Original subtitles

[low humming tones]

[woman screaming]

� �

- When you say "slasher movies,"

that's when the killer became the star.

- Don't go in there!

- "Halloween," it happens to be the Cadillac

of slasher movies.

- You don't know what it is...

- [screams]

- That makes Michael Myers go, "Her!"

- "Psycho" was the first time I was aware of the editing.

- The assembly of pieces of film...

- [screaming]

- To create fright.

- "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

is one of the most important movies.

- That ratchets up horror to a whole other level.

- That's the one that defined me.

- Sometimes you just want to sit down and watch Jason

take out a lot of stupid teenagers.

- There are a number of pictures where you're able

to actually take your deepest,

most antisocial impulses for a walk.

- "Horror" became a dirty word

in the late '70s, early '80s.

- These films hate women.

- 55% of that audience was women.

- They're the final girls. That's who you identify with.

- [laughing hysterically]

[chilling string music]

� �

[low tones ringing]

- There's the moment in "Halloween"

where I'm standing behind... [laughing] This house.

I don't know anybody yet. I'm 19 years old,

and saying to myself, "What am I doing?

How do I do this?"

And then you hear, "All right, everybody.

"Here we go, we're rolling!

Cameras rolling!"

And I have to start screaming.

And I had never screamed in my life.

Who screams?

Who screams?

[screams]

- [shrieks]

- [screams]

[continual screaming]

- [screams] - [screams]

- [screams] - [shouts]

- No! - [screaming]

- I suppose, for a lot of people

who grew up on "Friday the 13th,"

"Halloween," "Scream," horror equals gore.

- [screams]

[blood squelches]

- You have the idea

that all horror films

are slasher films, which is wrong,

and then you have the idea

that, uh, slasher films are purely misogynistic

and that the only people who watch them are men,

and that's also wrong.

narrator: The most extreme form

of horror films--slashers-- have been vilified

since they first came on the scene.

- [cackles] narrator: But they have also

been tremendously popular.

The worst of them can still be entertaining.

The best of them tell us brutal truths about ourselves,

our fears, and our secret desires.

� �

- [shouts]

- [screams]

[hollering]

- 1974, Bob Clark comes in

with "Black Christmas."

- [spluttering] [choir singing eerily]

- [choking]

- That is the first POV of slasher:

girls in the sorority house over the holiday...

- [groans] - [screams]

- But that becomes sort of the--the precursor

to John Carpenter, who comes in with "Halloween."

[menacing music]

� �

- "Halloween," technically, is a slasher movie.

but it happens to be the Cadillac

of slasher movies.

["Halloween" theme plays]

[suspenseful synth music]

- "Halloween" also made

horror films mainstream.

It was one of the ones that

people who "don't like horror movies" still watch.

- [heavy breathing]

- "Halloween" is remarkably effective,

like, from the opening long take of a child

looking through a mask.

- A young boy murders his sister

and is put away in a mental institution.

And 16 years later...

he escapes and comes back to the town

and to the scene of the crime.

- And over the course of Halloween day,

Michael Myers slowly lets his presence known

to Laurie Strode.

[knocking on door] - Tommy, hurry up!

Tommy, please! [shouts]

- This is rare in a lot of horror films--

actually, like, a likeable lead.

You know, in "Friday the 13th,"

you want both of those actors to die.

[laughing] You don't want

Jamie Lee Curtis to die.

You want Jamie Lee Curtis to survive.

- I think it all had to do with emotion.

John said very clearly what he wanted.

He said, "I really want her vulnerability."

It's why he cast me, apparently,

and I didn't really understand that at 19.

[menacing music]

And I learned what John meant

when I went and saw the movie

in Hollywood at a theater.

There's the sequence where Laurie Strode leaves

the babysitting house...

and there's this long walk between the two houses.

And of course, the entire audience

started screaming,

"Don't go in there!"

� �

And that's when I understood what John was going for

was that you cared enough about her

that you would tell her, "Don't do this."

[sinister music]

- So much of horror is about mood, atmosphere,

and cinematic style.

John Carpenter using the wide screen

and the Panaglide camera starting with "Halloween,"

it's something that makes the film

that much more effective.

