The Haunted Castle Analysis

The horror film has the honor of being one of the few genres aside from the Christmas film to own an entire month out of the year. The moment it becomes October, in the United States especially, the haunting themes of Halloween begin to take over. Anyone can guarantee that if an individual goes out of their house during the October month, they will come into direct contact with pumpkin spice flavored items from coffee to Oreos, Halloween candy in all shapes and forms, and the horror movie. Whether it is the film that started it all, The Haunted Castle, released in 1896 and directed by Georges Méliès or to the recent string of repetitive horror of the Paranormal Activity or Insidious franchises, the horror film is a long-lasting genre with one

sole purpose, scare the living Hell out of the viewers. Aside from the science fiction and fantasy genre, no other genre creates more pop culture figures. From Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolfman to Freddy Krueger, Hannibal Lector, and Ghostface, the “horror” behind the horror movie lies in its villain. Rosemary’s Baby has the Castevet’s, Halloween has Michael Myers, and Jaws has the shark. Each of these villains derives from the fear of the viewer. Who isn’t afraid of Satanists offering your baby’s soul to the Devil, seemingly unstoppable serial killers in an unnerving mask, or giant man-eating sharks? The horror film is here to make an individual disturbed, scared, and/or disgusted and yet people flock to them, pay ten dollars a ticket and twenty more dollars for popcorn and soda just to be scared. Maybe there is something more behind the horror movie than just scaring the living Hell out of us.
Scream, directed by Wes Craven, and released in 1996, is one of the more interesting horror films to have been widely released. It is a proud member of the slasher sub-genre, spawning several successful sequels and currently owning a TV series on MTV. Following in the murderous footsteps of films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Wes Craven’s own A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream starts the viewer off with a scene of Casey Becker, played by then-star Drew Barrymore, at home alone. Taking homage from Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Psycho, Wes Craven kills off his most popular actress in the first scene, leaving her gutted and hung from a tree in full view of her parents. Despite the comedic and downright parody involved with Scream, it proves to be a horror film by maintaining the slasher feel. It avoids the crime film genre despite having the “whodunit” element as well. Scream continues its story by introducing the little group of characters, Sidney Prescott, Tatum Riley, Billy Loomis, Stu Macher, Randy Meeks, Gale Weathers, Dewey Riley, and Principal Himbry. As the film progresses, the identity of the Ghostface killer remains ambiguous as the finger points from horror film enthusiast, Randy, the creepy Principal Himbry, Sidney’s boyfriend Billy, Sidney’s own father, and even Sidney herself. Only when the character is added to the growing body count are they taken off the list of possible characters that could be wearing the mask, but even then, no one can be sure. Wes Craven is a master at creating suspense as the viewer begins to not be able to trust anyone whatsoever throughout his film. "There's a formula to it. A very simple formula. Everybody's a suspect!" shouted by character Randy Meeks, portrayed by Jaime Kennedy, is prime example to this theme.
In horror movies, sound is an intricate part of the movie. Scream is no exception. From the very beginning of the movie, sound is present. The movie starts out right away with creepy music in the background as Dimension Films slowly comes out of the darkness. It is followed by a rumble, as if several doors are being shut. While the eerie music is still going the title of the movie is stretched out and comes back together with a loud crash. This is followed by a phone ringing, a heart beating rapidly, a terrifying scream, a knife slicing into something, and finally followed by more screams. Then the infamous opening scene arrives as Casey answers the phone. She believes she is being prank called by someone and continues to hang up when the mysterious caller becomes annoying, creepy, or both. When the caller begins to sound more threatening, Casey threatens to get her “on the football team boyfriend” involved, but then the caller asks if her boyfriend’s name is Steve. This is when young Casey realizes that this is no harmless prank, or even a creeper trying to scare her. Wes Craven is adding layers. Each passing moment more tension is added. He's scaring the viewer little by little. Then, when Casey is being chased by the killer, she goes outside and all the viewer can hear is her breathing. Her breathing is rapid, full of gasps and sobs. This again creates more tension. The sound card happens again in a later scene when Sidney, portrayed by Neve Campbell, goes into her hall closet to get a bag. There's some music playing quietly in the background. When she opens the door to the closet, the volume increases. It makes a swooping sound. It sounds like a mixture of voices and instruments. It's really eerie. It makes the viewer think that someone might be hiding in the closet. She closes the door and viewer realizes that no one is in the closet. Wes Craven is again playing with the viewer. He never gives the viewer more than a couple of minutes to relax. He always has the viewer wondering what's going to happen next. This is why Scream proves to be an effective horror film despite having the comedic elements as well as the crime elements mixed within.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, directed by Tobe Hooper, and released in 1974, is one of the first films in the slasher sub-genre as well as one of the first to incorporate the “final girl” trope.

The film follows a group of friends who fall victim to a family of cannibals while on their way to visit an old homestead. Although it was marketed as a true story to attract a wider audience and as a subtle commentary on the era's political climate, its plot is entirely fictional; however, the character of Leatherface and minor plot details were inspired by the crimes of real-life murderer Ed Gein, similar to Psycho’s Norman Bates and Silence of the Lamb’s Buffalo Bill. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is without a doubt a horror movie. It features a group of friends traveling through the Texas state to a homestead belonging to the family of one of the group. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker who proves to be more than they bargained for, so they ditch him. The group separates at the homestead and two lovers plan to go to a waterhole, but find it dried up. The two characters then hear a generator running in the distance and follow the sound to a house where they intend to ask for gas as their vehicle is running low on fuel. It is here that Leatherface makes his first appearance, bashing one of the character’s head in with a hammer, and kidnapping the other. Soon enough, final girl Sally, portrayed by Marilyn Burns, is the last one standing and she is held at the mercy of an entire family of psychotic cannibals with Leatherface serving as the muscle-bound slave of

sorts.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is again, undeniably a horror movie. Shot in Texas during a blistering August in 1973, the production was a famously arduous ordeal. One during which relative insanity set in amongst the cast and crew, culminating in a thirty hour day spent filming the climactic dinner sequence. The fetid mania in the finished scene is palpable. With windows closed off to approximate night time, temperatures soared to 125 degrees in the house. The meat used as set dressing rapidly rotted, giving off an intolerable stench that prompted the crew to regularly rush outside and retch in the bushes. It features a group of college students being brutally, dare I say, massacred by a chainsaw-wielding maniac who wears the faces of his victims as masks and his cannibalistic family. The dreadful feeling of being trapped, tortured, and terrorized by such people is an obvious fear of most sane people. Lying about the film being based on a true story in order to make a quick buck added to the terror and made most people afraid to drive through the state of Texas.