Original subtitles

America in the '60s and '70s

was defined by chaos.

Senator John F. Kennedy

is the 34th president of the United States.

The flare-ups between whites and Negroes.

The escalating war in Vietnam.

Struggle with the communists.

An oil crisis

that resulted in the rationing of gasoline.

The lines are lengthening,

supplies are dropping, and reports...

Demands for women's liberation.

Equal education and job opportunities, equal pay.

A growing civil rights movement

and a general distrust of institutions

like organized religion and government with a capital "G,"

these defined the times.

Rioting in a Negro section of Los Angeles.

Profound changes to cultural norms

created intense anxieties,

leading many to fear that society,

as we knew it, was falling apart.

The largest generation in history,

the Baby Boomers, were coming of age.

And that youth quake shook the world

as millions of teens and young adults

took to the streets protesting the war,

demanding equal rights for women...

- Women! - And joining the fight

for civil rights.

Struggle together to go to jail together,

to stand up for freedom...

This episode

of Blumhouse's Compendium of Horror

looks at how films of the era

reflected the real and tangible change

the Baby Boomers demanded

and how a new generation

of auteur directors and their films...

President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas.

Pushed the envelope of what was acceptable.

It has been established that persons who have recently died

have been returning to life.

I think if I had to come up with my Mount Rushmore

of horror directors,

you'd be like John Carpenter,

Wes Craven.

Tobe Hoover definitely belongs.

Definitely got to be Romero.

Night of the Living Dead

is in my DNA and in the genetics of my work, as well,

because, you know, you've got George Romero going like,

"You know, we got two bucks, and we got a field.

Let's make a zombie movie."

Boy, you used to really be scared here.

Johnny!

You're still afraid.

Stop it now. I mean it.

They're coming to get you, Barbara.

I was scared in my mom's basement,

this one back part of her basement.

It was a damp and dark place, and that's where I used to go

to fire up an old projector and watch old reels of film.

One day, I found this old print of this movie

that I'd never obviously heard of.

I guess I was about seven.

And it was Night of the Living Dead.

My mom found me like, I don't know,

end minutes before the end of the movie

and tried to, you know, turn it off.

But by that point, I was fucked.

Good Lord.

It took me a long time before I was cool

to go back in the basement.

And then I realized what my dad did.

I realized the creativity of it all.

To me, it was like it was the first time

I ever really kind of had an understanding

of what he did as an artist.

And I think most good directors that really have a grasp

of the medium can do horror.

And now that they're becoming venerable

in the eyes of the studio and so forth,

a lot of those people are going into it.

The idea that corpses could come back to life

as bodies without souls

originated in 19th century Haitian folklore.

Stories of the dead being reanimated

usually involves some form of religious ceremony,

such as voodoo.

These stories of the undead walking the earth,

along with a book called I Am Legend,

inspired director George A. Romero

to turn those concepts

into the flesh eating, slow-moving zombie

that shocked audiences in Night of the Living Dead.

I had met George Romero.

We were on a family vacation, and we were in Italy.

My Love for Night of the Living Dead

had sort of reached its pinnacle.

I'm happily typecast in a genre that I've always loved.

And I have an opportunity to work on Day of the Dead.

Day of the Dead was one of the greatest experiences

that I had ever had.

I mean, talk about just being plucked from a little kid

in his basement, watching horror movies, to standing next

to one of the greatest horror directors of our generation.

And watching him film a zombie movie and being in it.

I was actually in it, too.

I got decapitated. My head came back to life.

I mean, I could have retired at 19, for fuck's sake.

Aah!

I remember George Romero talking about movies

and the roller coaster ride, the adrenaline.

You know, you have people that may not want to ride

a roller coaster for real, but they'll go see a movie

and they'll go on the same journey.

Night of the Living Dead

is probably one of the few films

that actually gave me nightmares.

Saw it at a horror festival.

It was a couple of years after it came out.

So it already had a reputation.

It was heavy.

It was that really crude black-and-white photography

which gave it an almost semi documentary feel

and made it feel more realistic.

That's what really got to me.

The Night of the Living Dead made money

and lots of it.

Shot for just $114,000,

the movie grossed more than 12 million

during its initial release alone.

