The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies (Mammoth Books)

by Peter Normanton

  This wasn’t to happen overnight, but by 1924 his team had come up with a set of criteria they termed “The Formula” whereby the studios would have to submit their plots to Hay’s public relations committee, which inevitably resulted in many films being rejected. However, not every producer forwarded their ideas to Hays’ office. Among those that slipped through the net were: Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) with its scenes of bare breasted dancing girls tossing flowers into the onlooking crowd, the sensual Flesh and the Devil (1926) with its undercurrent of homosexuality, along with the highly successful World War I melodrama, What Price Glory (1926). Hays then took measures to create a stronger system of self-regulation by establishing a list of 37 “Don’ts and Be Carefuls”, again mainly of a sexual nature. Once more, there was little reference to the bloodthirsty, even though Hollywood was beginning to introduce a growing number of horror movies to theatres across the land, such as Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde (1920), The Phantom Carriage (1920), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), Waxworks (1924), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Monster (1925) and London After Midnight (1927). Hays’ way of thinking wasn’t entirely successful as was attested by the eroticism of Clara Bow’s display in It (1927) and the first male on male kissing scene in William A. Wellman’s tale set in World War I, Wings (1927), which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Production. It has been estimated that during this period Hays’ staff only managed to review about 20 per cent of the American film industry’s total output.

  When Hays met with Martin Quigley, the publisher of Motion Picture Herald who was also a devout Catholic with connections to the loftier echelons of the Catholic Church, he was presented with a set of principles put together by the influential publisher and a Jesuit priest, Father Daniel Lord. Their effect was to create a code of morality that would govern the whole of the American motion picture industry. With the United States thrown into turmoil in the wake of the stock market crash, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America accepted the stringent provisions of the Production Code in 1930. It would, however, take another four years before the mechanism was finally put into place to allow this legislation to bring an end to the lurid portrayals of the past twenty-five years. The filmmakers did all they could to avoid the Code between 1930 and 1934 as their starlets, among them Joan Crawford, Mae West and Barbara Stanwyck, luxuriated in some of their most enticing roles. The world of film, however, was about to change; from 1934, every feature submitted for cinematic release would require a seal of approval. The Code would remain in place until 1968 when its outdated precepts were superseded by the MPAA system of film rating.

  Production Code of the Hays Office

  The stipulations of the Production Code have been summarized below to show the three General Principles, followed by the subsequent set of specific restrictions:

  1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Thus, the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.

  2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

  3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

  The specific restrictions, itemized as “Particular Applications” of these principles, were:

  • Nudity and suggestive dances were prohibited.

  • The ridicule of religion was forbidden, with ministers of religion not to be represented as comic characters or villains.

  • The depiction of illegal drug use was specifically forbidden, along with the use of liquor “when not required by the plot or for proper characterization”.

  • Any explicit portrayal detailing methods of crime such as safe cracking, arson and smuggling was forbidden.

  • References to alleged “sex perversion” (such as homosexuality) and venereal disease were forbidden, as were depictions of childbirth.

  • The language section prohibited various words and phrases that could be considered offensive.

  • Murder scenes had to be filmed in a way that would discourage real life imitations, and the detail of a vicious killing could not be shown.

  • “Revenge in modern times” was not to be justified.

  • The sanctity of marriage and the home had to be upheld.

  • “Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sexual relationship are the accepted or common thing.”

  • Adultery and illicit sex, although recognized as sometimes necessary to the plot, could not be explicit or justified and were not supposed to be presented as an attractive option.

  • Portrayals of miscegenation were forbidden.

  • “Scenes of Passion” were not to be introduced when not essential to the plot.

  • “Excessive and lustful kissing” was to be avoided, along with any other treatment that might “stimulate the lower and baser element”. A limit of thirty seconds was later insisted by the Hays Office.

  • The flag of the United States was to be treated respectfully, and the people and history of other nations were to be presented “fairly”.

  • “Vulgarity”, defined as “low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil, subjects” must be “subject to the dictates of good taste”.

  • Capital punishment, “third-degree methods”, cruelty to children and animals, prostitution and surgical operations were to be handled with similar sensitivity.

  The continuance of the Production Code would have impeded the evolution of the more extreme forms of American horror cinema, with cinemagoers being denied the chance to experience the gratuitous splatter from overseas creators such as Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, Mario Bava and Ruggero Deodato, along with the exploitation savoured by Jess Franco. When the Code was first introduced few foreign films were ever made available in the United States, although there was one notorious exception, Czech director Gustav Machatý’s Ecstasy (1933), which was scandalized by Hedy Lamarr’s nude swim and ever-so-carefully veiled sexual innuendo. The Hays Office hacked into Machatý’s film prior to its limited run in the US, although the unedited version is still believed to have made an appearance in certain art house cinemas of the day.

