By Rish Outfield
Last year, I saw a whole lot of bad horror movies. Among them were such gems as The Howling 4, Midnight Kiss, Lost Souls, Mutant Man, Arcade, Sorority Girls and the Creature From Hell, Deadly Friend, and I Married a Monster. But it was when I was watching Sometimes They Come Back . . . For More, that I sighed in resignation. It didn't even try to be a good film. It failed in just about every area, and wasn't even one of those movies that was so bad it was good. It was one of those movies that was so bad you wanted to die. I actually asked the empty room, "Did it have to be so bad? Were they actually TRYING to suck?"
I don't know the answer to that question, and I don't really care. Not in the case of Sometimes They Come Back . . . For More, as it's just not worth it. But as a whole, the entire genre begs the question a lot of the time. I thought about movie horror for the rest of the year, and thinking of all the bad horror movies I've seen, I came to a couple of disturbing conclusions.
Since we established the Horror Film Compendium, my writing partner and pal tyranist and I try to watch these films with a grain of salt. There's nothing new under the sun, and I know it, so even something that's not spectacular but at least makes an attempt at good storytelling usually gets a good review from me. But so many horror films are just bad, folks. A lot are worse than bad. Seriously, if I were to make a stab at guessing (no pun intended), I'd say that half or more of the horror films reviewed for the HFC were mediocre or below. If I went through the entire list, I'd probably find the percentage much higher.
But why?
Well, off the top of my head, a handful of reasons are that they're cheap to make, they make money even if poorly done, they have no qualms ripping each other off–-because originality isn't highly valued in the genre, they're considered by critics and viewers to be lowbrow and many horrormakers don't intend to change that.
Off the bottom of my head, I decided to elaborate on that thought, coming up with some examples, excuses, and explanations. So here are five or six reasons why horror movies tend to suck, boys and girls:
1) They can be made cheap and easy. From a filmmaking standpoint, it's cheap to do a horror film. Sure, sometimes makeup effects and ketchup can be expensive, but then, you can always skimp on the female cast members' wardrobe. Movies in this particular genre are easy to make (easier than action, sci-fi, serious drama, or comedy). Their budgets are seldom high. If any work and dedication is put into a horror film, it's in the makeup or creature effects, not the direction or the script. They tend to be fairly easy to get distributed, so their makers are usually very new to the film business. A horror movie can be set anywhere and shot quickly. They don't need period wardrobe or expensive sets or travel to locations or heavy promotion or cutting edge technology. They don't need big name stars. Many feel you don't need good actors either, as the effects or body count will compensate for whatever faults the cheap and inexperienced cast demonstrate. "Just act scared," a director might say, where it would be wiser to say, "Just act."
2) They can be bad and still make money. Along the lines of their ease to make and distribute, even badly-made horror flicks have been extraordinarily successful. Though some may argue, the most important element of a motion picture is its script. Well, from the good old Roger Corman days (and even before), horror films have proven that you don't even need that to win big. Many times, the story isn't deemed important, let alone character development, good dialogue, etc. Someone somewhere decided movies were scarier if there's no motivation for the mayhem, and filmmakers have taken that as an excuse to omit logic or believability. If it's not necessary to explain why the killer is killing, then why explain anything? Don't spend time and money on rewrites and drafts and revisions and thought. Just roll cameras and get the video sleeve ready. Because they have a built-in audience, the mere fact that they're in the Horror section of the local video store guarantees them a minimal business regardless of what the critics say or even word of mouth. People like tyranist and me can know a film is filled to the brim with cliches and ineptitude, yet we slap down our buck and a half to see it anyway, because we like the genre and what it represents. Young people flock to see "the movie where the guy eats his own head," for no other reason than that. What more do you need?