To hype the movie, a $50,000 insurance policy

was offered to anyone who died of a heart attack

watching the film.

A marketing stunt that made seeing the movie

an irresistible test of courage for true horror fans.

Night of the Living Dead was groundbreaking for everything.

They made a movie in a town where movies weren't made.

They bucked the system, and they showed people images

that made every single person in 1968

who saw those images uncomfortable

at a molecular level.

Horror films to that point were cause and effect.

Actions have consequences.

Then here, these guys come with this film

that you could just be in the wrong place at the wrong time,

get bit, and the next thing you know, whoever you trusted

with your life and your heart and your spirit was now

turning on you and was a creature that was going to

not only kill you and eat you...

but turn you into another one.

The notion of the dead not dying,

coming back and turning you into a dead person,

infecting you with more death.

This zombie looks like your fucking girlfriend

or your husband who just died.

And then they're going to wake up,

and they're going to try to eat you,

and then you're going to fucking die,

and then you're going to become one.

Relatively new notion.

There are a lot of choices that people have to make

in the zombie apocalypse mythology.

I'm sorry, Mum.

Do it!

And when you realize that surviving

means having to do things

that you couldn't imagine that you would have to do,

and what this kind of thing does to a person,

it just shows you the drastic change

that people can undergo when dealing

with these tremendous outside circumstances.

And the distrust, man's distrust for other men.

Obviously, Night of the Living Dead

is a very, you know, low budget,

but it's about the beginning of the breakdown of society.

We have to look at the different iterations

that have been put on screen of the, you know,

post-apocalyptic living, whether it's, you know,

Mad Max, or 28 Days Later.

George Romero had a great handle on,

you know, the decay of society.

Ideas for the the zombie films that I've done anyway,

the idea always comes first.

I have to know what the movie's about

because they're not really movies about zombies.

I mean, the zombies are almost just minor annoyances, you know?

It was an extremely turbulent time,

and the civil rights movement was huge, and Vietnam was huge.

And the film itself is just chock full of messaging

about all of that.

But the messaging about it that I personally took away

was that times were changing.

Night of the Living Dead was released in the fall of '68

when America was experiencing profound tragedy and change

in the area of civil rights.

Just six months earlier, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Had been assassinated in Memphis.

The reaction in the streets was swift and furious

because equality seemed more unattainable than ever.

Horror films had always put social tensions

front and center, and George Romero's choice

to put a Black male lead in his movie

sent a loud and clear message.

To actually have a Black protagonist

in Night of the Living Dead was pretty cool.

It was pretty revolutionary. We had never seen it before.

And a heroic Black character. I mean, he was the hero.

He was the only one that knew what was going on.

The cellar is the strongest place.

You box yourself in the cellar

and those things get in the house, you've had it.

At least up here, you have a fighting chance.

You know, usually in a horror film,

the Black folks are the first to go.

There were a lot of instances where George had said,

"Look, I cast Duane Jones"

because he was the most talented actor

that he had met at the time.

You know, was George subliminally telling a story

by putting a Black man in the lead?

Subsequently, all of George's movies from that point on

had an African-American lead and a female lead, you know.

So whether it was by accident or subliminal,

George definitely was making a statement.

Night of the Living Dead definitely changed

the horror genre

because it kind of stretched what's permissible.

You didn't see so much viscera in movies.

You know, it definitely unleashed

what was possible visually.

You know, you could now see intestines being pulled out

and being eaten up by a zombie.

Now you could see the possession of a child.

The idea of the evil child, the demon child,

you know, that little girl, she comes back

after she'd been killed, and she comes back

and tries to eat her mother in the basement.

Oh, baby.

So that made a lot of things permissible.

In the '60s, there was a huge trend in the occult.

You had people leaving the church.

Church membership was down.

People were saying they were atheists.

You had a godless Catholic in the White House.

I mean, people hated that JFK had been Catholic.

That was like viewed with such alarm across America

that this invidious pope worshiper

was in the White House.

Suddenly it seemed like all religious faith

was up for grabs in America.

It wasn't the country we told ourselves we thought it was.

Hail Satan!

Hail Satan!

We weren't just a country of white Protestant men.

There were women who wanted rights.

There were Black people who wanted rights.

