Dave Stewart

Proto-Slashers: Looking at the flicks that paved the way for Halloween and the heyday of slasher movies.

REPULSION (1965)

Roman Polanski’s first English-language film, Repulsion is a bonafide, certified Retro Slashers classic, and one of the greatest horror movies ever made. It stars Catherine Deneuve as Carol, a repressed young beautician, sharing an apartment with her sister Hélène (Yvonne Furneaux) in London. While Hélène has a healthy relationship with a boyfriend (Ian Hendry), Carol is terrified by sex. Though Colin (John Fraser), an acquaintance of Carol’s, is persistent in his attempts to get to better know the beautiful and mysterious woman, she would rather spend her time at home, quietly feeding her psychosis. When Hélène and her boyfriend leave for a vacation in Italy, Carol goes fully over the deep end, hanging out with a rotting, skinned rabbit corpse, imaging hands pushing out of walls to grab her, seeking cracks suddenly appear in the ceiling, and thinking she is being attacked by unidentified men. Eventually, those who inhabit the physical rather than the imagined world around Carol learn about alternative uses for straight razors and anything else Carol can get her hands on.

Polanski, one of cinema’s greatest directors, was very early in his career with Repulsion, but his command on the medium is clear. It was the first flick in his unofficial “Apartment Trilogy”, followed by “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Tenant”, each a variation in a theme, exploring supernatural or psychological threats to apartment dwellers. With Repulsion he created a deliberately-paced, realistic study of a person slipping into full-fledged madness. Punctuated by a handful of well-placed, effective scares, some of which have been copied countless times, the film generates a terrific and creepy atmosphere that engrosses the viewer in Carol’s sick world. Though she has a minimum of dialogue, Deneuve is terrific as Carol, ably conveying her alternating helplessness and her misguided need for protective and violent outbursts. Though not a traditional slasher in the sense of an unstoppable killer hunting for victims, Repulsion finds believable ways to do just the opposite, bringing victims to its killer, who also just happens to be one of the most sympathetic in the genre. Unlike many slasher flicks, Repulsion’s ending is tragic, chilling, and thoughtful rather than jolt-inducing.

Available as a Region 2 DVD from Anchor Bay UK and on Region 1 from Program Power Entertainment, Repulsion will finally get the NTSC release it deserves when the Criterion Collection releases it later this month. It’s a must-own for any horror fan who appreciates horror that creeps rather than winks, squirts, or is CGI-generated.

Proto-Slashers: Looking at the flicks that paved the way for Halloween and the heyday of slasher movies.

The House That Screamed (1969)

Someone is killing the students at a private girls school. Sounds like the premise for any one of countless 80’s slasher flicks, but in this case it’s the plot of the 1969 proto-slasher, The House That Screamed (aka La Residencia and The Finishing School).

Directed by Narcisco Ibáñez Serrador, who also directed the essential Who Can Kill a Child?, this Spanish flick is not to be confused with the 2000 US release of the same name. Set in the early 1900’s, Serrador’s film follows the arrival of new student Theresa (Christina Galbó) as she is enrolled at a creepy girls’ school run by the strict head mistress, Mme. Fourneau (Lilli Palmer). Mme. Fourneau has a unique way of punishing disobedient students. Refuse to copy her dictation and she’ll lock you in a room where teacher’s pet Irene (Mary Maude) and her cronies will strip you nude and whip you. Irene and her pals enjoy the power and the punishment far too much, and Mme. Fourneau is a little too sadism-happy herself as she kisses a student’s bloody back saying, “You made me do this.” Not a good sign for the delicate Theresa who is having enough trouble fitting in. Once the other girls discover that her mother is a cabaret singer (code for prostitute?), Theresa is teased unmercifully to the point that she has no option but to run away. Complicating her plan, however, are both Mme. Fourneau’s nice but creepy teenage son (John Moulder-Brown) who has a compulsive habit of spying on the girls, and the psycho who is slashing though the school’s population unnoticed by staff and students, as everyone assumes that the dead girls have simply run away.