  It soon became obvious that one of the many failings of the Code was its inability to differentiate between age groups. Either a film was granted the coveted seal of approval or it simply didn’t see release. Further to this during the 1950s some distributors started to defy the code by bringing in foreign imports and by the 1960s with the appearance of Hammer’s stock of horror, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the drive-in splatter of Herschell G. Lewis along with William Castle, many of the Code’s restrictions needed to be relaxed. These films were now requested to carry an announcement recommending their content was intended for mature audiences.

  The current system of Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) letter ratings was introduced in 1968 permitting filmmakers to determine the nature of their film and then place it for submission to receive an official rating based upon the levels of violence, sexual activity, nudity and profanity. This rating system was based on age, but later clarified and then amended to overcome public confusion.

  Censorship in the United Kingdom

  Legislation evolved in the United Kingdom in a similar way to its counterpart in the United States. Following The Cinematograph Act of 1909, which required cinemas to attain licences from their local authority on the grounds of both health and safety and the content of the films that were being shown, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) was established at the request of the film industry in 1912. This fledgeling industry was already reluctant to the idea of being overseen by either national or local government. Although there were links with the government, particularly during the inter-war period, which warned against articulating controversial political views in films made on these shores, these were for the most part very informal. As with the Hays Office, a system for inspecting poten
tial scripts was introduced, inviting British studios to tender their screenplays prior to shooting. Surprisingly, American films were not treated quite as strictly, which allowed a flow of hard-boiled crime movies into the country, but such portrayals were out of bounds for British filmmakers.

  During World War II, political censorship became the responsibility of the Films Division of the Ministry of Information; meaning the BBFC would never again be able to influence the more political aspects of film and television. Their role was now more concerned with on-screen depictions of sex and violence with films being routinely censored seemingly as a means of social control. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) was cut to prevent the slightest possibility of teenage upheaval and Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) was edited to remove its openly sexual overtures. As social attitudes became more permissive during the 1960s, the BBFC began to devote their attention to those films that featured graphic sex and violence, which led to the prohibition of Last House on the Left (1972) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Recent years have seen a relaxation in the Board’s approach to the guidelines to keep in line with society’s ever-changing outlook, with many films that were banned during the 1970s now beginning to see release.

  In 1984, the BBFC became the British Board of Film Classification to reflect another change in its role, following the need to make classification a more significant part of its work. Under the Video Recording Act of 1984, the Board was given the responsibility for the classification of videos for both hire and purchase to view in the home as well as those films shown in cinemas across the country. Local authorities still had the final say over who was eligible to see a particular film in the cinemas in their locality, but this power did not extend to cover video recordings. The Video Recordings Act 1984 followed the moral panic created by the tabloid press between 1982 and 1983, which made the video nasty the scapegoat for so many of the country’s ills.

  The BBFC were now sanctioned to classify films under an age-rated system making it an offence to supply videos to anyone under the designated age of a specified classification. In the event that a film was refused classification, it was made illegal to put it up for sale or supply anywhere in the country. The BBFC’s role was also extended to their being empowered to demand cuts to films to enable a particular age rating, or in more extreme circumstances ensure actual classification. The act did not consider possession to be an offence in itself, but “possession with intent to supply” would be punishable by law. The BBFC would continue to demand cuts to those features that contravened the provisions of the Obscene Publications Act or other such legislation, e.g. the Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act 1937 and the Protection of Children Act 1978.

  Hammer Films

  Among the foreign imports entering the United States during the 1950s would have been a sensationalistic series of luridly bloodthirsty films produced in Britain, made by an almost unknown company by the name of Hammer. Hammer Film Productions was founded in November 1934 by William Hinds, whose stage name in his heyday had been Will Hammer. After only three years, the company was declared bankrupt following a downturn in the British film industry. However, Exclusive, the distribution arm of the organization, survived the liquidation. This allowed Hammer to rebuild, and between 1947 and 1955 they gained a reputation for producing cheaply made B-grade movies, and then in 1955 released their first horror movie. The Quatermass Xperiment was an adaptation of the Nigel Kneale scripted BBC television serial The Quatermass Experiment. The film was a resounding success, which prompted a sequel, again adapted from the BBC series and now scripted by Neale, Quatermass 2 (1957).

