Horror's Greatest is a TV series on Shudder that explores the horror genre, offering new perspectives on classics and hidden gems. The series features insights from horror experts like Kate Siegel, Tananarive Due, and David Dastmalchian, and is intended to appeal to all horror fans, from beginners to cinephiles.
Category
đŸ“º
TVTranscript
00:30Come in.
00:51A dozen teenagers have been butchered in this old and spooky house.
00:56Let's split up and look around.
00:58I suggest that we ponder this a bit longer before running off.
01:01Are you coming?
01:02No.
01:03That's the classic.
01:05Somebody fired the maid.
01:07Yeah, somebody did.
01:08The whole family maid was killed along with the rest of them.
01:10We've never been able to escape it.
01:12The tropes and the cliches that we've seen a thousand times.
01:15No one knows what happened to her.
01:16They never found this body.
01:18They found him naked on the beach, holding the chopped off head of another camper.
01:22They get better with time, not worse.
01:24The caller is in the house.
01:26The calls are coming from the house.
01:28So I think we kind of want some of those cliches.
01:31We want that familiarity.
01:32Every February 14th, Harry comes back to town just for someone to kill.
01:41It enhances rather than reduces the fun
01:45when we see the characters doing the things that people do in horror films.
01:48Is anybody out there?
01:50Horror fans are more educated on tropes than the average film viewer.
01:56I think that we come in with a knowledge base.
02:01We know what a harbinger is.
02:03You're all doomed.
02:05We know what a final rule is.
02:09Our favorite thing is when someone takes those rules and surprises us.
02:17What are the most common horror tropes and cliches?
02:20You know, they all relate to things that we may have felt when we were two, three, four.
02:26About what the things that we were scared of or that unsettled us.
02:31So that's what always becomes a trope.
02:34Because it has such a pull on it.
02:42Hello!
02:47Jerry, don't even think about it.
02:50Jerry!
02:51I told you I heard someone.
02:52One of the most important tropes of any horror movie
02:56is the protagonist doing something completely illogical.
03:00You know the part in scary movies where somebody does something really stupid
03:03and everybody hates them for it?
03:05This is it.
03:06You can't have a horror movie if your character does the right thing.
03:15They have to make the either brave or stupid decision to stick around.
03:221980s.
03:23We always had the trope of the girl running up the stairs
03:26when she should have been running out the front door.
03:31The killer is chasing me and so,
03:33oh my god, I'm running up the stairs and now I'm trapped upstairs
03:36and can't go anywhere from there.
03:39And so that became a trope in itself.
03:41For a long time, you know, most of a decade of slasher films,
03:45we were fine with that.
03:46We were just like, yeah, she should have run out the door.
03:49And there was something fun about knowing that.
03:52But there reached a point where it became more irritating than anything.
04:01Some of the more nonsensical tropes that will absolutely lead
04:06to better scenes and a better story are things like,
04:10let's split up.
04:14A terrible idea in a real scenario.
04:17In a film, leads you to a bunch of other scenes
04:20in which you get to enjoy these characters on their own.
04:23You have the opportunity to see how each character will act
04:27when they make the really stupid decision to separate
04:30and decide to go their separate ways
04:32that the killer can focus on picking them off individually.
04:38The absolute worst choice they could possibly make
04:41is the one that leads to the best story.
04:43Here, Cheryl, why don't you go down and check, make sure.
04:45Scotty, I'm not going down there.
04:47OK, OK, you cowards, I'll go.
04:51Horror fans will watch a movie and say,
04:53if I was in this film, I would never have done that.
04:55And that's why I'd live.
04:57Fans are always critiquing the choices of the characters in the movie.
05:01I know someone's out there.
05:03As if things would be different if it was them.
05:09This is delusion.
05:12It always makes me think of, you know, the Mike Tyson quote
05:15that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose.
05:20Everyone has a plan until Ghostface
05:22sticks a bunch of knife through their chest.
05:33You may think that you're smarter than the characters in a horror film,
05:37but, you know, if you were in that situation,
05:39you would inevitably find yourself making the same dumb choices
05:42because they're basic human choices.
05:44I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go check this place out.
05:46Whoa, whoa, whoa, just one damn minute.
05:48There's a psycho killer on the loose
05:50and you want to go traipsing around this gigantic mansion.
05:53Have you ever actually seen the Stab movies?
05:54So at some point in every sub-genre cycle,
05:58the tropes will become cliche.
06:00We will get sick of seeing that same slasher
06:03done over and over and over again.
06:08And at that point, it will usually become a horror comedy.
06:11Hello?
06:14Uh-uh, see, if that was me, I would be out of there.
06:17We will have somebody poke fun of it
06:19or call attention to it, like a scream.
06:23Hello, Sydney.
06:29That falls at the end of the prior slasher cycle
06:31and suddenly we're now all aware of it.
06:35The Scream franchise parodies horror movies.
06:38Watch out.
06:39Behind you, Candy!
06:42Ah!
06:42But it also gives you what you want in those horror movies
06:45and it also tells you what you're watching
06:48while you're watching it.
06:49No, I'm gonna tell you what it is, okay?
06:51It's a dumb-ass white movie about some dumb-ass white girls
06:55getting their white asses cut the fuck up.
06:58And as the Scream series goes on,
07:00each subsequent sequel does that more and more and more and more.
07:05What the hell are you doing?
07:06Being Gail Weathers.
07:08What the hell are you doing?
07:09I am Gail Weathers.
07:10Until you get to, like, 2022, 2023.
07:14What's your favorite scary movie?
07:16Um, not that one.
07:20And you have Scream movies that are basically
07:22about the Scream movies
07:24and about people that watch the Scream movies and horror fans.
07:28I told you I don't know these movies!
07:30I don't— ask me about something I do know!