[sharp tone plays]

- When I met John, I was immediately impressed

that he wanted to use the camera

to tell the story, rather than just a recording device.

The Steadicam-- the Panaglide at the time--

was one of those tools that John and I looked at

as being a key technique--

moving the camera fluidly.

� �

- You didn't know where Michael Myers was.

You know, you saw him outside,

and then you'd be in making out, you know,

on a couch, and it's like,

"Okay, he's out there someplace."

- Like, you'll watch a lot of these movies

and you're not scared anymore.

And when you think, of like, Michael Myers, like,

I was freaked out for years.

Just the idea of some, just, dude popping out of places...

and murdering you real quick.

- [screams]

Oh! [groans]

- Michael Myers is the human being

that's actually a wolf wearing a human face.

You know, the human that just ain't human.

[sinister music]

- [gasps]

[whimpering]

[jarring screeching tones]

- What you saw in the sequels was an attempt

to kind of shoehorn in, uh,

other characters or other mythologies

just to make it more interesting.

- In "Halloween II," they make it that Laurie

and Michael Myers are brother and sister.

- That Strode girl?

That's Michael Myers' sister.

- He's not her brother.

She's not his sister.

That's just bull [bleep].

Nobody was coming from that point of view

when they were making the first one.

And what makes the first one so good

is the fact that you don't know what it is

that makes Michael Myers go, "Her."

[menacing music]

- "Halloween" was one of the first films

to really initiate the final girl as a trope.

A main character who's a woman

who is first a victim

and ultimately, a survivor who fights back.

- [cries out]

- It's a formula that really worked,

and it's become so common

that I think most people don't even think about it.

- Go upstairs, get Lindsey, and lock the bedroom door.

- I'm scared! - Do as I say!

- The boogeyman... - It's pure.

There's something very pure and clean about it.

No! [struggling]

Innocence and danger coming together

with that music

and that camera work

and the performances

is why I think we're still talking about it today.

narrator: John Carpenter's "Halloween"

launched the slasher boom of the '80s.

Its influence is still felt today.

But it didn't come out of nowhere.

- [screaming]

- Good evening.

[eerie ambient music]

I have some news that will delight you.

� �

Murder is not dead.

- Starting with, uh, Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"

in 1960,

we started seeing a new approach to horror.

It was the, uh...the horror that didn't come out of, uh,

some grotesque radioactive anomaly,

but it could be lurking next door.

A nice young man like Norman Bates

could be the new Frankenstein, the new Dracula.

- Do you go out with friends?

- [swallows]

Well, a--a boy's best friend is his mother.

- Hitch always thought it was a comedy.

He always claimed that.

- The content, as such,

was, I felt, rather amusing.

- My mother, um-- what is the phrase...

[tense music]

She isn't quite herself today.

- But it's very perverted

and very sick.

- There's hangers in the closet

and stationery with "Bates Motel" printed on it,

in case you want to make your friends back home

feel envious. [chuckles]

And the, uh...

Over there.

- The bathroom. - Yeah.

- One of the big things

that I think to this day was still shocking about "Psycho"

was you killed the protagonist

40 minutes in to the movie. - Yeah.

- Even knowing that the shower scene

was coming, I was like, "Wait, she can't be the one

who gets killed." - "There's so much movie left."

["The Murder" playing]

- [screams]

No! [shouts]

- "Psycho" raised terror to a level

that I had never seen, anyway,

because it was near realistic.

- No!

- Before "Psycho," that was not imaginable,

that level of terror.

� �

"Psycho" and Hitchcock

brought terror into your shower.

- "Psycho" was the first time I was aware of the editing...

[eerie, quickening pulsing]

And how your mind gets tricked,

and what you see off-camera.

- This process of frightening

is done by means

of a given medium:

the medium of pure cinema.

� �

The assembly of pieces of film

to create fright.

[distorted screaming]

- That shower scene is one of the most iconic pieces

of cinema ever to be created,

so much so that it's-- it's burned in people's brains

who haven't even seen the movie.

