When the crew asked me about doing a piece about slaughter flicks?' I said, of course I will. Then I thought, what the hell would you consider a 'slaughter' flick? Webster's dictionary defines slaughter as "the act of killing," which leaves the possibilites open to your own interpretation...

Follow up:

The original 1974 film Texas Chainsaw Massacre (review here) was the film whose name seems to get tossed around the most so I thought it best to start there and try to decide what really makes up a 'slaughter' flick. After watching TCM again I decided upon the things that I thought make up a 'slaughter' flick.

First of all we need some quick and brutal deaths. Our first introduction to Leatherface is a very fast scene where he jumps out, smashes Kirk's head in with a mallet, gives him one more good whack to finish the job and then slams the metal door shut. The elaborate traps of the Saw franchise can't be counted in here. Now maybe the deaths don't have to be overly brutal but it helps if they just happen. There's not really a motive or a reason and TCM showcases this. Leatherface pretty much just turns his victims heads into bloody pulp or carves them up for dinner. Why? Why the hell not!

Next up is the feel of the flick. This will be hard to pin on a movie now since filmmaking has moved along from the grimy look and feel of the 70's. This is a highlight of TCM though as you can almost smell the movie. I felt sweaty and dusty just watching the damn thing. House of 1,000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects especially manage to capture some of that feeling but I'm not sure as to how many current films you could paste this grimy feeling onto.

Now we have to look at the villain of the movie. This is where we'll eliminate all the slasher flicks that sprung up in the 80's and onward. There's something different about Leatherface when compared to the other famous slasher villains. He's not subtle or stalking, he's bursting out of the woods waving a chainsaw. Freddy will taunt his victims, Michael will simply stand right on the sidewalk for everyone to see, Jason will speed walk till he catches up with you.

Leatherface is simply there. His big hulking frame taking up the doorway before he brings his mallet down on your head or grunting and squealing as he takes you apart with his chainsaw. Are the other villains as brutal as this? Of course and then some but this leads back to why Saw doesn't count in the 'slaughter' idea. These villains are setting up corpses and death scenes for everyone to find.

When Jerry heads into the house in TCM he doesn't find anyone until Pam bursts out of her freezer tomb. The other villains would have laid out their victims in elaborate ways as if to send a message. Leatherface just wants to kill people, it's what he does.

TCM is a very bloodless movie, leaving all the squishy stuff up to our imaginations. After having seen so many horror movies you can't deny what Kirk's head looked like after a few thumps with a mallet. Leaving it up to us to decide gives the film an even more brutal touch. Nothing is more effective than what our mind can conjure up allowing us to place our own fears on top of the image.

Probably the best example of these ideas now would be Hatchet. Brutal, full of blood, a sweaty, grimy swamp and a killer who is just there suddenly ripping someone's head in half. I think the villains in both these pictures are similar enough and I wouldn't put them in the slasher camp either. House of 1,000 Corpses captures some of the feeling of TCM and is obviously influenced by it but Rob Zombie takes the violence to an entirely new level leaving some memorable scenes of carnage behind. For me, it's those scenes that almost take it out of the running. They can be far too elaborate and set-up but I think this one still manages to fly just under the line of a 'slaughter' flick.

Two of my favorite films that I would throw in the 'slaughter' ring are the terrific French horror films High Tension and Inside. It's no surprise that Alexandre Aja, director of High Tension, cites TCM as an influence on his early career. High Tension is soaked in blood and has a mindless killer involved although the final reveal not only left many fans confused or upset but it also takes away from the film falling into the idea of a 'slaughter' flick. The deaths in the film are truly mindless brutality though. The most memorable of the bunch for me is a woman getting her throat slit while one victim watches through the slats on a closet door. In the end I'd call this one close but I'm not going to let the surprising and confusing ending take it out of this camp.

Inside is probably the one film here that is really stretching to make it into 'slaughter'. It almost has more in common with a slasher flick but I want to add it in here because of the insane amount of blood. The moment I hit the Horrorbid site and saw it covered in the red stuff I instantly thought of Inside. The story of a recently widowed women who is pregnant and finds herself a victim of a woman who wants that unborn child is bathed in blood. Brutality is another aspect of this film and coupled with all the blood that is shed I think this fits nicely into the 'slaughter' idea. While the motivations of the killer aren't exactly mindless, we're unaware of the real intentions until later in the film. This leaves the killer as a psychotically deranged mad woman through most of the flick and helps it fit into my idea of this genre.

What all these films share is lots of blood, even if it's only implied in TCM, brutal deaths and a killer who is motivated by either the nothing at all or something very simple. I'm sure plenty of people will have their ideas for what constitutes a 'slaughter' flick and the choices will probably be as varied as the people who make them. This is simply what I find to be fitting of the title 'slaughter' flick. I think that for horror fans you couldn't get much better than these films for a night of movie madness. TCM, House of 1,000 Corpses, Devil's Rejects, Hatchet, High Tension and Inside. If that was a film festival I would be the first one at the door!

Under the marquee - Will