3) They are self-cannibalizing*. Horror movies, more than any other genre, have a tendency to rip off other horror movies. If something works once, it may work again (and again and again and again . . . ). They steal ideas, capitalize on trends, and pop out sequels faster than any other legitimate genre. Remakes, copycats, and knockoffs abound. When one film where a masked killer stalks teenagers made a lot of money, scores of imitators immediately went into production (and many of those made money too). When one film where a killer shark attacked swimmers made a lot of money, several variations quickly made it to the screen. When a new slasher flick in 1996 made over a hundred million dollars, all the studios leapt on the Horror Is Back bandwagon. Like I said before, in Horror, few people care about originality, unless it's originality in killing someone (hence the myriad implements of death in movies like Friday the 13th, The Prowler, and Madman). And, since nobody cares about horror films or considers them art, nobody gets into much of an uproar about blatant counterfeits or Grade Z imitations.
4) They appeal to the basest of our nature. Brutality exists within every one of us. Our ancestors had to fight to survive, and up until very recently, all human beings killed to eat. There exists within us all the potential for great evil, for great violence, for great viciousness and cruelty. To watch displays of this behaviour often touches on our lower instincts, and to find murder, mayhem and torture entertaining is not considered civilized. Because we have all thought about hurting/killing someone and not done it, a part of us is fascinated by such actions repeated on the screen. Psychologists try and connect violence on the screen with violence in real life, but few manage to credibly relate them. On the contrary, many feel there is a release achieved in watching violent material, and real-life frustrations or desires are lessened by the viewing. After Psycho and then the European influence on filmmaking, horror films tended to get more and more explicit in their violence and gore, and many people find them disgusting or tailored to the lowest common denominator. Teens are fascinated with both sex and violence. Along these lines, filmmakers began sticking sex and violence together on the screen, upping the titilation quotient, often for its own sake. Hence you get the obligatory breast reveals and the teenagers going off to have sex in '80s slasher films. These films are marketed on visceral thrills, and intelligence is actually shied away from ("If it's too complicated, you risk alienating your target audience," someone once said).
5) Scares are hard to come by. It's not easy to make any movie, with budgetary constraints, time and location restrictions, union problems, the usually filmmaking politics, conflicting visions, other pressures, etc. And Horror is no exception. Every genre has a goal inherent in itself, and the Horror goal is to scare. But scares take work. It's not easy to create a scary atmosphere. It takes time and preparation. It takes thought. It takes pacing. It takes a certain amount of skill and a certain understanding of a film's audience. It's not a simple task to get actors and actresses to realistically show fear. And it's hard to gauge what a viewer will react to in a positive way (see Laughable Scare). I think that's a reason many films rely on the tried-and-true scare attempts: the cat jumping out, the phone ringing suddenly, the friend stepping into frame and putting their hand on the shoulder, the evil mirror appearance-–they worked countless times before, and they're easy. Sometimes to frighten, you have to take risks, and that means striving for innovation (how about creating a new way to shoot something?), bucking the status quo (don't automatically declare the kittens or twelve year old safe from harm), avoiding the easy solution (dare, for once, to end a movie without leaving things wide open for a sequel). And not everybody wants to go the extra mile–-just walking across the lawn to the mail box is enough for plenty of folks.
6) They are unappreciated anyhow. I think the biggest reason horror films are often so bad is that they are unappreciated. Horror is the dirty uncle with the grabby hands of the film family. There are plenty of folks who would dance a jig if horror movies were banned forever. Even back in the Thirties and Forties with the heyday of Universal Horror, these movies were considered a lower class of entertainment than the others. No one lauds horror movies, they're considered to be contributors to society's ills, critics revile them, their fans are considered deviants, and in those rare moments when praise is actually given out, many times people won't deign to call them Horror movies ("A fantastic thriller!" "A scary work of suspense!" "A psychological shocker!" "A spooky supernatural drama!" "The summer's feel-good animated children's comedy!"). And where very little is expected, very little is achieved-–no one expects them to be any good, so they don't aspire to be.
Horror is the least-regarded class of the movie industry (except for porn, but that's an industry of its own). It is considered lowbrow, stupid, juvenile, mindless, sexist, amateurish, and evil. My father called these movies garbage. And, as any straight-out-of-school psychologist will tell you, if you're told you're bad enough, you become bad. At least that's what I told the judge.