[screeching string notes] - [gasps]

- People know that Bernard Herrmann's score--

the... [imitates string notes] You know,

kids grow up, like, doing that with that sound,

not knowing what it's from.

[laughing] Like, talk about having made a cultural impact.

[ominous string music]

- Bernard Herrmann's score to the film was very dramatic,

very--very propulsive.

It's virtually impossible

for a horror composer

not to have to wrestle with the "Psycho" score.

� �

You cannot avoid it. You have to deal with it.

� �

- In 1960, I'm sure people regarded the shower scene

in "Psycho" as having gone too far.

[rustling]

Like, "Alfred Hitchcock's gone too far this time."

But it's indelible, it's--

they're indelible images, and they're, like,

forever, like, sort of in your brain and, like,

people have bad dreams thinking about those movies.

- John Carpenter, you know, was greatly influenced

by "Psycho," even to the point of casting

Janet Lee's daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis,

in the lead role.

- Ironic that it's the same genre...

same family.

Obviously, it was the biggest...

thing in her life,

as I know that "Halloween" is mine.

So when I jokingly say to you,

"'Halloween' Actress Dies"...

that's what it will say.

Nothing else.

Just like my mom. "'Psycho' Actress Dies."

[eerie music]

- Because of Hitchcock,

people will accept cinema first in a thriller...

in a way they won't accept it in a love story,

in a way they won't accept it in a period drama,

in a way they won't accept it in almost--

most every other genre,

because Hitchcock taught people

to be thinking of cinema first.

We're just naturally okay

with the camera taking off and doing things.

[eerie string music]

- I think it's fair to say that "Psycho"

was a turning point...

[screeching string notes]

Certainly in American filmmaking--

and in Hollywood filmmaking,

because there was no one more establishment

than Alfred Hitchcock.

[dark string music]

And there was no turning back.

There was no turning back.

narrator: "Psycho" influenced every horror film to come,

and it paved the way for a new kind

of movie monster... - [screaming]

narrator: The chainsaw-wielding

serial killer. [chainsaw whirring]

[chainsaw revving]

[chainsaws whirring]

[woman screaming]

- If you think about the landmarks

"Psycho" and "Halloween,"

clearly the bridge between the two

is Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

- Yeah. - [hollering]

- [screaming]

- Out of every movie that we've talked about,

that's the one that defined me.

Like, that's everything I wanted in a movie

and everything I ever wanted to do in movies.

It was just disgusting and nasty,

and that redneck thing...

- Relentless. - That movie just changed

the way I thought about movies.

- Yeah. - Instantly.

[chainsaw revving]

[girls screaming]

- We decided to re-watch "Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"

like, a month ago. I watched it eight times.

- [shrieking]

- "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is one of the most

important movies, to me, of all horror films.

- You walk into a movie called "Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"

and you expect the worst.

And you get it.

[woman screaming]

[menacing music]

[slurping, woman screaming]

� �

It was incredibly potent and visceral...

- [sucking]

- There was an imagination-- a dark imagination--

that had no limits.

[male narrator reading somberly]

- [laughs] It just starts with that great,

like, dreadful, somber narration

at the beginning of the story.

[narrator reading somberly]

- So right off the bat, you're thinking, "Wow,

is this based on a true story?"

And then they flash this date...

- It really feels like you were dropped

into, uh, watching something happen for real.

- This heat is just driving me crazy,

I don't know if I can take much more.

- Listen, the condition... - "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

was the first one where I thought

they were real people. - Yeah.

- I never looked at them as actors.

- [laughing]

- You don't see any on-screen violence.

It's all implied. - The hook...puts her

hanging on the meat hook. - When he picks her up,

and he's holding her over the hook...

- [shrieks] [musical sting]

- And you came out of that movie

certain that you remembered,

"Oh, yeah, remember, you see the hook go through her."

But your mind just put it all together.

- Stop. [chainsaw revving]

[screaming]

- "Texas Chainsaw" is inspired

by the Ed Gein story from, uh, Wisconsin.

[dark music]

female reporter: It was a crime that shocked

the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin.

[projector clicks and whirs]

Edward Gein, accused of killing a woman,

then gutting her body like a slaughtered deer.