07:32Ask me about It Follows!
07:34Ask me about Hereditary!
07:35Ask me about The Witch!
07:36But it's also a Scream movie, but it's also a slasher film.
07:41I don't know where they can take it from there.
07:45You got stabbed a billion times,
07:47got dumped by your famous wife,
07:48and crawled into a bottle.
07:50I think it's safe to say you're on the suspect list.
07:52Well, maybe you're the killer.
07:55Because that cut deep.
07:57With the two new Screams that we have done,
08:00I think we've had that same type of ability to look back
08:06since the original Scream came out
08:07and be like, Scream came out 25 years ago.
08:10What has changed in the state of horror since then?
08:13Where are we as a world audience?
08:17We've had nine ghostface killers so far.
08:20Nine? I thought in the movies—
08:21Forget about the movies. The movies don't matter.
08:23We're able to play with a little bit of the tropes and the cliches
08:27and the state of horror as it is right now.
08:32One of the most proud sequences that I have been a part of
08:35is the sequence where we killed Dylan Minnette's character,
08:39which is named after Wes Craven.
08:41And that is playing on the tropes of,
08:45you know, if you open a door,
08:46you better be careful when you close it
08:47because then, you know,
08:49ghostface will be standing right behind that ready to kill you.
09:00I think we had no less than seven doors
09:02that he opens and closes
09:04before we actually get to the moment
09:05where he sees an open door.
09:08Mom?
09:10And then choosing to just simply close the door
09:12and then have ghostface be in the room with you.
09:17And getting into that death against the door,
09:19which now we end up playing on another trope,
09:21which is instead of a jump scare,
09:23we're now into this slow push of the knife through the neck.
09:32And we just stay on that shot for a while.
09:37We played on so many tropes on this,
09:39and this is all stuff that came before us
09:41that we could just subvert expectations,
09:44do something new with,
09:46think how audiences think this is going to go,
09:49and then go in a different direction with it.
09:51We have to finish the movie.
09:52Who gives a fuck about movies?
10:00Sometimes when a person acts wild and crazy,
10:02well, wild and crazy things happen to them.
10:05They do?
10:06Horny teenagers must die.
10:09Nobody who is having premarital sex
10:11should be suffered to live.
10:13This is like the abstinence education
10:15of conspiracy theories.
10:19Like we want all of our teenagers to be afraid
10:22to have sex in the back of cars.
10:24It's just an outrageous puritanical American concept
10:27that makes me furious.
10:30So it's thought that the horny teenagers must die thing
10:33came out of the 1980s.
10:34Hey!
10:39But we were definitely seeing that back in the 1970s.
10:43Even in the 60s.
10:47Teens have always been horny.
10:48It's just part of human nature.
10:52And so in the 70s,
10:54we started kind of pegging them off
10:56and really kind of using them as cannon fodder
10:58in a lot of horror films.
10:59It's a very Christian, cultural belief.
11:04And you don't have to be Christian to know it or feel it.
11:07That if you're having too good of a time,
11:09you're going to get punished.
11:13Movies like The Omen and The Fury and Changeling
11:18and The Exorcist were adults for the most part.
11:21And because adults were at the center of the narrative,
11:24it felt more important.
11:26But by the time you throw kids into it,
11:27they're not supposed to know what to do,
11:29which in the beginning is cool.
11:31But then after a while, it's like,
11:33okay, I get it.
11:36They're easy to kill.
11:39Whatever is successful that's out there
11:42also puts a pressure on you.
11:45And that happened with Psycho 2.
11:49Richard Franklin and I were afraid we weren't violent enough.
11:53And that's why we put in the two kids,
11:55Megan Love and the Baby.
11:56Kids making love in the basement.
12:04You just don't.
12:06That's that have sex and die thing
12:08that had become a cliche
12:09or was on its way to being a cliche then.
12:11Quit. Quit now.
12:18Quit? Why would I want to quit?
12:20Camp Crystal Lake has changed.
12:23Friday the 13th was the first independent slasher film
12:27that got a major wide release by a big studio.
12:31Made a gargantuan amount of money
12:35and took the genre in some of the directions
12:38that we now think of as cliches.
12:41Hallelujah.
12:45In particular, the idea that if you have sex,
12:49you're going to get killed.
12:51We weren't doing anything.
12:52We were just messing.
12:55In Friday the 13th, Pamela Voorhees overtly says,
13:00the counselors were making love when my son drowned.
13:03They weren't paying attention to him.
13:05And now I have to kill them.
13:08Well, people liked it because teenagers
13:10like watching teenagers have sex.
13:12They like watching teenagers get murdered.
13:13It's fun. It's exciting.
13:15So it just kind of, it was a successful trope.
13:17They repeated it in part two, part three, part four, part five.
13:21Nobody ever got sick of it.
13:24But it kind of became like an endearing thing,
13:27like an endearing trope.
13:28It's just like all those horny teens,
13:29like they're going to be the next to go.
13:31But it wasn't like you were actually sitting there
13:33being like, yes, they deserve to die.
13:34That's right.
13:36Boo on you.
13:37You can deliver these same tropes and same cliches
13:40where we don't even really react
13:42because it just seems lazy.
13:44Like they're not even trying.
13:45They're like running through a checklist.
13:46Like here's all the stuff that we have to do.
13:53And then there are ways you can have fun with it.
13:55Like, yeah, sure.
13:57You're going to have a guy with a mask
14:00kill a bunch of horny teenagers.
14:04But you can have a lot of fun with like,
14:06who are those horny teenagers?
14:08You look at the fourth Friday the 13th
14:10and it's like one of them is Crispin Glover.
14:12God, I'm horny.
14:13Who is delivering such a deeply strange performance.
14:17Hey, Ted, where's that card screw,
14:21that fancy card screw for the wine bottle?