  That same year the company looked to producing an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from a script submitted by Milton Subotsky, but it proved a little too close to Universal’s telling of the Son of Frankenstein (1939). Jimmy Sangster was brought in to redraft the original screenplay to avoid litigation with Universal and extend the running time to ninety minutes thus making it admissible for distribution across the UK. The gruesome nature of Sangster’s script and Hammer’s decision to shoot in full colour duly alarmed the BBFC, who were so concerned with the unseemly nature of this feature they felt they would not even be able to classify the film with an “X” certificate. The script, however, remained almost unchanged and under Terence Fisher’s direction Hammer’s first Gothic horror went into production. The Eastmancolor elevated the level of gore to an intensity that had never before been experienced in film. The Curse of Frankenstein was unashamedly graphic in its bloody display and Fisher extracted every opportunity to allow the camera to linger on each of its gruesome scenes. The film proved to be a huge success both at home and in the US.

  After a lengthy agreement with Universal, work began on Dracula, although the BBFC were once again far from happy with the excess of blood coursing through the script. Terence Fisher’s direction helped to make Dracula another resounding success as it smashed box office records on both sides of the Atlantic, with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing excelling in their respective roles. These two films were to provide the formula for Hammer’s productions for the next twenty years and forced the censors to re-evaluate their guidelines.

  1960

  The year 1960 came out to be one of the most significant in the development of cinematic horror. That year five films were released in different parts of the world which would change the face of horror and, as many commentators had feared, open the floodgates for what would become an unwholesome tide of gore-ridden terror. The films in question were Psycho, Peeping Tom, Les Yeux Sans Visage, Black Sabbath and Jigoku. While many films had threatened to shock their audiences with their explicit titles such as Corridors of Blood (1958), these films challenged their audiences in quite different ways and caused immense problems for the censoring authorities across the western world. The audience reaction, however, was very positive and following the success of Psycho, Hollywood began to realize there was money to be made in such explicit violence.

  After several years of making low-budget nudie films, the highly educated Herschell G. Lewis used his exploitative formula to make a series of bloodthirsty horror movies that were made specifically for the drive-in cinemas of the south-eastern states of the US. They proved to be immensely successful and very soon other directors began to follow suit. As with the B-movie terrors of the 1950s, these films were shot in a matter of days, quite often using only one take. Their intention was to generate a maximum return as quickly as they possibly could, and to hell with the finer points of acting and production. Lewis would ascend to become the first Godfather of Gore, and as ham-fisted as his films were, they would attract a procession of gore-loving teenagers by the carload. Lewis’s Blood Feast (1963) is now considered to be the first true splatter movie and was very soon followed by so many more.

  Grindhouse and Exploitation

  With the relaxation of censorships rules in the US, exploitation cinema began to attract a greater following during the 1960s. These suggestive films had been in existence since the 1920s, but the drive-ins and the former bump ’n’ grind striptease theatres that had become the grindhouse cinemas of 42nd Street provided a ready market for these low-budget features. They picked upon the more seamy aspects of cinema and attracted a quite unique following. The films on show in these tawdry picture houses covered a wide range of sub-genres, such as biker movies, drug-related features, blaxploitation, nunsploitation, spaghetti westerns, extremes of violence, an abundance of large boobs and more than a smattering of lurid sex. European movies also began to appear in these cinemas coming in from Italy, France and Spain. Eurosleaze attracted yet another audience and soon followed the gialli and cannibal movies. If the celluloid merchandise was cheap enough, then these cinemas were interested and men such as Jess Franco showed themselves quite capable of delivering the goods, time and time again. The quality of many of these films may have been very poor, but the audiences in these rundown establishments were privy to several films that planted the seeds f
or a generation of filmmakers when they prepared to let the slasher run amok in mainstream cinemas across America. Two of these films in particular were of immense significance; both directed by Mario Bava, the first of which was Blood and Black Lace (1964) followed seven years later by A Bay of Blood (1971). Although their European counterparts were so often badly dubbed, these gialli, with their penchant for imaginative murder and enticing femmes, soon garnered an appreciative audience.

  Away from the world of cinema, a series of murders committed by the Manson Family in 1969 would have considerable repercussions for the whole of the US. The country was shocked by their vicious disregard for human life and there were serious questions asked about family values, many of which were to remain unanswered. Those films that thrived upon an excess of violence once again fell under public scrutiny, but these features also generated considerable amounts of money as evidenced by the work of the prominent Sam Peckinpah. Former college professor Wes Craven had taken a career change, entering the world of low-budget exploitation and realized that a film unreserved in its level of brutality would indeed shock its audience, but would make a highly lucrative return. The evidence was there in the newspaper headlines; the press thrived on excess and the tabloids sold on the back of it. The Last House on the Left (1972) was an audacious venture, but its controversial success inspired films of a similar ilk such as Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), which in turn inspired even greater excess, some of which again came from Craven in The Hills Have Eyes (1977).