- Tobe told me that he-- when he was a kid,

they would tell him the story of this guy, Ed Gein.

reporter: He would use those body parts and bones

to make lamp shades and other furniture.

He would also wear dead female body parts.

� �

- And so they used to use Ed Gein

as a cautionary tale.

"Don't be bad, or Ed Gein will come for you."

� �

- Someone once said before Tobe Hooper,

there had been plenty of films about psychopaths,

but when you saw "Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"

it was the first time you saw a film that seemed

like it had been directed by a psychopath.

- Tobe, he had a sweetness to him.

At the same time, he would try to rip your head off

if you--if you even messed with a frame of his movie.

- If you'll pardon my French, they didn't give a [bleep]

about what people thought

about the movie they were making.

[sinister music]

The conditions of making that movie

were so primitive.

I mean, these guys,

they borrowed 16-millimeter Aeroflex cameras

from the University of Texas

under the hottest, worst conditions.

It was like 120 degrees,

and they were like, "Let's go out there

and stir it up."

- It was not a pleasant experience for anyone,

and it's reflected in the film.

- [screaming]

- I don't think Tobe Hooper set out

to make a movie about Vietnam, but he could not help

but reflect the rebellion that was going on.

male reporter: Subsequent investigation...

- The times were political,

and the times were, you--you know,

steeped in Vietnam.

- Hit her, Grandpa! - [screaming]

[wailing]

- "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

is a very American story,

and--and in some ways, uh, a capitalistic story.

- The place where they shoot the cattle in the head

with that big air gun thing.

- Oh, that--that gun's no good.

- I was in there once with my uncle...

- What "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

is really about

is a family of dispossessed workers.

- With a sledge. [laughing]

See, that was better.

They died better that way.

- Because of automation and loss of jobs,

they no longer have the means, you know,

to earn th--a living for themselves.

- [stuttering] With the new way, people put out of jobs.

- The oppressed working class

turn the tools of their trade

back upon their former employers--

the chainsaw, the hammer, and so on--

but it's also tied in with psychic repression,

because, like, people love the meat on their plate

but don't want to think about how it gets made.

And by substituting the teenagers for the cattle

and the former dispossessed workers

enacting revenge against them,

it's a kind of un-repression both of meat itself

and of working-class labor.

[chainsaw revving]

- [hollering]

- And Tobe called that movie

"a $60,000 flare" he shot up from Austin.

And I mean, it's in the Museum of Modern Art now.

It's a classic, but it's unmatched after that.

I mean, that ratchets up horror to a whole other level.

[chainsaw whirring]

narrator: "Texas Chainsaw," "Halloween," and "Psycho"

opened the gates for a new kind of horror.

["Friday the 13th" theme plays]

But the slasher film as we know it was truly born

with the most successful horror franchise

of all time...

[sharp string music]

"Friday the 13th."

narrator: When you think of "Friday the 13th,"

you think of dead teenagers...

- [screaming] - [shrieking]

narrator: And the unstoppable Jason Voorhees.

[sinister musical sting]

- Growing up when I did, we all watched

"Friday the 13th"... one, two, three, four,

five, six, seven.

Eight was horrible.

[whirring]

- [screaming]

- But in terms of character names...

[darkly] Jason Voorhees.

It--it was just evil.

� �

- I believe that I have murdered

more people on film than any actor in history.

I played Jason in four of the "Friday the 13th" films.

There's a lot more to playing a character like Jason

than throwing the mask on and, you know,

walking around threateningly,

because two of the major tools an actor uses

are their facial expressions

and their voice.

So now, you take away both of those

by making him silent

and putting a mask on him.

- [whimpering]

� �

- [screams]

- So I always was conscious

of Jason never looking awkward

or off-balance or weak.

I would never look down to see where I was walking,

because I thought it weakened the character.

My favorite Jason kill-- which was my favorite

all-time kill for a long time--

was the sleeping bag from "Part VII."

- [screaming] [quickening string music]

� �

- I put my heart and soul into that character

and loved playing it.

- Name the killer in "Friday the 13th."

- [breathing heavily] Jason! Jason! Jason!