14:25Ted?
14:26And in one scene, dances.
14:28And it does a dance that no human being
14:31has ever done before.
14:32And that brings so much life to the show.
14:36Because just casting this guy
14:38is such an unexpected choice.
14:41I think you're incredible.
14:49There is something odd going on in my building.
14:52Oh, sinister conspiracies.
14:56Wouldn't it be amazing if the people in charge of us
15:00were smart enough to be able to ever keep a secret?
15:02Wouldn't that be great?
15:04Wouldn't it be amazing if there were these old families
15:06that were really running everything behind closed doors
15:09as opposed to inbreeding themselves into a stupor?
15:12It's one of my favorites because
15:14it's probably not true in real life,
15:16but it adds such a beautiful flavor to a movie.
15:19He isn't my husband.
15:21It's someone who looks like him.
15:22He's an imposter.
15:24Those are some of my favorite movies
15:25because they really connect horror to social concerns
15:29in a very grounded and impactful way.
15:31Today, everything seemed the same, but it wasn't.
15:35It was a nightmare.
15:36People are changing.
15:37They're becoming less human.
15:39It's happening all around us.
15:43Phil Kauffman's remake of Body Snatchers and The Thing
15:47are two of my very favorite horror movies ever
15:50for that reason, as they really get into paranoia.
15:52I trust a tough thing to come by these days.
15:55Who's that?
15:56And the other, and not knowing
15:59whether even you are not what you think you are,
16:03much less your best friend or the person next to you,
16:06and this notion of paranoia.
16:13And people get that social anxiety in a new community,
16:15and they feel like they're on the outside of things,
16:17and it can feel to the individual
16:19like everybody's in a cult or everyone's a Satanist
16:24because there's a vocabulary that you're not used to
16:27and things like that.
16:28And so horror, like Midsommar, will take that idea
16:36and blow it up into this full balloon
16:40with the tension at the end
16:43until you're just waiting for everything to explode.
16:46There is always something going on.
16:48You have to look closer, all right?
16:50What about this guy?
16:53Paranoia is a crucial element of horror.
16:57Not knowing where the threat is.
16:59If you know where the threat is coming from,
17:02it's not scary.
17:04It's a lack of knowing.
17:06So something like Hot Fuzz that's really about
17:08who's in on this conspiracy?
17:10Who is part of the killing spree?
17:13And you find out it's most of the town.
17:17Hot Fuzz is riffing so much on like the wicker man.
17:20Are you the one, Lord Yir?
17:22Aye, I'm Alda McGregor.
17:25And you must be the policeman from the mainland.
17:27Police officer, yes.
17:28I'm Nicholas Anew.
17:29And, you know, creepy movies about small English villages.
17:33I think you all ought to know that I am here on official business.
17:38And the ultimate reveal that it leans into this folk horror direction
17:42where there's this conspiracy of all the normal people in the town.
17:46They're all working together with this sinister plan.
17:49Rosemary's Baby is like the other perfect example.
17:53Oh, I was just talking about you.
17:55So favorably, I hope.
17:56Where you have this group of seemingly normal people,
18:00like your neighbors.
18:01And I think it's really good when it's like older people
18:04who seem really innocent,
18:06like they can be your grandparents or whatever.
18:07We're your friends, Rosemary.
18:09There's nothing to be afraid of, Rosemary.
18:11Honest and truly, there isn't.
18:13And then they are actually involved in something really evil.
18:17When anyone can be bad and morality is unclear,
18:21then you are truly terrified.
18:24This is no dream.
18:25This is really happening.
18:27You're truly terrified because anything can happen to you.
18:30No one can be trusted.
18:35Oh, God.
18:36We got a $36,000 motor home here.
18:38We don't need any restaurants.
18:40We don't need any showers.
18:41We got our own.
18:42We don't need any water.
18:43We don't need any electricity.
18:45We don't need any showers.
18:46We got our own.
18:46We don't need anything from anybody.
18:48We are self-contained, babe.
18:50My favorite The Townsfolk are in on it movie
18:52is Race with the Devil, where we see Peter Fonda
18:55and Warren Oates RVing.
18:57I think they're on their way to a ski trip.
18:59On the way, they happen to see a satanic sacrifice.
19:11They witnessed something that they shouldn't witness.
19:13No joke.
19:14No bullshit.
19:15Murder!
19:16And from then on, they're marked.
19:17And they're just on the run and being chased
19:19by a collective of crazy satans.
19:25Peter Fonda at that time kind of represented Americana
19:29in some way.
19:31An easy rider, he was the manifestation
19:33of the counterculture.
19:35And he gets killed by the squares.
19:37In Race with the Devil, it's the mid-'70s.
19:39He's kind of become the culture.
19:41I'll tell you, you're about the strangest guy
19:43I've ever met in my life.
19:44Well, hell, you're drunk, Frank.
19:45You know, he's married.
19:46He owns a business.
19:47He and his friends like drinking martinis
19:49in their $30,000 trailer.
19:53And now, the crazy hippies are out to get him.
19:56Oh, this looks nice.
19:58In the scariest scene in the movie,
20:00they stop at a trailer park that they think is safe.
20:03Do you feel like a swim?
20:06Yeah, let's do.
20:07She puts on her bathing suit.
20:08She goes to the pool.
20:09She's like, I need to relax.
20:10I need to get some cool water on this hot day.
20:14And everybody at the pool just stares at her.
20:20She's like, OK, this is even bigger than we thought.
20:22And it's everywhere.
20:25It's like if deliverance was Satanist, right?
20:28And so the movie is funny and absurd.
20:32But it's also genuinely scary
20:34because it's just the world of the other.
20:40So I think this notion of not knowing who to trust,
20:43of feeling like you're the only person
20:45who is sane in a world that is insane
20:48is just great fodder for horror.