There were Catholics, there were Jews, there were Hindus.

There were all these other people out there.

It was terrifying to white people.

And so Rosemary's Baby really jumps in with all four feet

right on that pressure point.

Oh, that's nice. What is that? That's the TV room?

Well, only temporarily. It's going to be a nursery.

- Oh, you're pregnant? - No, not yet.

I hope to be as soon as we're settled.

Wonderful! Well, you're young and healthy.

You'll have lots of children.

At their most basic,

horror movies have been allegories

for the fight between good and evil.

Rosemary's Baby was no exception,

opening in theaters in the summer of what turned out

to be a pivotal year in history and in the movies, 1968.

Women were on the march, rejecting marginalization

and demanding that their voices be heard.

They were moving into corporate offices, boardrooms,

and into the political center of power.

Against that backdrop of societal change,

Rosemary's Baby was a sophisticated horror film

that reflected the paranoia of the era

and asked complex questions about female autonomy,

marital abuse, and the role of women

in a rapidly changing world.

I've spoken pretty openly about the fact

that I am somebody who can speak back to the screen

when Rosemary's Baby is playing.

It's a cornerstone film for me for so many reasons,

but I just find it that deeply entertaining.

This is for you from Roman and me.

For me?

It's just a little present is all, for moving in.

There's no reason...

Real old. It's over 300 years.

And scary for a lot of different reasons.

It's lovely.

You know, not just about sort of the literal story,

but for all of the subtext I think underneath it.

In Rosemary's Baby, director Roman Polanski

used themes of religion and the occult as a backdrop

for questioning the role of women in society.

Rosemary's Baby kind of came out of nowhere in '67.

Before, movies were gothic stuff from Hammer,

vampires in Ancient Europe, Victorian Times,

old timey places.

Universal Monsters.

On TV was The Addams Family, The Munsters,

laugh track horror.

We don't want any child of ours going to school

and being stared at.

With Rosemary's Baby,

you suddenly had this contemporary horror story

set in modern-day New York.

He's an actor. She's a homemaker.

They're young kids in love,

living in an identifiable, recognizable,

modern-day setting.

With Satan.

This is no dream. This is really happening!

I have a memory of just feeling like this movie is unreal.

You know, I mean, Ruth Gordon.

Are you kidding me? This performance.

Listen, I won't let you go to no Dr. Hill,

nobody ever heard of.

The best is what you're going to have, young lady.

Where's your telephone, huh?

Just the vividness of the filmmaking.

The assuredness of every passage, every shot.

I still watch it with a sense of awe. I really do.

Dr. Hill prescribed vitamin pills.

No pills. Minnie Castevet has a herbarium.

I'm gonna have her make a daily drink for you

that will be fresher, safer, and more vitamin-rich

than any pills on the market.

Rosemary's Baby is about the complete lack of autonomy

and control that a woman and or women societally

have over their bodies.

I think just the general feeling of powerlessness

in Rosemary's Baby, how no one would listen to her,

how she was constantly being gaslit,

how she was listening to these men,

and as a result, literally gave birth to the devil.

I just remember that pervasive feeling of like,

"No one will listen to me,"

being something that really shook me emotionally.

Has an under taste.

A chalky under taste.

I don't get it.

That's silly, honey. There is no under taste.

I think Rosemary's Baby is haunting

because, one, this is her husband,

the person she's supposed to trust

more than anyone in the world, who's supposed to love her.

The dismissive pat on the head

and extreme gaslighting behavior on stark display

in Rosemary's Baby were all too familiar to women

ignored by their bosses, and even by their own husbands.

Like all the best horror films, Rosemary's Baby was

a resonant, riveting echo of its time and its portrayal

of a vulnerable woman exploited and betrayed by the men

she trusted made an indelible impression.

A scene that I love in which late in the game,

Rosemary realizes, "Oh, my God, something terrible

is happening to me."

And she goes to her original gynecologist,

played by Charles Grodin, and begs for help.

And maybe all of this is coincidence.

But one thing is for sure.

They have a coven, and they want my baby.

Certainly seems that way.

And he listens to her, and he's really patient,

and he says, "Why don't you lie down?

You must be exhausted. I'm going to get you some help."