- I'm sorry. That's the wrong answer.

[eerie music]

narrator: Jason is synonymous with "Friday the 13th,"

but he's barely seen in the original film.

The rest of the formula, though, was in place.

- "Friday the 13th" is a story

about a group of camp counselors

who've come up to set up a camp...

- Well, come on. Let's go.

- I thought we had two weeks.

- And have been sort of targeted

by a mysterious killer.

- No...

[sinister string music]

[breathlessly] No...

[gasping]

� �

- One or two or three of them get picked off,

and you say, "Oh, my goodness, anybody could go at any time."

- [gasps loudly] - Something's wrong with Ned.

- That was, I think, part of the--the secret

to the suspense that we were able to create.

["Friday the 13th" theme plays]

[indistinct words echoing] - It must be my imagination.

[chuckles]

[gasps, screams]

[jagged violin music]

� �

- We needed somebody that knew a lot more than we did

about how to pull off a special effect.

You wanna stab somebody with a knife.

How do you do it? You can't just get

a rubber knife and-- and start... [laughs]

You know, going at people.

And we were fortunate enough

to run into a guy named Tom Savini,

and he just couldn't wait

to get involved, and he had such wonderful,

positive energy.

- Kevin Bacon was, uh, sitting upright underneath the bed.

His--only his head came through the bed.

- [chokes]

- So I'm actually pushing the arrow through

the fake chest and neck,

and my assistant, uh, was pumping the blood.

Now, while he was pumping the blood, the tubing came off

the blood pump, and during the take,

he grabbed it and blew through it,

which caused the nice gurgling of the blood.

[terrifying violin music]

So it was a happy accident that made the effect,

you know, a l--so much better.

- What makes "Friday the 13th" a classic

is the reveal of Mrs. Voorhees.

[sinister music] - Steve!

[panting] Oh, Steve!

[musical sting]

Who are you?

- Well, I--I'm Mrs. Voorhees,

an old friend of the Christys'.

- Everyone's trying to survive, uh,

as they're being knocked off one by one

by a killer that they don't know, and then you reveal

it's the mother of this drowned boy.

- You see, Jason was my son.

- A mother was driven mad by her child drowning

and seeing the world ignore it and go by

and think that they can just restart

and go on with their lives.

The manifestation of grief is actually

very poetic and relatable.

- [screams]

- We started to hear some of the score

that Harry was writing for the first "Friday the 13th,"

and this--this... [imitates echoing sound]

Kept coming up.

["Friday the 13th" theme plays]

[indistinct words echoing]

- You remember a scene at the very end, uh...

where Mrs. Voorhees--uh, Betsy Palmer, rest her soul.

Dear Betsy. We hear, uh, her son go...

- "Kill her, Mommy.

Kill her."

- And that's what kicked it off for me.

I went, "She hears voices in her head."

I went up to a microphone and went,

"K...ma..."

And then it came out...

[imitating echoing] Kih...mah...

And it literally became the signature

of that series, the sound that--

what they call "the Jason sound."

- [whimpering] - Look what you did to him!

- [whimpers]

- [screaming] - [yelps]

[grunts]

- I remember thinking the movie was over.

You remember, she was on the lake.

And I thought the m-- I legitimately was like,

"Aw, the movie's over.

[exhales] She's at the boat."

- [growling] [shrill violin music]

- [screaming]

- He jumped out that water. I lost it.

I don't even know how I fell for that.

To this day...

was the loudest I ever screamed in my life.

- The boy, Jason.

- Jason?

- Nobody knew that was

going to become a franchise,

but it was certainly easy to replicate.

[screeching string music]

[dark music]

- The--my biggest regret is putting the bag over his head.

- [screaming]

- So then, doing "Part III,"

this guy we had hired as a--as a 3-D expert

was also a hockey player.

And I was trying to figure out--

you know, I wasn't gonna do the bag again.

"What are we gonna do?"

And one day, he walked into my office

with a goalie mask and said, "How about this?"

[sinister music]

- [screaming]

- It was perfect.

It was, immediately--

that was gonna be great.