20:59One staple of horror films is the book
21:03that should never be open because to read it
21:06would be to drive yourself mad and to be a psychopath.
21:10Unleash evil in the world.
21:17Presumably, the book in question is something by Dean Kuntz.
21:22This ties into a lot of mythology and folklore.
21:26This book is designed to raise the devil.
21:28The idea that you're coming across an old page or tome
21:33or something from a forgotten time, a forgotten faith,
21:37a forgotten cult or religion of some sort
21:40that holds all this power
21:41that people of this time are not ready for.
21:49H.P. Lovecraft used to write about the Necronomicon.
21:53Could I see that before you put it away?
21:55The book that's going to give you
21:56all the unholy demon knowledge you need
21:59to make people bend to your will
22:01and reality bend to your will.
22:03Shot off.
22:04And then, of course, we have The Evil Dead.
22:06Oh, God.
22:07Where you literally have a copy of the Necronomicon
22:10sitting in the basement.
22:11Look at this.
22:16You have like the magic book being uncovered
22:19and then recited and raising all hell.
22:25Everyone seems to believe that it started
22:27with Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead.
22:30Everyone seems to believe that it started
22:32with Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead.
22:34Certainly pulls it off with respect and maximum amperage.
22:37But what I remember was a film called Equinox from 1970.
22:43Wow.
22:44This is some piece of literature.
22:46Seems to be a very veritable Bible of evil.
22:56The Necronomicon itself pops up in countless movies.
22:59It even is its own movie.
23:01There's an amazing film from the 90s called Necronomicon,
23:04Book of the Dead, in which the titular Necronomicon
23:08is featured in every story.
23:09The secrets of the Necronomicon do not come cheap.
23:12This is going to cost you your life.
23:17Also, one of my absolute favorite films of all time,
23:20Lamberto Bava's Demons, also features a cursed book
23:24that is found inside the tomb of Nostradamus.
23:26Nostradamus sounds like a rock group to me.
23:29Yeah, top of the pops in 1500.
23:31Well, what's it say?
23:33It's in Latin.
23:34I can't figure it out.
23:36Yes, I can.
23:36That when read aloud causes demons to rise up from the ground
23:41and also from out of a theater screen to attack everyone.
23:44Son of a bitch!
23:46Shit!
23:49We see it all the time in kids movies as well.
23:51Even when I was a kid, I remember watching the Care Bears movie.
23:55It's about a cursed book.
23:56Who are you?
23:57How do you know my name?
23:58I am a spirit, Nicholas.
24:01Your friend.
24:02It's a scary-ass cursed book in it too.
24:05Make them stop laughing.
24:06Make them stop.
24:08Only you can do that.
24:10Here, teach them a lesson.
24:14But it's this idea of knowledge is power,
24:16but it can also be your downfall,
24:18that there is this potential to read something
24:20that is so detrimental to your psyche
24:22that it can somehow curse you or take you down.
24:25There's no turning back.
24:32And even beyond cursed books, to me, it's cursed media as well.
24:35Like, I'll watch a cursed VHS,
24:40a cursed recording,
24:45a vinyl that will kill you.
24:47But I think in a larger scope,
24:50you know, what is the power of art?
24:52Can things cross a threshold into reality
24:55from when you read them or when you listen to them?
25:04How goes it?
25:08What the hell you think you're doing?
25:09I'm from Appalachia,
25:12and I remember seeing murderous rednecks when I was a kid
25:16and thinking, like, is that supposed to be us?
25:18Don't play games with these people.
25:20And then you realize, yeah, that is supposed to be us.
25:23It came out of 1970s.
25:25We had this huge redneck explosion in the 1970s.
25:36And after Deliverance, it's the idea of,
25:39they're kind of the villains.
25:42Then they get chainsaws.
25:45Then they become cannibals.
25:46I eat the brains of your kids' kids.
25:49And it's all hill folk, and they're isolated and clearly inbred.
25:53And, oh boy, somehow I both loved watching
25:58and also felt the pain of these movies simultaneous.
26:01So yeah, that is still a trope that we see.
26:06I remember being in college and watching Wrong Turn
26:10and realizing that that was supposed to take place
26:13really close to my hometown.
26:15And then suddenly being like, oh gosh,
26:17is this what the rest of the world thinks about?
26:22Oh, I don't care.
26:23It's fun.
26:24Look at them.
26:25It's fun.
26:26Wrong Turn's fun.
26:30I say this as a proud member of the coastal elite myself.
26:35The terror of chainsaw-wielding rednecks
26:38is really the terror of coastal elites
26:41who are in a panic at the thought of being somewhere
26:44without Wi-Fi.
26:45It is fascinating that there are so many movies
26:48about cannibalistic, human-skin-wearing hillbillies
26:53when actually, you know, I think probably serial killers
26:57wildly prefer the city because there's a deeper victim pool.
26:59Deep in the heart of Texas, it's 12 midnight.
27:02Ain't nothing going on.
27:04Run!
27:04The monkey alive!
27:06The movie, when anybody asked me if there's a movie
27:08that they haven't seen that they should see,
27:10I'm like, you should see Tucker and Dale versus evil.
27:13It takes the city people being menaced by hillbilly trope
27:16and turns it on its head.
27:17And so I'm from Eastern Kentucky.
27:19I'm a hillbilly.
27:19So that movie really spoke to me on so many levels.
27:23We are in hillbilly country now.
27:24We are in hillbilly country.
27:25We are in hillbilly country.
27:26We are in hillbilly country.
27:27We are in hillbilly country.
27:29We are in hillbilly country.
27:30We are in hillbilly country.
27:31We are in hillbilly country.
27:32We are in hillbilly country now, boys.
27:36College kids in the car.
27:37They're going to this lake house.
