The best slasher horror movies are based on these 6 skins

John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic Hallowe’en It was by no means the first slasher movie, but it inspired a wave of copycats who collectively encoded much of what fans still expect from the genre: the gory impalements, the connections between sex and death, the casts of young people that are. eliminated. one by one, and so on. Perhaps the most enduring element in Hallowe’en It is the most expensive. The murderer Michael Myers, whom Carpenter and co-writer / producer Debra Hill sometimes call “The Shape” in their screenplay, wears a ghostly white mask, blank and expressionless.

In the reality of the film, Myers pulls the mask out of a store. But Hallowe’enProduction designer Tommy Lee Wallace actually made the props by spray painting a pre-existing William Shatner mask. Star trek Captain Kirk’s character, and widening his eyes. Although apparently a ready-to-wear product, the modified mask was strangely grotesque, and now, it is iconic. For the moment Hallowe’enWith the end credits rolled up, the memorable masks had become essential accessories for sword-wielding maniacs.

In the years and decades that followed, horror filmmakers have toyed with the look of those masks, diverging in fascinating ways from Hallowe’en“Hauntingly abstract” mode. With the understanding that there are always blurred lines in categorization, here are six of the main groups of slasher masks, broken down both by how they appear on the surface and by how they unsettle the audience.

Elegant and / or blank

Before Hallowe’en, masked killers in horror movies gravitated toward cleanliness. In Mario Bava’s seminal giallo movie Blood and black lace, the villain’s head is wrapped in an anonymous white cloth, girded like a shroud, just like the killer’s head in Sergio Martino’s classic giallo Torso, and Clive Barker’s cult favorite. Nightbreed. By contrast, Brian De Palma’s silver plastic half mask Ghost of paradise stands out, with its bird’s nose and huge grommets. But its glow also makes it look unreal, as if it hadn’t been touched by human hands.

In Sophia Takal’s 2019 version of Black christmas (very different from previous versions), the mask serves as a symbol of misogynistic evil. It is black and polished, it looks like artificial stone. However, like the white and silver masks above, there is a void in the design that allows viewers to project their impressions and fears. There is something clinical sick about all these masks. They are not like something you would see in a spooky monster. They look more like what a very human, very perverted fetishist might wear.

Sacks

Like the blank and shiny masks, the loose burlap masks sported by some movie slashers are fundamentally featureless. But there is a rawness about sack masks that makes them more impactful than a cleverly fitted or molded blank mask. Serial killers who throw a bag over their heads appear to be in a hurry. They have to kill and they have to kill now.

One of the earliest sack-headed killers, not so remembered today, appeared in the 1976 horror film. The city that feared the sunset. A micro-budget thriller from Arkansas B-movie impresario Charles B. Pierce, The city that feared the sunset riffs on the semi-true story of a “ghost killer” from the 1940s. Later examples of effective bag masks include The strangers and its sequel The strangers: prey in the night; and the scarecrow-masked boy known as “Sam” in the anthology film Trick or treat.

In fact, the resemblance to a scarecrow may be the best way to understand the disorienting visual effect of the sack. The burlap-wrapped killers appear to have been nailed to a stick in a cornfield by a farmer seeking to scare off a flock of birds. Now they come alive and they come after you.

Off the shelf

Even hardcore horror fans sometimes forget that Friday the 13thJason Voorhees was not the killer in the 1980 original (spoiler alert: it was his mother) and he did not wear a hockey mask in the 1981 sequel (where he wore a jacket instead!). It wasn’t until 1983’s Friday the 13th Part III that Jason picked up the hockey mask that he has continued to wear in each subsequent franchise entry. Sometimes it looks like his masks could see the action tomorrow at a local ice rink, and sometimes they look just as hideous as Jason himself has become over the decades, as he has grown into something superhuman.

The quasi-practical mask is not Super-common in slashers. (One of the most prominent examples of non-Voorhees people is the 1981 gas mask My bloody valentine and in its 2009 remake). But horror movies that use them speak of a hazy fear within the audience. If we were walking through an arena or a mine, seeing someone in a hockey mask or gas mask might not seem strange. But what if we were in a parking lot? And did someone in a gas mask come up to us? We would probably be nervous, wondering why someone was using that outside of its usual context. We would be confused and in a panic … until the moment when a peak began to swing towards our chest.

Animals

Almost all slasher movies recall warning fairy tales and the notion of a “big bad wolf.” But some are more explicit about this than others. In Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass’s meta-horror Creep movies, for example, the killer, if actually it is a murderer and not just a lone joker, he has a wolf’s head. In the home invasion thriller You are next, the mysterious intruders disguise themselves as lamb, tiger and fox. And even in the already horrendous Saw franchise, writers and directors return time and again to the image of a disgustingly realistic pig mask.

Wolf or not, it’s easy to see why animal masks have such a visual impact. They are a reminder that we are not too far from any other beast that is out in the wild, scratching itself to survive and trying not to be eaten. They are also a reminder that we share this planet with other creatures, who can be inscrutable and sometimes dangerous.

Ironic

Young Horror Fans Should Look For The 1976 Curiosity Alice, sweet Alice– A murder mystery mystery in which various characters (including the killer) wear a yellow hooded raincoat and a painted doll mask. This is an excellent example of a kind of slasher mask that is still used effectively today – one that is seemingly cheesy and fun, but disguises something menacing. In recent years, slasher connoisseurs have seen similar masks in the two Happy Death Day movies (with their oversized baby face masks) and the Purge series (where some of the lawless operatives have worn smiling masks with puffy cheeks. , like a mix of Guy Fawkes and Jimmy Carter).

One of the most enduring ironic masks is worn by multiple iterations of “Ghostface” in the Scream films. Those movies are both ruthlessly terrifying and smirking; so it’s no coincidence that Ghostface’s mask looks like Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream. Like the movies, the mask is a kind of joke, which also, in a somewhat perverse way, draws on a well of real and painful emotions. It’s no wonder Ghostface has become such a popular Halloween costume in the 25 years since the first Scream. The mask is fun and disturbing, to almost the same extent.

Grotesque

Poll any group of moviegoers on what they think are the best or scariest horror movie masks. Chances are there will be a good chunk of votes for Jason Voorhees ‘sand-ready outfit, and maybe even more for Michael Myers’ bloodless, pale Shatner. But even hardcore fans of the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises will likely admit that the scariest masked killer is 1974’s Leatherface. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and its many, many sequels). A wild cannibal, who like any good hunter tries not to waste any part of his prey, the hulking Leatherface usually covers his real face with the stitched features of his victims. It’s a bad dream, come true.

The distorted and decaying original look of the Leatherface also set a standard that many later slashers have tried to match. It will always be a challenge to find a mask as uniquely terrifying as hers; but teams in movies like Burning, Behind the mask, Smiley And they’ve certainly gotten closer, relying on design motifs like exaggerated eyes and mouths, and seams that resemble scars.

All this brings us back to the original Hallowe’en, where only some alterations in the color and characteristics of a human face made it appear onhuman. Here’s what a great horror movie mask can do: take something recognizable and distort it until it looks strange. Sometimes these movies and their costumes scare us just by distorting the ordinary and reminding us that we are not as far as we think from living inside a nightmare.