- [growling] - [screaming]

� �

- I don't understand how, in the first one,

he's like an 11-year-old who jumps out of the lake,

and then he's built like a--

a WCW wrestler.

- [screaming, whimpering]

- I don't understand what happened

where he suddenly got all jacked.

- [screaming]

[metal crinkling]

- You know, after the first movies

and the subsequent sequels became,

"Who are these, you know, awful kids

"that we sort of hate and we can't wait

for Jason to take them out?"

[dramatic riffing music]

- [screaming]

� �

- [screaming]

- I've always thought that the slasher films of the 1980s

didn't really work as horror fiction.

But they worked pretty well as slapstick comedies...

[jarring music] - [strangled cry]

- And the reason for that is, you know,

the characters are never allowed to be anything

except one-dimensional types.

You've got a gang of teenagers.

You've got the jock. You've got the stoner.

You've got the slut. You've got the virgin.

You never care about them,

you never fall in love with them,

and so when the serial killer starts

knocking them off one by one...

You laugh instead of recoil in horror,

because he's actually more of a personality than they are.

[sinister music]

- [gasps] - With the success

of "Friday the 13th" and the success

of "Halloween," people just were--

producers were ravenous to find material

and knowing that, "Oh, well this is the formula."

[both gasp] [haunting organ chord]

- One of the by-products of-- of the success

of "Friday the 13th" and a few other movies

was that people on the outside are looking in, saying,

"Oh, they killed ten people

"and they made a lot of money.

"We'll kill 20 people,

and we'll make a lot more than that."

[shattering]

narrator: By the early '80s,

slasher movies glutted the market.

Audiences loved them,

but they also inspired outright hatred.

- [shrieking]

narrator: Where some saw harmless entertainment,

others saw a threat to society.

[both screaming]

- Come on, baby.

Light my fire.

[rock 'n' roll playing] - You bet I will.

- [laughing]

- I gotta tell you something,

the worst horror movie I ever saw was [bleep] great, okay?

- Yeah, that's true. - That's the way that I am,

because I go in there and I say,

"What am I gonna see? I don't know."

A movie that's PG-13

that's a horror movie,

it's gotta be scary in some way

that's really artistic.

[faint echoing scream]

- [gasps]

[eerie music]

Once you get to R and once you get to Unrated,

you're saying, "I don't know what I'm gonna see."

I got one word for you: "Maniac."

[quiet, sinister music]

� �

- "Maniac" is one of my favorite movies,

and I had a feeling you'd like it, which is why...

- "Maniac"--oh, of course. - As a gift for you,

I brought you a "Maniaction" figure.

- Holy [bleep]!

We did not rehearse this, folks.

Look! - [laughing]

A "Maniaction" figure.

- I'm so excited, I almost dropped it!

It's a "Maniac" bloody scalp.

- It's--isn't that sweet? - Yeah, it really is.

I mean, I don't know how to thank you for that.

[woman screaming]

- [whimpering]

- "Maniac" is about a guy named Frank Zito

who's a very... ah, oddball character

who stalks young women.

And he scalps them and he takes their scalps home

and he puts them on these mannequins.

And it is here he sort of struggles

with this relationship he had with his mother.

- I will never...

[dark music]

let them take you away from me.

- It's a very minimalist look at what happens

inside the mind of a serial killer.

- You bitch! - What...

- [grunts]

- What're you...doing... - [grunts]

- [gagging]

Stop it!

What are you doing?

- I mean, the original "Maniac" is mean,

but it's actually really powerful and,

thanks to Joe Spinell's performance,

kind of emotional.

- [sobbing quietly] Why'd you make me do that?

[sniffles] I didn't wanna do it.

- It really, like, went too far.

You know, watching that movie, you really felt like

the killing scenes were really protracted

and really brutal and really grim.

[quickening violin music]

- When that movie came out, it was so controversial

You know, a lot of women were protesting it

because this idea that it was misogynistic, of course.

You know, it's like all these movies get this label

of being misogynistic because the victims

are primarily women.

- ...again. - [moans]

- I don't feel like the film's misogynistic at all.

As a matter of fact, I feel, as a woman,

it really represents a realism to me.