27:38They're having a great time.
27:39They're all, like, a little dumb, you know.
27:42I'm in a car full of morons.
27:46The first thing they see is Tucker and Dale,
27:48who are these sort of hillbilly hicks who you think,
27:51you're like, oh, could they possibly be dangerous?
27:54Did you see the way those guys looked at us?
27:58And you slowly realize that not only are Tucker and Dale
28:02not dangerous.
28:03Dale, we need anything else?
28:05Pickled eggs, six pounder.
28:06They're very sweet, and they really support each other.
28:09Friends forever.
28:10Best friends forever.
28:11And they're just really good guys,
28:12and one has a crush on one of the college girls,
28:14but of course, she'll never talk to him.
28:16Are you out of your mind, Tucker?
28:18You're a college girl, okay?
28:19They grew up with vacation homes
28:20and guys like me fixing their toilets.
28:22You gotta have some faith in yourself, man.
28:24Oh, good, look, your friends are here.
28:26And the college kids end up being the evil of the movie.
28:29They're the people who are attacking them
28:32and also accidentally killing themselves
28:34many times along the way.
28:40They were very accident-prone, those college kids.
28:45Something that Tucker and Dale versus evil did well
28:48was that they showed that the point of views of people
28:52greatly vary based on fear.
28:55It's about personal bias.
28:56No, no, no, no, no, no, please, no, no, no.
29:00Don't, don't, don't, don't cry.
29:02No, please, no, no.
29:02A lot of the perspectives of horror are specific,
29:06and it does create tropes, so when you just subvert those.
29:09Oh, oh, oh, it's the pancakes.
29:12You hate pancakes, I'm gonna make you something else.
29:14You're subverting what the person thinks is going to happen.
29:16I think that shift is what creates the comedy.
29:19Officer, do we look like a couple of psychos
29:22Officer, do we look like a couple of psycho killers to you?
29:27Well, it's hard to say.
29:29Looks can be deceiving.
29:31Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
29:38I'm telling you, Pete, this is bullshit.
29:40This really sucks.
29:41Just do it, fix it, man.
29:42Those cunts aren't gonna wait all night.
29:46Oh, fuck, this is a mess.
29:48The one that drives me the most crazy is the car not starting.
29:52Come on, come on, come on, come on.
29:54Come on, come on.
29:55God damn you, come on.
29:57Come on, like, what else can we do there?
30:01This car ain't going nowhere.
30:02The number of times I've gotten into my car
30:04and it just doesn't start is like three,
30:07but I feel like in every single Friday the 13th movie,
30:12in every single low-hanging fruit horror,
30:15something terrible is gonna happen to your car.
30:17Oh, great, a flat tire.
30:20And I think maybe that's because it's another one of those things
30:23that's so familiar to our day-to-day consciousness.
30:25Why?
30:26Because we live in a car-based society.
30:29Some of the stuff around our automobiles
30:33and the way they're used are still employed
30:35in really exciting, fresh ways in horror films.
30:40The old cliche about, you know, the car won't start,
30:43that's faded away,
30:45but now all the cars have backup cameras in them
30:48so you can see what's behind you.
30:52And that is put to ingenious use
30:54in the Joe Lynch film, Suitable Flesh,
30:59where the demon-possessed villain is behind the car
31:03and Heather Graham is, you know,
31:06backing over him and going forward
31:07and backing over him again
31:09and we can see it all playing out on the backup camera.
31:15We played with the car trope, to be honest, in Ready or Not
31:19when we did the OnStar beat.
31:22Good evening, this is Justin.
31:24Your call may be monitored for quality.
31:25People are trying to kill me, can you please help me?
31:28When Grace is, like, in a car, driving away, calling for help.
31:31Can you call the police, please?
31:34Yes, I'd be happy to help you with that.
31:35And she's like, I need to get away from this family
31:38and then the voice from the OnStar comes on and says,
31:42Ma'am, it says here that the car was reported stolen.
31:45I'm sorry, but I have to shut it down.
31:47No, what?
31:47No, what the fuck, are you fucking kidding me?
31:50And using that technology against the means of escape,
31:53I think that's kind of like a fun way
31:55of just playing with those tropes.
31:56Is there anything else I can help you with?
31:58Yeah, you go fuck yourself, Justin!
32:03The old Ark House is something that we've really had
32:05as long as film has existed.
32:06I mean, Georges Méliès was doing it.
32:08It's always been there,
32:09so in a way, it's like it was a trope
32:11even from the minute the first camera was rolling,
32:12practically, in France.
32:14What's fun is seeing how it's kind of evolved over the years
32:16and how we've sort of adapted the old Ark House
32:19into meaning something different every single time.
32:25Welcome to Prairie Blossom,
32:27the name my husband and I chose for the escape.
32:32The creepy house is something that everybody can identify with.
32:36The creepy house is something that everybody can identify with
32:39that shows up over and over and over again,
32:41I think, for a variety of reasons.
32:44Talking about the psyche, the house represents the person.
32:47If you're dreaming about your house,
32:49you're dreaming about yourself.
32:51And the idea that somebody breaking into your identity
32:53and causing havoc, I think,
32:56really touches something in the root of human fear.
33:01So, James Whale's Old Dark House 1932,
33:04this is a pre-code film,
33:06and it is making fun of old dark house movies
33:09before these are even really a thing.
33:12Talk again, louder.
33:13I should have thought that was loud enough to wake the dead.
33:18On a hideously dark and stormy night,
33:21a group of travelers who represent a mix
33:25of the British social hierarchy,
33:27I thought you were never going to open that door.
33:29Bye.
33:33and encounter a seamy side of life
33:37I am wanted by the police.
33:41that most of them never would have imagined existed.
33:45Can you conceive of anybody living in a house like this
33:47if they didn't have to?