The House That Screamed features a solid cast highlighted by strong female characters, prefiguring slasher classics like The House on Sorority Row. Palmer, Maude, and Galbó, also the star of great genre flicks What Have You Done to Solange?, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, and The Killer Must Kill Again, are all outstanding. The film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Manuel Berenguer and atmospherically and suspensfully directed by Serrador. Each memorable murder is shot in a different style from the previous attack, giving each killing its own feel and style. Like Psycho, there is a shift in audience sympathy, but in House this happens more than once, allowing despicable characters to suddenly become sympathetic. Frequent reference has been made in the genre press to how this film was the inspiration for Dario Argento’s classic Suspira, but any specific inspiration seems to be related only to the gothic atmosphere and the murder-at-a-girls-school setting. POTENTIAL SPOILER: Most entertaining of all is the fact that the ending seems to have directly influenced that good times 80’s slasher Pieces. END POTENTIAL SPOILER.

Though the identity of the killer may not be too difficult to unravel, The House That Screamed is an excellent horror film that is unfortunately difficult to see in North America. Region 0 PAL copies are easier to come across, though the film is offered on a Region 1 NTSC Elvira’s Movie Macabre disc on a double bill with The Maneater of Hydra. Reportedly, though this disc is viewable in a version without Elvira’s jokey comments, the film fades to black any time an Elvira segment is due to appear. Ugh.

I’ve only ever been able to see The House That Screamed on two separate grey market discs that lose the letterboxing after the opening credits, and that both seemed to be duped from the same fuzzy videotape source. I would love to get my hands on a pristine widescreen copy of this awesome flick. And you should too. Enroll in The School That Screamed today to get a crash course in proto-slasher history. If you don’t, Mme. Fourneau and Irene will break out the Cat o’ Nine Tails. You’ve been warned.

Proto-Slashers: Looking at the flicks that paved the way for Halloween and the heyday of slasher movies.

Homicidal (1961)

I love William Castle movies… The Tingler, The House on Haunted Hill, Mr. Sardonicus, Macabre, I Saw What You Did, 13 Ghosts, The Night Walker, Straight-Jacket. I mean, what’s not to love? Castle made movies that attempted to give the horror audiences of the 50’s and 60’s what they wanted – fast paced fear flicks that genuinely tried to generate some thrills. Sure he had to resort to gimmicks sometimes, but that’s part of the fun. Whether is was wiring seats to gives movie goers a mild shock, or releasing a fake skeleton on a wire overhead, Castle went all out to deliver the goods.

After Hitchcock had a major hit with Psycho in 1960, Castle responded the following year by producing and directing Homicidal. To help lure audiences, Castle created the Fright Break and Coward’s Corner. Just before the film’s twist ending was revealed, a clock appeared on the screen accompanied by a voice over informing viewers that they had 45 seconds to leave the auditorium if they were too frightened to see what was coming next. Those who left would receive a full refund, but there was a catch. Walkouts would have to sit in Coward’s Corner, a booth in the theatre’s lobby. They would have to remain there until the movie was over and everyone else who was brave enough to see how Homicidal ended had walked past, undoubtedly jeering. But nah, I can’t imagine anyone opting for that humiliation.

Homicidal tells the story of a mysterious woman (Jean Arless) who checks into a hotel and offers the bellboy a large sum of money to marry her. He agrees, and after a murder occurs, we find out that the Mysterious Ms. lives in the small California community of Solvang where she cares for her husband’s wheelchair-bound former governess (Eugenie Leontovich). Why she does this, I dunno. Enter Arless’ husband, his sister (Patricia Breslin) and her boyfriend (Glenn Corbett), and the stage is set for a murder party straight out of the Psycho handbook. Just why all these murders take place is reveled in a convoluted twist ending that most audiences will have guessed long before the film’s end.

On my first viewing of Homicidal at a film festival a few years ago, I fell victim to a laughing fit as the film’s surprise became immediately apparent upon its introduction. It was a “Is everybody seeing this?” kind of moment. As it turns out, most people in attendance were indeed seeing the same thing I was, judging by the amount of knowing laughter spreading throughout the theatre. I can’t speak for everyone else at that screening, but I can tell you that I wasn’t laughing “at” Homicidal, but I was laughing at it’s audacity. I’ve always appreciated Castle’s willingness to put any and every over the top element he could think of up there on the screen in the name of entertainment. That’s something that some of the more outrageous slasher films would eagerly adhere to twenty years later, and it’s a reflection of Castle’s genuine showmanship. Castle’s horror movies always had a keen sense of entertainment delivered through their “stop at nothing” attitude that never truly looked down at their audiences. Instead, Castle’s flicks respected their audiences’ desire to have a good time and a few scares at the movies. Recently, I watched Homicidal again with a couple of pretty savvy movie viewers, and I was stunned when they didn’t catch on to the film’s twist until the end of the movie. It was good to know, however, that the movie could still work on the unsuspecting.

