halloween

Cravenous: The Last House on the Left

~ LobaBlanca ~ Leave a comment

It’s October, denizens. You know how much I love this month. Even though it’s cold and bound to get colder from this point on in the year, I can’t help it. I love Halloween. I love horror. And while I’m still struggling to find solid footing when it comes to my visits here to the lair, I had this idea this morning while driving to work and I’m going to try to make it so. See, I decided a little while ago that, for this October, I wanted to watch/re-watch every Wes Craven-directed movie that doesn’t include the word Nightmare or Scream in the title. We all know how I feel about those two franchises. But what about all the other films that Craven directed throughout his career?

I’ve already loaded up my Netflix queue with every Craven film they offer (and I’m seriously debating going ahead and buying a couple that aren’t offered but that I love enough to want to add them to my collection anyway). There are enough movies in my list that I know I’m not going to be able to finish watching them all this month, so this new feature will last a hot minute longer than until All Hallow’s Eve. Plus, I’ve got a lot on my plate work-wise and play-wise, so that will slow things down there as well. But, the good news is that I’m here now, and I’m…Cravenous in my horror hunger.

Did you see it? What I did?

So let’s start with the beginning of it all, shall we?

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Admittedly, this is a very difficult place to start, especially for non-horror fans. I can’t recommend Craven’s first film The Last House on the Left. It falls soundly into that category of horror populated by realistically unsettling storytelling. Even if you do like horror but your preferences skew toward the scary yet implausible variety, then this is not the film for you.

Instead, this is Craven exploring the darkest of horror. Not the phantasmagorical. Not the supernatural. Not the paranormal. For Craven, we were the most frightening monsters to examine. Thus, when this film starts out with the warning that this story is based on true events, I view it less as a specific warning and more of a generic caution that what we’re about to see can be as true as we make it. As anyone who pays attention to the news even today (even? especially today), we can make this true…and we can make far worse true.

In horror lingo, you can boil the story down to two words, one genre trope: rape revenge. I don’t like rape revenge stories. I also don’t like this type of realistic horror. Again, I’m aware enough of what we do to each other in real life that when I want to be scared, I want it to come from a horror that cannot actually happen to me. Maybe that’s a cop-out. I don’t know. However, reality is a bludgeon enough even when it isn’t being horrific. A couple hours of escapism is a nice balm to a bludgeoned soul.

However, Craven felt the need to go to these darker depths of humanity, driven by the need to better understand the reality he and his peers were experiencing at that point in history. He said in many interviews regarding this movie that it was spurred into life by our increasingly violent culture. The images broadcast from the Vietnam War in particular brought violence into homes all along Main Street USA in visceral, unsettling ways, leaving all of our society

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Debra Hill

~ LobaBlanca

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Last call for Ladies, denizens, and just as my first draw this month was perfect (as has been every other draw, quite frankly), so too is this final draw.

In some ways, I guess you could say that I’ve broken my own rules…or at least bent them in twisty-like-a-pretzel ways. See, Debra Hill isn’t a character from a horror movie. Instead she was one of the originators of some of the greatest characters to grace the genre in modern times. While any casual horror fan knows that John Carpenter was behind bringing Michael Myers to the genre, what most people forget (or don’t know) is that Debra Hill both co-wrote Halloween with him and then produced it. And worked behind the scenes, doing everything from setting up equipment to bagging and unbagging leaves to help make a sunny, summery California neighborhood look like Haddonfield, Illinois in late October. Oh, and Haddonfield? That’s where she was born…only it’s really in New Jersey.

Hill went on to work with Carpenter on scripts for Halloween II, The Fog (which is another brilliant film that doesn’t seem to catch quite as much love from genre fans as that babysitter stalker movie does), and Escape From L.A., among other significant writing credits. She also was a proliferate and successful producer, thanks to the totally unexpected success of her first gig (again with that babysitter stalker movie!). Beyond producing a string of fantastic Carpenter movies or Carpenter-inspired movies like The Fog, Halloween II and III, Escape from New York, and Escape from L.A., she also produced The Dead Zone as well as the decidedly non-horror but still important to Loba, Adventures in Babysitting and Clue.

Not bad for a woman whom no one in the business took seriously when she first came to Hollywood a mere four years before hitting the right chord with that…yeah, you guessed it…that babysitter stalker movie. She once even noted, “Back when I started in 1974, there were very few women in the industry, and everybody called me ‘Honey.’ I was assumed to be the makeup and hair person, or the script person. I was never assumed to be the writer or producer. I took a look around and realized there weren’t many women, so I had to carve a niche for myself.”

Not only did she succeed in carving that niche, she carved her name into the very foundation of a genre that is decidedly not known for its overall welcoming nature toward women. True, by helping to co-write Halloween, she did help establish that somewhat patronizing “virginal final girl” trope, but holistically, Hill’s was a career of trailblazing brilliance (plus, I do cut her some slack since she did get Jamie Lee Curtis laid in The Fog…and let her survive [spoilers]).

Sadly, Hill died of cancer in 2005, at the horrifyingly young age of 54. Obituaries noted that she was one of Hollywood’s first female producers, that she was a pioneer in the industry, an inspiration to women. Jamie Lee Curtis described her as “the most influential woman in my professional life.” John Carpenter said his relationship with Hill was “one of the greatest experiences of my life

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Laurie Strode

~ lobablanca

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If ever there was a case for hazard pay for babysitters, then Laurie Strode would be the star witness. She’d also make a great case for why working on holidays warrants at least time and a half.

[Loba Tangent: Do not even remotely think about mentioning any remake to me in this instance. I have written all I need to about that cinematic abortion.]

As I already mentioned, even though Jess Bradford started the slasher movie “final girl” trope, Laurie Strode, as portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis in director John Carpenter’s Halloween, became the standard by starring in the more popular slasher movie…thus confirming the home truth that it’s not about being qualified…it’s about being the most liked.

Life Lesson #345,634,905 From Horror.

That’s not to say that Laurie isn’t qualified as a Lady of Horror May-hem. Quite the opposite. She proves herself repeatedly as a survivor by virtue of many things…including, well, her virtue. Although John Carpenter has repeatedly denied that his intention was ever to present a puritanical notion that only the “good” girls survive while the naughty girls become slasher bait, the fact remains that by becoming the example against whom all following slasher movie heroines would be compared, our virginal, nebbishy Laurie cast a mold from which final girls didn’t break free for almost 20 years.

[Loba Tangent: Oh, but I hope I draw that name before this month is over…]

Focusing on Laurie’s sexual activity (or lack, thereof), regardless of the reasons, always seemed misogynistic to me. What does it matter what uglies she and her friends are bumping? It’s as ridiculous as the 70s/80s horror movie “rule” that demanded at least one gratuitous boob shot. Because titillation.

Thankfully, horror has become a little more sophisticated in some ways (although it has a long way to go to really be more inclusive). Our final girls don’t have to be pure as the driven snow anymore. They just have to be smart under pressure.

That all being said, Laurie definitely does keep her wits through one of the most helacious Halloween nights ever. Even better? Her weapon of choice at one point? Knitting needless. Hard-core, betches. Hard. Core.