33:49Brazen, lulling creatures in silks and settings.
33:52They fill the house with laughter and sin,
33:55They fill the house with laughter and sin,
33:57laughter and sin.
33:58These characters that are stuck in this horror together.
34:03Madness, Kate.
34:06We are all touched with it a little, you see.
34:10are so weird and curious and from another time,
34:15and yet I could see myself in there when I watched that movie
34:20because I watched it during the pandemic,
34:23right in the heart of one of my darkest moments.
34:25And I remember watching this film and just going,
34:28oh my God, Whale was such a genius.
34:31Those lights, they gave me quite a start.
34:35I suppose it's a storm.
34:36On the contrary, we make our own electric light here
34:39and we are not very good at it.
34:41Pray don't be alarmed if they go out altogether.
34:45James Whale had mostly lost his ability
34:48to take horror movies seriously very early on.
34:50My sister was on the point of arranging these flowers.
34:56He had seen all the tricks
35:00and understood how they work
35:01and he couldn't help but want to turn them on their heads.
35:05That's kind of fascinating right there that,
35:07you know, as early as the 1930s,
35:10we already understood that horror films
35:12often have a very basic template.
35:14Did you hear that?
35:15I did hear something.
35:17And it's possible to point out,
35:19to point a finger at,
35:20now this thing is happening, now that thing is happening.
35:23And you've seen this before and you know how it's going to end.
35:25The light's gone out.
35:26I suppose they'll stay out this time.
35:29Now we should be miserable all the evening.
35:31Which I think is kind of fun
35:32because it brings the audience in on the scare.
35:36I don't think the creepy house will ever go out of fashion
35:39because houses are inherently creepy.
35:41And then also there's everything that you and your family
35:44sort of manifest in a house.
35:50How many creepy house movies are just as much about
35:52kind of family tragedy or family dysfunction or violent acts?
35:57You're the one that wanted a house.
35:58This is it.
35:58So just shut up.
36:00You bastard.
36:05In Halloween, the house is not creepy per se,
36:09but the inherent terror comes from the fact
36:12that a monster is coming into your house.
36:15Michael Myers is coming into the house.
36:18Halloween is about the desecration of the American home.
36:28If we're thinking about the haunted house
36:31as kind of like the classical American motif
36:35that encapsulates the horror of the country's creation,
36:38Texas Chainsaw Massacre resituates that
36:42from a house that's haunted by ghosts of the past
36:46to a house that's starving
36:49and that is a cannibalistic slaughterhouse
36:52in order to comment on the byproducts
36:56of American capitalism and industrialization.
37:01And then you can have very modern buildings
37:04evoke something completely different.
37:05Like in Creepshow, they're creeping up on you.
37:07He's in the super high-tech,
37:09kind of you imagine a high-rise kind of building.
37:12And there's something inherently creepy about that too,
37:14about something that feels so separate
37:16from human beings and from nature.
37:19You'll never get in here, never.
37:22So it's like, what is an old dark house movie?
37:24It changes meaning over the years.
37:29It's a cliche, but it keeps adapting.
37:32It's kind of like a virus in the horror film.
37:34It changes shape over and over again.
37:36It keeps popping up.
37:36So that's why it's still with us today.
37:38No matter what you do, it won't stop.
37:39You can't be stopped.
37:44So the old cliche, you see someone in a panic sprinting away
37:59and the killer is walking slowly behind them.
38:02And yet, nevertheless, he catches up to them,
38:04pre-cuts later, and there is a hatchet
38:06in the back of your head.
38:07This was a thing present in horror films
38:10going all the way back to The Mummy.
38:13The joke about The Mummy was,
38:14oh no, here comes The Mummy.
38:15We all better walk a little faster.
38:24There's still something about us running
38:26and the killer walking that remains a terrifying image,
38:30even if when you think about it, you're like,
38:32yeah, they're going to get away.
38:38It would be really silly to see Mike Myers running full speed.
38:42It's better that he's just lumbering.
38:45It's scarier.
38:45It's just scarier that somebody puts zero effort
38:49into stalking you and they actually wind up catching you.
38:53Michael Myers is a metaphor for death.
38:57And you can't outrun death.
39:03I think that it also speaks to this supernatural energy
39:07that a lot of these killers have.
39:10Stop.
39:11He's dead.
39:12No, he's not.
39:12Look at him.
39:13He's still breathing.
39:14Get away from him.
39:15But he stopped breathing.
39:17No!
39:21Even if a character is not explicitly supernatural,
39:26the fact that he's able to catch up with the victim
39:29no matter what gives him a sense of being bigger than life,
39:35having some supernatural powers that no matter what you do,
39:40you won't be able to fight against.
39:42There's a really good joke about it
39:44in Behind the Mask, The Rise of Leslie Vernon.
39:46In a way, that's super smart because it's this guy
39:48training to be a slasher killer.
39:51You have no idea how much cardio I have to do.
39:56It's ridiculous.
39:57You gotta be able to run like a freaking gazelle
40:00without getting winded.
40:02Plus, there's that whole thing of making it look like you're
40:04Wildcat and everybody else is running their asses off.
40:07And I gotta stay with them.
40:09And he has to master all those tricks.
40:11Copperfield, Houdini, sleight of hand, escape tactics.
40:17She thinks she saw me.
40:19Maybe not.
40:19She's not sure.
40:20Just want to get her a little paranoid, you know?
40:22Just plain to see that there might be some trouble coming.
40:27It's such a good movie to look at if you
40:29want to deconstruct the slasher.
40:31You got your red herring all worked out?
40:34I think so.
40:34I think so.
40:35She spends a lot of time at the library,
40:37so I was going to do it there.
40:38Because it takes every single one of those tropes,
40:40and then it makes fun of it.
40:45Rule number one, nobody gets away.
