jealous of him. Now he was never all Norman, but he was often only mother.
At other times, the mother half took over completely. At times he could be both personalities, carry on conversations. So he began to think and speak for her, give her half his time, so to speak. Even treated it to keep it as well as it would keep. So he had to erase the crime, at least in his own mind. most unbearable to the son who commits it. Matricide is probably the most unbearable crime of all. Now that pushed him over the line and he killed 'em both. and it seemed to Norman that she 'threw him over' for this man. His mother was a clinging, demanding woman, and for years the two of them lived as if there was no one else in the world. Now he was already dangerously disturbed, had been ever since his father died. you have to go back ten years, to the time when Norman murdered his mother and her lover. that is, from the mother half of Norman's mind. Now to understand it the way I understood it, hearing it from the mother.