Psycho
i have been rewatching some of my favorite films to yap about them so here we are lol
Dehumanizing of evil is something that never stood right with me. When learning history and being taught about 'evil' humans of the past, we make sure to overlook any traits they had that is usually associated with being human, whether unknowingly or not. We try so hard to make them out as something of inhumane nature because we do not want to believe that such evilness could exist within us. But it does.
“We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere.And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.”
In the earlier stages of horror cinema, the villains were almost always was some sort of nonhuman creature being with the belief that monsters are by definition nonhuman. Serial-killer and slasher film twisted the narrative into something completely original like no other.
It wasn't until 1960 and the dual appearance of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in the United States and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom in the United Kingdom that the serial-killer film truly came into its own. Arguably, however, these twin masterpieces did more to set the stage for the "slasher" subgenre of the 1980s than to codify an authentic serial-killer cinema.
With perhaps the sole exception of hardcore pornography, no modern film genre has reached such a level of commercial success despite—or perhaps because of—its inherently controversial nature as the slasher film. The term "slasher" has become widely adopted by fans and critics alike to describe a vast collection of strikingly similar horror films released after 1960. These films typically feature isolated, psychotic men—sometimes a female psychopath appears, but usually only for a twist ending—who are often masked or concealed, stalking young men and women (especially women). These characters' appearances, personalities, or promiscuous behaviors trigger the killer's memories of past trauma, unleashing his intense psychosexual rage.While the precise structure of the slasher film may vary based on different interpretations, certain themes have remained remarkably consistent: male-on-female voyeurism, sexual confusion and perversion, the spectacle of murder, the potential for female self-defense, the substitution of violence for sexual release, and the failure of traditional authorities to stop the threat. Though often criticized by feminists like myself for promoting misogynistic ideas and targeted for censorship by concerned parents and lawmakers, the slasher genre has largely been ignored by mainstream academics, likely due to its perceived "low-culture" status. Yet, in recent years, scholars and pop-culture historians have begun to explore the progressive potential of a genre once dismissed as "violent pornography."
As mentioned earlier, Hitchcock’s Psycho was instrumental in establishing many of the genre's key elements, such as offering a pseudo-psychological explanation for the killer's motives, portraying a sexually transgressive female as a central victim, and emphasizing intimate violence with sharp, phallic objects. One could argue that the history of the slasher film is essentially an ongoing expansion of the themes set forth by this piece of groundbreaking art.
Not only does it shift the narrative as I mentioned earlier, by that hauntingly beautiful final shot, it forces us to stand face to face with the uncomfortable reality: “If you look into the face of evil, evil's gonna look right back at you.”The evil exists within us and the most terrifying monsters are none other than humans.
A masterpiece to put it simply. The shower scene alone is a generational legacy for horror cinema. I still can’t believe that I got to see the set with my own eyes back when I was visiting LA.
I might add more to this review when I feel like it but this is all I have to say for now :]
(creds to ted bundy, taschen’s horror cinema, and american horror story i guess)