40:54You mess that one up, and not only is it a complete breakdown,
40:58it's really embarrassing.
41:05The beginning of the 80s and the late 70s
41:07was really the beginning of horror movies centered on youth
41:10doing things in groups.
41:12Hey, Scotty, what's this place like anyway?
41:14Well, the guy that's renting it says it's an old place.
41:17A little run down, but it's right up in the mountains.
41:20I don't think you really had that a bunch previously,
41:23so it wouldn't be a bunch of people renting a house together.
41:26Cheerful.
41:27Yeah, it has a nice homey feeling.
41:29Until slasher cinema and Evil Dead,
41:32and movies about teens and 20-somethings going off
41:35and doing things together on short trips.
41:40Where are you, girl?
41:42These kind of movies are 10 little Indians.
41:44You know, one by one, they get killed.
41:51And it's always a group of friends as opposed to a family,
41:54because if it's a family, it's intergenerational.
41:56You have husband and wife, you have children.
41:58Nobody wants to see the children get killed.
42:00It just makes it harder to tell the story.
42:02So a bunch of friends, great.
42:04I can kill all of them.
42:12I've never said it so simply, but it was quite liberating.
42:20Cabin in the Woods comes out, and I think all of us got scared
42:23that we would never be able to make a horror movie again.
42:35Because it was sort of the horror movie to end all horror movies.
42:40What the hell was that?
42:42It used all of the tropes.
42:44You have these very quintessential teenagers.
42:47You have the jock, the nerd, the hot babe, the virgin.
42:50And they all are going out to this cabin in the woods.
42:54And you keep cutting back and forth to this sort of corporate headquarters underground.
43:00And they're making bets, and they're, you know, doing work jokes.
43:03You don't exactly know what's going on until you realize that they're orchestrating all of it.
43:10She's airballed.
43:11We need the Japanese crew to get it done.
43:13And they're orchestrating these things all over the world, in fact.
43:17And they have to do it because it's keeping these massive gods underground appeased.
43:28But that is sort of irrelevant.
43:29It is more about them making the horror movie,
43:32them coming up with, like, who is going to be the bad guy,
43:34and them sort of orchestrating this, like,
43:35oh, we're going to put stuff in her hair bleach to make her dumber because now she's a blonde.
43:40The hair dye.
43:41Dumb blonde.
43:42Very artistic.
43:44We're going to pump certain chemicals in to make them horny.
43:48Engaging pheromone mists.
43:52We're going to do all sorts of stuff to make them live out this horror movie fantasy.
43:57What the horror fans really responded to was the whiteboard full of options
44:02of things that could kill them.
44:04Congratulations go to maintenance.
44:09Everything from, like, mermen to, you know, murdering hicks.
44:12That's not fair.
44:13I had zombies, too.
44:14Yes, you did.
44:15Yes, you had zombies.
44:16But this is zombie redneck torture family, you see.
44:19They're entirely separate species.
44:21I'm sure most horror fans did this, like me.
44:23There's always a way to do it.
44:25Most horror fans did this, like me.
44:26There's always next year.
44:27When I watched it at home, I paused it so I could read everything on the whiteboard
44:31because someone took a lot of time to come up with all of those tropes
44:35and put them neatly on a whiteboard.
44:37And I appreciate that as a fan.
44:55The final girl.
44:57I love the final girl.
44:58One of the reasons I love horror is because very early on you had strong female role models.
45:02This was a genre where women could survive and fight and fight back and fight ugly and win.
45:10And I think that is empowering on every level.
45:14Playing a final girl is one of the greatest joys of my life.
45:19I'm a woman.
45:19I'm a woman.
45:20I'm a woman.
45:21I'm a woman.
45:21I'm a woman.
45:22I'm a woman.
45:22I'm a woman.
45:23I'm a woman.
45:23I'm a woman.
45:24The final girl is terminology that was coined by Carol Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws,
45:31which was reviewing the horror films of the 70s, the slashers in particular,
45:37and is sort of attempting to create taxonomies and categories for the tropes,
45:42for the sort of beats in the storytelling that appear again and again and again and again
45:48in all kinds of slashers.
45:50And the final girl was one of the major ones.
45:54The final girl is classically the smart girl of the group.
46:04It's tragic.
46:05You never go out.
46:06Guys think I'm too smart.
46:08I don't.
46:08I think you're wacko.
46:09Now you're seeing men behind bushes.
46:11And her wits allow her to survive, to escape the killer and ultimately take him down.
46:19While her friends, who are more the party girls, the girls who are having sex,
46:25they usually succumb to the killer.
46:27Tommy, hurry up!
46:29Tommy, please!
46:31The final girls of the 70s were always white.
46:35Do as I say!
46:36Hurry!
46:39They were always thin.
46:40Wait, little girl.
46:43And they were always virgins.
46:45What that really reflects is the same kind of standards for true womanhood that were
46:52inscribed in the 19th century.
46:54I guess I'll see you tomorrow in school, huh?
46:56Sure, great.
46:57Okay, bye.
46:58What type of femininity do you perform in order to be taken seriously and be considered
47:06of value and worth saving?
47:09These are the qualities that allow you to survive.
47:12No, don't do that.
47:15Go to hell!
47:16When I was a young teenager discovering horror movies, I hated school.
47:21Where's your pass?
47:23Screw your pass!
47:24I didn't want to go back and I would look to horror movies and I would see the final
47:29girl and all her friends are dead and she has to take down the killer and she does all
47:34that.
47:34And I was like, if she can do that, I can survive another day of high school.
47:38Once it hit the mainstream, it got appropriated and sort of turned into something else.
47:44So now the final girl is kind of considered this feminist figure.
47:55But the original final girls weren't all that feminist.
48:00They were more like, you know, like, you know, like, like, like, like, like, like, like,
48:04like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like,
48:08in nature.