And he leaves, and you see her say,

"Okay, little Andy or Jenny, we're going to be okay.

This nice man is going to help us."

God bless Dr. Hill.

And then she wakes up from her nap.

And similar to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

scene I love so much, she is returned to her captors.

And you realize that

whether Charles Grodin was in on a scheme

or just simply thinks any woman with this story

must be utterly insane, he has done the absolute wrong thing.

And that moment is like the fulcrum of the whole movie.

Somebody help me!

I think it's a great allegory for sort of

the "my body, my choice" fight that has been happening forever.

I think the most brilliant thing about Rosemary's Baby

and why it stood the test of time

is because we're still fighting for control over our own bodies.

That is a fight that is sadly still going on to this day.

The early '60s were when back-alley abortions

were sort of the unmentioned elephant in the room.

Reproduction was huge in the '60s and in the '70s,

and, in fact, you had a ton of childbirth horror coming out,

and a lot of that finds its roots with Rosemary's Baby.

I won't have an abortion.

Nobody's telling you to have an abortion.

Just go to see another doctor, that's all.

Films like Carrie or Rosemary's Baby

are films often made by men that are struggling with

the notion of femininity and femaleness,

as both societally and then,

for some of the filmmakers, personally monstrous.

Rosemary's Baby was not only a reflection of

America's reaction to the women's movement,

but a reflection on director Roman Polanski himself.

Polanski's subsequent statutory rape charge

and flight from America sent many women back

for a second look at the film

about the takeover of women's bodies.

So there's something really interesting to me

about seeing those filmmakers forcing themselves

to be empathetic with female characters

and a female point of view and female experience.

With women demanding power in society

and in their homes, horror films continue to grapple with that

shift by taking it into the spiritual realm.

The graphic depiction of demonic possession

unnerved a country steeped in religious belief.

The Exorcist was ahead of the cultural curve

with its depiction of God versus the devil

in a spiritual fistfight for the soul of a child.

And audiences, already questioning the role of religion

in modern society, well, they were ready.

For me, 'cause I was an old Catholic kid,

the devil will still always be the absolute worst

because the devil could be anybody,

and the devil is a supernatural force.

Well, then let's introduce ourselves.

- I'm Damien Karras. - And I'm the devil!

Now kindly undo these straps.

If you're the devil, why not make

the straps disappear?

That's a much too vulgar display of power, Karras.

I think I saw the original Exorcist in a theater,

which is still, to this day, one of my favorite horror movies

ever because of the approach that they took.

They were like, "This is real. I'm Friedkin",

very intense filmmaker, and I'm going to hire

like Ellen Burstyn as the mother, who is a completely

believable actress,

like Academy Award-winning type actress.

"I'm gonna put her in this horror film."

As a Catholic, I wasn't allowed to watch The Exorcist

because it would possess me.

So by the time I recovered from Catholicism, I watched it,

and I go, "Oh, yeah. I can see how this messed up some people."

The first time I saw it,

I actually went to see it in the theater.

It's a super scary movie to see in a theater.

And one of the most shocking moments in my life

in a horror movie is when she does the spider walk

down the stairs.

And I remember starting to see it.

And then the next thing I know, I'm standing on my seat

in the theater, like, crouched.

Like, I don't know how I got there or how fast it happened.

But I remember my friend, he's like, "Get down."

And I was like, "Where... Where am I? What happened?"

How long have I been out?"

Which is like, I don't know if that's flight...

It's flight, I think.

It's freeze. I would have...

The tiger would have eaten me.

I was 10, eleven years old when The Exorcist came out.

Everything about The Exorcist felt like it was happening

in the house next door to me, and that was terrifying.

And that was what was terrifying for most people.

I mean, there were lines around the block.

Despite being banned by most organized religions,

including the Catholic Church,

The Exorcist was a commercial and critical success,

partly because it was so subversive at a time

when Americans were questioning their own spiritual beliefs.

The Exorcist won two Oscars and placed horror films

and horror fans into the mainstream.

You know, walking backwards down the stairs,

making a kid's head turn around and stuff like that.

Vomiting pea soup.

Ah!

All of that shit is pretty horrifying.

But, you know, I don't even think

you have to be Catholic to truly be unnerved.