It's--it's--it's like

a cathartic experience in a way,

because women live in that sort of world every day,

where we have to be hyperaware

of who's around us and what could happen.

[eerie music]

narrator: "Maniac" ends with a group of women

taking brutal revenge on the killer.

- [moaning in fear] - And this...

narrator: Today, many horror fans and film scholars

consider it a classic, but in the '80s,

"Maniac" helped set off a moral panic.

[women shrieking] - [grunts loudly]

- Horror became a-- a dirty word, I think,

in the late '70s, early '80s,

and I think that the reason for that was the--

the explosion of slasher movies.

[themes overlapping and building]

� �

- A new breed of "shriek merchants"

has exploited the once honorable genre

of the terror film.

- It was a very cheap form of horror entertainment,

and those slasher films got a lot of bad press

for brutalizing women,

for violence, for the gore,

and--and the people making legitimate horror films

were afraid that they were gonna be tainted, uh,

by the legacy of a lot of these slasher knock-offs.

- I think a lot of people have the wrong idea.

They identify these films with earlier thrillers

like "Psycho," or even a more recent film

like "Halloween," which we both like.

These films aren't in the same category.

These films hate women.

- [shrieking]

[flesh squelches, shrieking stops]

- But don't you find that

in a really effective horror movie,

blood stains the critics' eyes?

Like, once you get blood in your eyes...

- Yes, yes. - You can't wash it out.

They can't see anything else... - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Other than the kill, and they also feel like

if they like the movie,

that they're endorsing that for real--

or that kind of violence. - Yeah.

- So--so most often, those reviews just become

a soapbox to be like, "Look, I'm a good person.

"I'm a good person. I don't like

this sort of thing," but the truth is, we love it.

It's like it's-- it's the enjoying fantasy,

enjoying a scary story. It's like, it's--

it's no different from "Grimms' Fairy Tales."

[suspenseful organ music]

- The slasher films celebrate the female character

because they're the final girls.

The people who--who survive the slasher movies

are the final girls,

and that's who you identify with,

and that's the smart one.

The women are the ones who are smart.

It's the sex-crazed guys bringing their girlfriends

to have sex that, you know, get slaughtered.

- [gasps]

- Most of the feminists who were against horror

were not really watching these films

or analyzing them, you know?

They were just sort of, like, "Pornography is bad.

Horror films are bad." You know?

So they weren't actually engaging with the genre.

- These women in danger films all really boil down

to just one same image,

one disturbing image:

a woman screaming in abject terror.

- Usually it's the people who don't actually

know anything about the topic

that are the loudest complainers about it.

- And unfortunately, the audiences that go to them

don't seem to like women too much, either.

- In the '80s, "The New York Times" conducted,

um, a poll with theatergoers

to find out who was seeing these slasher films,

and they found out that 45% of the audience

was made up of adolescents.

55% of that audience was women.

[women screaming, wailing] - [gagged screaming]

narrator: "Maniac," its slasher cousins,

and the Reagan assassination attempt...

[gunshots]

Triggered a crackdown

on realistic violence and gore.

- [screaming] - By 1984,

the golden age of slasher films was over,

but audiences still wanted their scares.

- [shrieks] - So film makers created

a new kind of monster.

[sinister music]

- Okay, show her. - [gasps]

Well, is it a Good Guy or not?

- It is. It is!

Wow. - A Good Guy!

- One of the first experiences of horror

was, uh, "Child's Play."

- Hi, I'm Chucky,

and I'm your friend to the end.

Hi-de-ho! [laughs]

- [giggling] - When I first saw that,

I was about four--

four or five.

So it was just this little doll and it was cute

and then all of the sudden, it just came alive.

And it's--it's always those moments

where the camera is moving...

[suspenseful music] - [panting softly]

- [gasps]

- But you don't--it's kind of the POV of the doll

that just, like... it--it just drove me crazy.

- [shouting]

[screams]

- And I can be honest. To this day,

I'm still affected by that.

- Nobody believes you about Chucky.

[inhales deeply] Unless you start telling the truth...

right now...

they're going to take you away from me.

