L.P: Girl Power: the Politics of the Slasher Movie

Women within the horror genre and how they were repositioned

Generally, within the media women are seen as weak and scared. This was how they were portrayed within the genre of Horror films before the 1970s. Men would supposedly be the hero’s, who would save the vulnerable women from the evil threat. However, in the 1970s many feminist movements were on their way to achieving a great deal. George A. Romero, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter, all directors of this time changed the ideological stereotypes of how women should behave in horror movies by responding to the politics of their era. The films when this all changed was Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Last House on the Left (1972), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Halloween (1978), they allowed females to finally protect themselves from all the horror and evil rather than having to be saved.

The conventions of the 'stalk and slash' subgenre of horror

The ‘stalk and slash’ subgenre tends to follow the same pattern in which a group of teenagers will go to an obscure location to follow a stereotype of drugs, drink and sex. Then slowly, a masked murderer in the middle of a typically scary location like a wood will murder them. Finally, one character will remain, and then this character will have to get rid of this murderer or else he will get killed as well. According to Mark Whitehead in his novel Slasher Films the subgenre is intensely formulaic.

Who originally watched these films and why?

It was soon realized that the core audience for Slasher films was teenage boys and men. The two main reasons for this were: female nudity scenes, and graphic scenes of murder and blood. This became such a favourite for young men that filmmakers starting having to think of new ideas to make the murders even gorier, finding new ways to kill of this typical group of teenagers, for example in one movie an adolescents head was squeezed so hard his eyes popped out of the sockets. They also once presented a teenager in a sleeping bag getting bashed to a bloody pulp against a tree. This allowed audiences clear approval and kept their interest also making horror icons out of their special make-up effects technicians.

'The Final Girl'? 

-       This concept was constructed by Carol J. Clover

-       Used to describe the sole female survivor of Slasher films

-       The ‘final girl’ was there to mark a female character as individual from the other teenage friends.

-       The final girl is more clever than her friends, does not join in with unintelligent situations such as drinking, drugs or sexual liaison and she is finally the first to release this threat that is going to kill all her friends.

b    by Laurel