Homicidal is a fun viewing experience and a tiny step forward on the road from Psycho to Halloween. Its campy aspects are part of its charm. Even guessing the film’s twist shouldn’t stop you from enjoying the out of control plot and the film’s set pieces. A couple of the murders in particular come as a surprise even today. Following Psycho’s lead, one slash-a-thon especially comes out of the blue and features more black & white blood than expected, and another, using a trick Castle would repeat in Straight-Jacket, entails a body part being removed in silhouette.

Incredibly, Homicidal managed to end up on Time Magazine’s Best Films of the Year List, an honour the magazine had denied Hitchcock’s film a year earlier. So why not do like Time, and pay an over-the-top tribute to this proto-slasher yourself? Get your hands on the DVD, have some friends over, and recreate Coward’s Corner in your living room. Isn’t it time you had a Fright Break?

Proto-Slashers: Looking at the flicks that paved the way for Halloween and the heyday of slasher movies.

Hands of the Ripper (1971)

Suppose an infamous serial killer had a baby daughter who witnessed her father murder her mother. Years later, the memory of the event buried, the daughter commits a series of murders herself. That’s the premise of the 1971 Hammer thriller Hands of the Ripper, a terrific and not nearly famous enough late-era flick from the genre-defining British film studio.

As the title reveals, the serial killer/bad role model here is Jack the Ripper. Though his vaguely diseased and scarred face is seen only briefly in the film, appearing in the opening and in several quick flashbacks, his influence is felt throughout. In my books, madmen don’t come much creepier than the Whitechapel Murderer.

The plot really begins to get cooking when Anna (Angharad Rees), the Ripper’s daughter and now a young woman, is taken in by Dr. John Pritchard (Eric Porter). The good doc is obsessed (is there any other kind of doctor in horror flicks other than the obsessed ones?) with unraveling the secrets of the mind, especially those of the schizophrenic. Recognizing the signs of the disorder in Anna, the doctor sets out to cure her, developing a particularly unhealthy variety of codependency. As Anna begins killing, Dr. John (as Anna calls him) hides her crimes, allowing her to continue her murderous behavior.

Though we always know who the killer is, part of the grisly fun of Hands of the Ripper lies in waiting to see who will set Anna off and how. You see, each time the Junior Miss Ripper kills, she falls into a sort of catatonic trance first, facilitated by a kiss and a shiny object glistening in her eyes. It’s surprising how many ways screenwriter L.W. Davidson and storywriter Edward Spenser Shew find to bring these two elements together, happily ushering in yet another attack with yet another sharp object. When the killings do occur, they’re sudden and bloody, often catching the viewer off guard with their urgency.

Davidson and Shew have also given us interesting characters in Anna and Dr. John, as well as in some of the supporting characters. Anna, though a vicious killer, is sympathetic and likeable (when not slashing someone’s neck) and Dr. John is single-minded and purposefully blind to the danger he’s enabling, but with more than enough humanity to be a-okay otherwise. In bringing them together, Davidson and Shew have constructed a much more complex relationship than at first meets the eye.

Davidson/Shew and director Peter Sasdy make good use of the Whispering Gallery at London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral during the film’s climax. It works both as a dramatic setting and, on a more hoighty toighty note, as a metaphor laden with whispers and repeating cycles. Hitchcock would be proud of their use of local landmarks and Freudian hoo-haw. Of course, being a Hammer Horror, Hands of the Ripper is literate and thick with period atmosphere. Though this might all sound a little mellow or highbrow for some gorehounds’ tastes, my advice is to slow down and smell the… er, blood.

Hands of the Ripper is a neat twist on Slasher conventions even before Slasher movies proper existed. Unfortunately, it has yet to be available on Region 1 DVD. Resourceful Ripper freaks, however, can find VHS copies and DVD-R versions available online, and those with Region Free players can pick up the Region 2 disc. With any luck though, MGM’s Midnight Movies series might just see fit to release this flick into the hands of Ripper fans in North America too.