A fair to middling example that comes to mind: a couple of years ago, my roommate and I went to the local video chain store to pick up a couple of scary movies. One of the flicks we picked up was Night of the Demons. When we got it home, we opened up the case and found that it wasn't Night of the Demons ("Freddy and Jason are too scared to come"), but the Italian gorefest Demons ("Their cities will be your tombs"). Well, we took the tape back to the unnamed video store (okay, it was Hollywood Video), and asked them to switch it for us. Well, it turned out that they didn't have a listing for a movie called Demons, and didn't see what the big deal was, since the movie we had rented was Horror and it had 'demon' in the title. Not that it WAS a big deal, but it was just another example of the low opinion people have of the genre.
If an actor was quoted as saying, "I won't make a comedy," people would call him an asshole (and they'd be right). If an actress said "I'm not interested in romantic dramas," people would wonder what her problem was. "I hate action pictures," they're boring. But everybody knows certain actors who "won't do horror movies," and we laud them for it. Good for them, they're serious actors. With few exceptions, once an actor becomes established, they try to distance themselves from their prior horror work, as if the genre were a sordid past to be buried before an election campaign. Just try asking Leonardo DiCaprio to sign your copy of Critters 3: You Are What They Eat sometime.
Horror movies aren't considered art. They're not in the running for Academy Awards. They're the B-features of drive-ins everywhere and stuck in the back of video stores next to hated subjects like Martial Arts and Documentary. Of course, there's exceptions to all of this, but very few people think of the exceptions when they think of horror films.
And there are plenty of other factors involved in creating Bad Horror. We could create a top ten list. Or a top twenty list. With so much stacked against them, I guess you can't blame the makers of crap like Sometimes They Come Back . . . For More. They figure, "Nobody is going to appreciate this, since it's just stupid horror movie, so why bother putting my heart and soul into this?" And they do a half-assed job (it's the American way). But I can blame them. There are masses of people like me in the world, who truly appreciate and love the genre, who like nothing more than a well-done, scary, entertaining horror movie.
It doesn't HAVE to be that way. You know what, around the time I came into this world, the all-time box office champion was a horror movie (The Exorcist). And two years later, it was blown off the top of the list by ANOTHER horror film (Jaws). A few years back, the big old blockbuster dinosaur action science fiction family adventure Jurassic Park was, regardless of those other words, a horror film. Horror movies have saved studios and given aspiring movie stars their big breaks. The Best Picture Oscar winner of 1991, The Silence of the Lambs was a horror film. Heck, even though I didn't dare review it on the site, 1999's multi-zillion dollar hit, The Sixth Sense, was a horror film!
And I happen to love Horror. And I don't care who knows it.
Let's just keep that between us, though, okay?
My friends, this essay has been a long time in coming. Sure, one of the excuses for that was laziness, but a bigger one was that I didn't know how to end it. Sure, there are a ton of reasons why horror movies tend to be bad, and many other reasons I didn't think of, or wouldn't understand until I had to make a few of my own. I guess if we can learn anything from this (and there's a real possibility we won't), it's that it's a real wonder that there are as many good horror films as there are. Movies are hard to make, period. But horror movies have a lot of extra obstacles to overcome.
That's why I'm grateful for the Wes Cravens and the Steven Spielbergs, the James Whales and John Carpenters, the Alfred Hitchcocks and the Sam Raimis, the Dario Argentos and the James Camerons, the George Romeros and the Steve Miners (and even the Jim Wynorskis and Edward Wood Juniors, who taught us that even the worst stuff can be entertaining). Because there are so many bad horror movies out there, it's all the more refreshing to find one that is well-done. It's like finding a Reggie Jackson rookie card in a pile of Garbage Pail Kids. It always gives me a feeling of satisfaction and excitement, when I discover a new, good slasher film or monster movie, and I want to share it with everyone I think will listen. I know there are several out there I have yet to find, and there's probably a good one being made right now.
So, no, it didn't have to be so bad. And let's hope together, that the next one is not.
Rish Outfield
* Even if you don't believe it, the pun was not intended.