- It's about a mother trying

to hold her family together,

defend her--her son against this, you know--

against the charges of being a--a murderer.

I mean, a seven-year-old boy? Horrible.

And the boy may be mad.

He keeps insisting that his little--

that his doll is talking to him.

- Come on, Chucky,

say something!

Tell me!

- Hi, I'm Chucky,

and I'm your friend to the end.

Hi-dee-ho! [laughs]

- [grunts]

[sinister music]

- To me, horror is always about

violating the sacred.

Take a child-- something that we all look at

and coo over and look after and dote on--

and make them...

the most evil [bleep] out there.

And a child's toy is sacred too.

These are things we grow up with, and you--

you--you basically cast horror's black shadow, uh,

over all this sacred, righteous stuff.

- [deep voice] You stupid bitch!

- [screaming] - You filthy slut!

I'll teach you to [bleep] with me!

- No! No! - In the 1980s,

advertisers had started

to target children directly.

- Brought to you exclusively by Play Pals,

makers of Good Guys and other fine toys.

- It's like children had become

these little consumerist monsters

who could, you know, coerce their parents

into getting them more and more stuff

that they didn't need.

- Well, what do you think? - I want a Good Guy

to go with it.

- I know you do, Andy, but I didn't know about it

in time this month to save up for it.

- I remember my mother telling me

a crazy story about fighting someone

in a dark alley for a Cabbage Patch Kid.

- � I got my doll, I got my doll! �

- We can see this line between

the "direct to children as consumers" advertising

on the one hand and the potential consequences

of what that brings into the home on the other.

- [bellowing] - [exclaims in fear]

[screams] - [growling]

- I was asking for-- for them to create a doll

that had never been created before

to do things on film that had never

been done before.

This is a breath before CGI. There was no way out.

It was all on camera, live or die.

[sinister music]

And we built the apartment up--the apartment set--

four feet off the ground.

We punched holes through the set

behind the doll so you couldn't see the wires

directly behind it.

- [hollering]

- [groans]

- [shouts]

- I mean, I used every trick in the book

to try to maintain...

the illusion that the doll was alive and moving.

- Hi.

It's me, Chucky.

What do you think?

[ominous piano chords] - Mommy...

- I mean, think about it: you're being chased

by something this big with a knife!

You know, I mean... [stammering]

You know, how do you sell that?

- [hissing] - [screams]

- Well...did, didn't we?

- Chucky is a piece of horror history.

Chucky's face sits

on that horror Hall of Fame board

right next to the guy in the hockey mask,

right next to the Michael Myers mask,

Freddy's glove...

he's in there.

- [screaming, groaning]

narrator: "Child's Play" was violent,

but no one would mistake it

for the grim realism of "Maniac."

[terrifying music]

- [screams]

- [grunts] - [screams]

narrator: Chucky was following a trail blazed

by one of the most famous characters

in the history of horror...

- [cackling] - Freddy Krueger.

- You know, "Nightmare on Elm Street"

came out in 1984,

and I remember seeing that movie

and I was so excited about the fact that,

"Ooh, there's a new twist to this sub-genre,"

that now the rules of--

of any sort of world don't apply.

narrator: In part two, we'll see how

"A Nightmare on Elm Street"

brought slashers back from the grave...

- Freddy is in the imagination

of the person he's haunting...

- [screams] - And the imagination

is larger than life.

narrator: Dive into the psychosexual darkness

of "Candyman"...

- You have to be able to deliver the scares,

and you have to be able to make people talk about it

long after you've gone.

narrator: Watch as "Scream" turns the genre inside-out...

- [screaming] - I thought I was in

a documentary about a serial killer,

and they're playing this, you know, for laughs.

narrator: "The Silence of the Lambs"

makes grisly horror respectable.

- Love your suit.

[saw buzzing]

narrator: And 21st-century anxiety leads

to the no-holds-barred terror of "Saw" and "Hostel."

- [muffled hollering] - People who don't

see these films take them way more seriously

than the people who do.

- [screaming] - We wanted to make something

that was super scary, and we'd inadvertently

become known as the kings of torture porn.

- [screaming]

- [cackling]