48:09A lot of them got saved by men.
48:11That was like part of the trope.
48:16It took me a while to realize, like, the entire concept of the final girl is a little messed
48:21up and really what we should be striving for is the collective, is for the female characters
48:30to work together to bring down the killer.
48:33And it doesn't have to be, you know, you against your friends.
48:37It's either you or your friend who are going to die.
48:40So you better be the smart one.
48:41You guys can both be smart.
48:43You guys can work together to bring him down.
48:51You are a black character in a horror movie.
48:54Prove that you can stay alive.
48:56Name one black character that survived a horror movie.
48:58You must answer correctly or you die.
49:02I like tropes to a degree, but tropes, while they can be comfortable and familiar and perfectly
49:08harmless and even fun, have an underbelly.
49:12They really do, I think, reveal societal feelings about entire populations.
49:19If you kill off the only representative of an entire population and you do it casually
49:27and you do it for a jump scare.
49:32Or you do it so you shall be avenged.
49:35I'm so sorry you were murdered, Thomas.
49:37I miss you.
49:38I miss you too.
49:40You know, why are you doing that?
49:43Could you add maybe another black character to offset that balance?
49:48Yo, Franny, where you hiding at, you bright-faced pussy?
49:51Hey, we should find the others first.
49:52You think you're hot shit with your little milk can, don't you?
49:55Well, let me see you come get a piece of me.
49:57Often, I feel like that solo black character is usually the masculine man who's like,
50:02oh, I can do it.
50:06Take that, motherfucker!
50:07And then they die.
50:10That creates more fear, I think, for the rest of the characters because that's the power.
50:16That's the strength.
50:17That is what's represented through that person.
50:19But then that doesn't allow for authentic responses.
50:25Trick or treat, motherfucker!
50:28I know a lot of men who get scared.
50:33And I think not allowing those characters to feel human creates that trope.
50:41Because you're like, oh, this doesn't feel real.
50:43I'm very cautious as a writer of that, just knowing the world that we live in
50:48and kind of having an expectation of how audiences are going to receive what they're seeing.
50:55The blackening is really cool because it is looking at the horror genre as a whole,
50:59but it's fully reframing it through a black lens.
51:03Yo, when did we become the kind of people that walk into dark-ass places?
51:06Hey, stop it!
51:09A group of friends, they're going to celebrate Juneteenth at this cabin in the woods.
51:14Is it just me or is this giving Texas chainsaw massacre?
51:17Oh, no, I've never seen that film.
51:19White people scare me.
51:20And there they find this gate.
51:23What's this?
51:25Oh, hell no.
51:26And the game has all kinds of racist imagery.
51:32I will spare your lives if you sacrifice the person you deem the blackest to me.
51:38The blackest?
51:39You have two minutes to decide.
51:40There's this idea of what is black and what is not black.
51:44And to take that conversation and flip it on its head.
51:47Every single time one of y'all make a joke, it's always, oh, Allison, you white this.
51:51Allison, you white that.
51:52To force people to claim and grab onto the parts of themselves that they feel are the whitest.
51:57I'm gay.
51:59No, no, and just like my homophobic family member says,
52:02gayness is just whiteness wrapped up in a bunch of dicks.
52:04And today, I agree.
52:05Was just a very funny way to show the diversity of blackness.
52:11I voted for Trump.
52:13What?
52:16Twice.
52:18We all do a lot of things that don't necessarily fit in a box of what is black.
52:23It really is black people turning these horror tropes upside down
52:27that for all these years with white people, these make no sense.
52:30I'm safe.
52:30Don't say this dumb shit.
52:34We.
52:35Oh my God.
52:37We have to split up.
52:39Something I find funny is when people try very hard to not be like stereotypes.
52:43King.
52:43King?
52:44Yeah, King.
52:45Because you're the one with the gun and you gangsta.
52:47I'm an ex-gangsta, I changed my life.
52:49But then there's parts of stereotypes that are just true.
52:52And having that balance to be like, no, I don't want to be a stereotype.
52:55But also, this part of me is pretty stereotypical.
52:59And showing that like, yeah, this person has changed.
53:02There's growth.
53:03But at the end of the day, yeah, he got a gun.
53:05I knew you had a gun.
53:06Wow, that's profile.
53:07How come you used it before?
53:08On what? The TV nigga, by the way.
53:10Because life is scary.
53:12He a black man.
53:16One of the cool things is, is black films are playing with white horror film tropes.
53:21And they're creating new black horror film tropes.
53:23Wait, how do we know we can trust him?
53:29I'm one of the good ones.
53:30Oh, that does not help that y'all say that.
53:31So it's going to be fun to see how those get turned around in other ways.
53:35When it comes together as one mix, as, you know,
53:38films become more diverse and more opportunities.
53:41What do we do now?
53:43Call the cops?
53:46Because society changes, the tropes change with us.
53:51The way that we employ them is always reflective of our present concerns.
53:58What new monsters might emerge when we revisit and renegotiate the classic tropes?
54:15I told you this isn't a man.
54:34I saw some lights up ahead.
54:35There's probably a farmhouse up there.
54:37So I'll go and check.
54:45Shut up, you bitch hog.
54:51The book speaks of a spiritual presence, a thing of evil,
54:55that roams the forests and the dark powers of man's domain.
54:59Honey, give this place a chance, okay?
55:01Well, I hope these people aren't too weird.
55:10These things were made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
55:15Ultimately, there's something about kaiju that is very cinematic.
55:32To have a monster that's the size of a skyscraper is just the best thing in the world.
55:37Devours those people, squishes them in the mouth.
55:41He's killing people, but we're rooting for him.
56:11Well, what do we do?
56:28Why don't we just wait here for a little while?
56:36See what happens.