Stockton’s Matinee Bar is dim, and a neon pink light glows against the vinyl black stools lined up along the bar. Two men sit across from each other at a table. One was just released from a mental institution. The first man asks: “Did they put you in a straight jacket?” “Only for the first couple of nights,” the recently released psycho responds.
Hunched in front of an eight-inch monitor at the end of the bar, director D.W. Landingham yells, “Cut!” and writer and lead actor Scott Duns scratches his forehead using a plastic fork to avoid smudging his makeup.
Landingham is shooting a suspense thriller in the historic Stockton Royale Theater, now a theater-themed bar. The original theater seats are used for seating in the booths, and the marquees above each doorway read “Cool Hand Luke,” and “Psycho.” Refreshments are still peddled at the original concession stand, but it is less popcorn and candies, more gin and tonics. Landingham, Duns, and many others have gathered this Sunday morning to humor their passion for striking fear into the hearts of grown men with their upcoming film Bad Faith.
The psychological thriller is just one branch of the horror film genre. And while scary movies range from the seriously sick Silence of the Lambs to campy B-films like Slugs, they essentially serve the same purpose: to torture, manipulate, and give the audience an all-access pass to life-threatening situations.
“I love it because you can go to the theater and forget your worries,” says Bad Faith’s production consultant Mamie Jean Calvert. But Calvert realizes that most horror films are not Schindler’s List-serious, and they cannot be properly enjoyed if you expect cinematic genius. “You have to take them for what they are,” she says.
In order for any genre of horror film to work, it has to contain two important elements: violence and boobies. “It takes more to shock people now, and you have to take it a step further,” says Calvert. Recently horror movies with PG-13 ratings are flooding the market because producers know they will appeal to a wider audience. But the audience-friendly rating cuts down on the amount of bare skin and retch-worthy gore that truly makes horror movies enjoyable. In horror there is nothing more precious than shock-value.
Horror flick producer Sean McCarthy recalls watching Ghostbusters with his dad years ago. His heart raced as Egon and Ray zapped paranormal beings with their proton packs. This was a world he’d never known, and at three years old, he took it as reality.
“What has always been an essential element to the horror film is the play on society’s primal fears,” says McCarthy. When Raging Cyclist—his first feature-length film—premiered, kids complained of having nightmares after watching the movie. To McCarthy, this meant his film was a success. “Gore is fun,” he says, “but what gets you is the psychology of it.”
The silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is considered to be one of the first major horror films. The film’s flickering cinematography, eerie black borders, and the exaggerated expressions of the lead actors will not exactly terrify today’s audiences, but in 1920 the images broke ground and gave solid, bloody roots to the horror films that are a guilty pleasure for so many people today.
Horror films later took on a more gothic appeal with strange creatures and deformities like hunchbacks and werewolves. But things didn’t get personal—that is, psychological—until Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho came out in 1960, says Mark Capraro, who teaches Horror Film classes at SFSU. In the past three to four years, films have turned to torture as a device to make desensitized audiences squirm and look away, says Capraro.
Fear in films has evolved from the unknown monster to the mysterious killer and then to the inescapable situation that is presented in what Sean McCarthy refers to as “torture porn.”
A lot of factors go into why horror films have changed and what makes them successful, but what remains is that a good horror film will get under your skin, pinpoint your vulnerabilities, and make you face your primal fears. With these films, audiences can get up-close-and-personal with serial killers, or live vicariously through teenagers running from a chainsaw—and never be in harm’s way.