Going to Pieces

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Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film

January 19th 2010 00:24

The first major documentary tracing the history of an American institution: the stalk’n’slash flick. Going to Pieces (2006) is based on the book of the same name by Adam Rockoff, published 2002, and has been adapted for the screen by J. Albert Bell, Rachel Belofsky, Michael Derek Bohusz, and Rudy Scalese.

I haven’t read Rockoff’s book, but I intend to purchase it for my own literary archives. It’s curious to note he penned an original screenplay, Wicked Lake (2008) - which was re-worked by another screenwriter – about a bunch of young lesbian witches on a weekender of carnage, which I’m still waiting to be released on DVD under down under (so I can indulge in what looks to be some seriously deep trash), but I digress …

Bava's first cut was the deepest

Essentially the book Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (1978 – 1986) starts with Halloween (1978, the first major box office success) and ends with April Fools Day (1986, a black comedy marketed as a straight slasher flick). As the doco elaborates, the slasher sub-genre began as early as Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Peeping Tom (1960), but it wasn’t until Mario Bava’s Reazione a Catena (1971, Chain Reaction), a graphic giallo with more alternate titles than you can shake a hatchet at (Twitch of the Death Nerve, A Bay of Blood, Bloodbath, Ecology of a Crime, just to name a few) and Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974), when the unknown killer’s POV was used as a primary source of focus and the body count was raised considerably with assorted creative deaths (Friday the 13th Part 2 even copies two of the murders almost shot for shot!)

Most new fans of the slasher genre probably don’t know of Bava’s and Clark’s movies, as it is John Carpenter’s Halloween that gave the genre it’s spearhead, turning it into a cash cow almost over night. Friday the 13th (1980) followed, spilling more graphic gore and creating a bloodlust for explicit violence and creative deaths. Soon every major studio, and countless independent production companies, was releasing slasher flicks, most of them utter crap.

After Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) was released a concentrated effort on behalf of offended and pissed off parents (mostly disgruntled mothers) to have the movie’s ad campaign, but preferably the movie itself, removed from circulation was successful, the arc of the slasher movie’s success was on the wane. Within a couple of years every possible holiday had finally been plundered as a premise (My Bloody Valentine, Graduation Day, Mother’s Day, Happy Birthday to Me, etc), the pattern of teens who smoke pot and have sex, are stalked and slashed by a masked killer every twelve to fifteen minutes, leaving a Final Girl at the end of the movie, exhausted, bruised, but cheered by the audience was set in stone, and audiences were becoming bored.

If you're not home before midnight, you won't be coming home at all

The documentary should really have been sub-titled: The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Slasher Film, since Wes Craven made a killing at the box office with his slick, knowing parody of the genre, Scream (1986), a movie many critics thought was really rather clever, but is only smart in that it is packed full of references and sly nods, and impressed its audiences by being the first slasher flick to have its characters discuss the genre it was parodying. Slumber Party Massacre (1982) lampooned the genre nearly fifteen years earlier. Scream (originally titled Scary Movie), is responsible for the commercial re-packaging of the genre to include big stars (especially those from television looking for a chance to play against type).

What the doco doesn’t discuss is the rampant plundering of all the classics and cult faves into remakes and re-envisionings that has happened in recent years. It is true, as is stated by several of the interviewees, that the slasher genre will never die, and as long as there are teenagers going to the movies there will be slasher flicks. To be more precise; the horror genre will never die. It is arguably the most important genre of cinema as it provides audiences with an outlet, a purging, a reflection, of our humanity/inhumanity that no other genre can touch. It grapples our worst fears and straddles them like a rollercoaster ride as pure, unadulterated escapism (only science fiction/fantasy comes close to that kind of exhilaration). To be mortified within the safety of cinema (or the confines of your living room) is a powerful release. Slasher flicks took the basic elements of the horror movie and upped the ante on the viscera and the suspense; sex and death as cinematic sensationalism.

Even the most innocuous masks became faces of evil

Going to Pieces features some great interviews with many luminaries, including special effects whizzes Stan Winston, Tom Savini, and Greg Nicotero, directors Sean Cunningham, John Carpenter, Amy Holden-Jones, Joseph Zito, Wes Craven, Paul Lynch, also Rob Zombie offers his thoughts on the rise again. We get great archival clips, including Siskel & Ebert back in the day spilling vitriol on the genre, and some fascinating and frequently hilarious comments from lesser known figures such as kooky Betsy Palmer (who played Jason Voorhees mother in the first Friday the 13th), the lovely Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp’s pubescent gender-bender killer), and John Dunning, the screenwriter of My Bloody Valentine and Happy Birthday to Me, who states at doco’s end, “I don’t know where it can go in the future unless you start killing the audience …” Now there’s a perversely original thought!

Friday the 13th - Part V: A New Beginning

I noted that virtually all of the clips shown, especially during the kill montage at doco’s end, featured prosthetic effects, because the heyday of the slasher movie was before CGI. Even the clips from Hostel (2006) and Saw (2004) shown didn’t show any computer trickery. In a quiet tribute the documentary filmmakers salute the old school, and I admire that. It’s amusing to note that many Hollywood stars got started, or featured, in a slasher flick: Jason Alexander and Holly Hunter (The Burning), Kevin Bacon (Friday the 13th), Johnny Depp (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Tom Hanks (He Knows You’re Alone), George Clooney (Return to Horror High), Patricia Arquette (A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors), Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger (The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and Rose McGowan (Scream).

Going to Pieces moves along at a brisk pace, and sometimes feels a little rushed, like an episode to a television series on the history of the horror movie, but it’s still so great to see so much in such a short space of time (90 minutes). This is an excellent crash course in the sub-genre’s history and compulsory viewing for horrorphile newbies.

Here's the trailer:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

5 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Matt Shea

January 19th 2010 00:34

20/20 Filmsight

Nice one, Bryn, and I can't wait to check this out. Completely agree with your assessment of the horror genre's importance in terms of cathartic release. To me, sci-f and horror are like flipsides of the same coin: horror is essential for a cathartic release and sci-fi's great strength is its provision of a forum for intellectual release.

Comment by Bryn

January 19th 2010 01:18

Horrorphile

Matt, chur chur! I plan to get the book of this for a hopefully more scholarly analytical approach which wouldn't have worked as well for the doco, though the doco gets to indulge in the visual glory a whole lot more!

Comment by Anonymous

January 19th 2010 03:44

This was a great documentary. I agree with Bryn, it's highly recommended.

Kemi~

Comment by JohnDoe

January 20th 2010 18:37

Film & TV on DVD

Sounds like a fun distraction Bryn,

I will watch it just for the interview with Felissa Rose, that final shot of Sleepaway Camp kept me up for a while, shame the rest of the movie was so painfully average.

Comment by Bryn

January 20th 2010 21:53

Horrorphile

JD, indeed. Yeah, Felissa describes how they took a mold of her face and a male stripper (I think) wore it as a mask. She watched the movie at the cinemas not knowing what the director had shot and was like "Whoa! I'm a guy ...???" LOL She's been apparently cast in Raimi's remake of The Evil Dead as Cheryl. Cool (that she's been cast, not that Raimi is remaking his own movie).

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