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Posted on August 25, 2016

Trailblazing Self-Reflection and Postmodernism in Student Bodies (1981)

Gwen

I can think of no better way to exemplify my gluttonous yet astutely reflective consumption, digestion, and regurgitation of horror than by beginning with a film that does much the same. The 1981 Paramount Pictures film Student Bodies film gained a cult like following after it re-emerged on late night television via USA Up All Night which showcased other greats such as Reform School Girls (1986), Summer School (1987), and Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1989). Read more

Posted on August 16, 2016

Chicken Hawk (1994): Documenting Perversion

Elizabeth Erwin

Like many, the recent social media explosion erroneously linking Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump to the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) gave me more than a little pause.[i] Given what I research, I’d heard of NAMBLA but was under the impression that they had disbanded. A quick perusal of the organization’s website and Wikipedia page confirmed that it is still active although on a very marginal scale.[ii]

One thing that did jump out at me in this reading was a listing for a 1994 documentary entitled Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys. Immediately, the title was what caught my eye, as “chicken hawk” is an outdated term that was once actively used within the queer community to describe an older man who pursues a much younger man.[iii] That it would be used in this context to describe pedophilia was disturbing to me on a variety of levels and so I set out to watch it for myself (it’s readily available on YouTube).

Part of me really wishes that I hadn’t.

Posted on August 12, 2016

Thirteen Women (1932): The Slasher that Started it All

Dawn Keetley

If you love horror films, you’ll want to watch the classic Thirteen Women (David Archainbaud, 1932). It’s a little-known film that, four decades before The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Black Christmas (1974), and Halloween (1978), mapped out the contours of the slasher plot.

Myself and Gwen have recently written an article about the film: “Thirteen Women (1932): An Unacknowledged Horror Classic,” published in the Journal of Film and Video 68, no. 1 (Spring 2016). I’m just hitting a couple of the highlights here, so if you want more analysis, that’s the place to go.

We didn’t conjure our idea up out of thin air. Some film critics had already nodded to Thirteen Women’s anticipation of the slasher sub-genre. For instance, in his review of the DVD, which was released as part of the Warner Archive Collection in 2012, John Beifuss notes that Thirteen Women is “not exactly a horror film,” yet he goes on to map numerous of its “horror themes,” drawing a line to both Friday the 13^th (1980) and the Final Destination franchise (2000-2011). [i] We disagree with Beifuss’s hedging: Thirteen Women is in fact a horror film. Read more

Posted on August 5, 2016

Dinosaurs and the Horror Film, Part 2: Carnosaur

Dawn Keetley

Dinosaur movies are typically categorized as horror films, but not all of them are—and so I thought I’d use two intriguing-in-their-own-right dinosaur films as part of my ongoing exploration of what makes a horror film. In [part 1 of this discussion], I argued that Disney / Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur (2015) is not only not horror but represents an explicitly anti-horror project. Carnosaur, on the other hand, a low-budget Roger Corman production, is unequivocally a horror film. Carnosaur was released on May 21, 1993, just four weeks before Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park—and it bears some resemblance to its big-budget competitor. While not as good a film as Jurassic Park, Carnosaur is vastly more interesting, especially for horror fans.

Carnosaur is a crazy film—and while it’s currently not easy to find, it’s worth the effort to try to get your hands on it. Diane Ladd plays Dr. Jane Tiptree, a woman whom one male character calls “the fairy godmother of military biotech.” Tiptree has been sequestered away, working to create a hybrid race of dinosaurs to whose eggs women give birth right before they die. Tiptree’s plan, it turns out, is to wipe out the human race for their sins, creating a new and more worthy species (genetically-modified dinosaurs) to continue life on earth. You might be forgiven for thinking that some of the finer points of Tiptree’s scheme are a little illogical—and my advice would be, well, to enjoy and not overthink it! Read more

Posted on July 27, 2016

Dinosaurs and the Horror Film, Part 1: The Good Dinosaur

Dawn Keetley

Sometimes you watch a film that helps clarify what a horror film is by not being a horror film. Disney / Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur (2015) is that film—and it set me thinking about the contested place of dinosaurs in the horror genre. Films with rampaging dinosaurs are often categorized as horror films. But should they be?

This will be the first of two posts that explore what makes a horror film by looking at two films about dinosaurs, identifying what is explicitly not horror (The Good Dinosaur) and what unequivocally is horror (Carnosaur, 1993).

To start with what is not horror: Disney / Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur. While it is not a horror film, The Good Dinosaur, like many Disney films, contains horror, the appearance and containment of which seems necessary to the film’s construction as something other than a horror film. Read more