The taboos that were explored in the early '70s,

no one ever would have imagined a movie like

The Exorcist, that explored the violation

of a 12-year-old girl by this demon

and everything that it did for the Catholic Church.

Well, we as Catholics, we were told every week,

"You're not allowed to go see that movie."

And I don't know a single Catholic

that didn't fucking eventually go see that movie.

The Exorcist is considered the scariest

horror film ever made because it strikes into the heart

of a very religious country.

You know, that's the last thing we want to do is mess with

the devil and have it show up in our homes.

That's why we put, you know, the crucifix on the wall.

That's why we go to church.

And then when it just shows up because a demon wants to have

a good time, it's super scary.

I feel The Exorcist hit the nerve that it did

because at that time, nobody had seen anything like it.

At that point, people found a lot of comfort in religion.

And now all of a sudden, this movie comes out

that's like... people's beliefs were being stirred in terms of,

oh, why would a God let something like that happen?

And in such a dramatic and horrific fashion.

The 1960s introduced America to

the counterculture movement and the hippies.

America's youth wanted change, and the hippie movement,

well, they wanted it yesterday.

Young people protested against the Vietnam War.

They rebelled against commercialism.

And they fought sexism and racism.

They pushed the needle of progress so far

that it made their parents' generation squirm.

And what the hell's the matter with you kids?

But if the hippies saw love and peace

as the goals of their movement,

older, more traditional Americans saw chaos.

And after Charles Manson and his murderous family,

even evil in the movement.

The 1960s were incredibly idealistic.

There was the idea that the world really could change

because this new generation of young people

who thought so differently, they were going to be in charge.

And by the time we get into the '70s,

the system is fritzing wildly.

They were rebelling against the government.

They were rebelling against war.

They were rebelling against racism.

They were rebelling against everything

that we continue to rebel against.

There was an insanity in the air.

There were always serial killers throughout time,

from Jack the Ripper and centuries before, I'm sure.

But it was somehow, I don't know,

it was in the air in the '70s,

whether it was Son of Sam or a chainsaw massacre

or the Hillside Strangler.

Like, it was out there.

There were people out there.

And The Hills Have Eyes and I Spit on Your Grave

perfectly bring the horror of war and the chaos of war

to your front door.

And they show you that there is no escaping

from the unseen evil in your neighbor.

You know, in the mid to late '70s,

horror movies were very punk rock.

There was an edge to them.

Most of them are made with no money in that era whatsoever.

You know, Texas Chainsaw Massacre

is like, it puts Clerks to shame in terms of,

like, use of minimal budget.

Like Psycho before it,

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is believed to be based

on the true crimes of a serial killer.

And the origin of Leatherface could also be traced back

to the violence inflicted by the Butcher of Plainfield, Ed Gein.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was cheap to make

and grossed millions in its first run.

Low-budget indie films took note.

I love Texas Chainsaw Massacre

because it is like, we've got no money,

but we'll scare the hell out of you.

It is very proto Clerks for me.

If they don't make that movie,

I don't get inspired to make mine, even though

they're two completely different subject matters.

Oh, my God. The scariest movie I've ever seen, hands down,

is Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

I remember being shaken to my core by that film.

And it's definitely one of those movies

you don't feel the artifice or the seams of filmmaking,

though it's an extremely sophisticated movie.

You feel sort of just like plopped in real life

in some horrible way.

That movie really stuck with me and stays with me,

and I consider it one of the greatest horror films ever made.

Generated by sensational coverage

of anonymous serial killers that seem to be lurking

in every suburban neighborhood, a polarized America was becoming

increasingly frightened.

That sense of dread had movie fans primed for films

that brought the faceless, senseless, evil killer to life.

Tobe Hooper elevates the art form in this incredible way

and makes a movie so terrifying

that any time I try to make a horror movie,

that's the movie I was trying to make.

When I tried to do Red State,

that's me trying to do Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

When I tried to make Tusk,

I was trying to do Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

That movie still lives in my heart and soul.

It's a movie I still watch once a year.

It still fucking works.

The mastery of what Tobe did was that he made it completely

on what you thought was happening.

It was considered the most violent film ever made.

But there's no blood in it.

[ Woman screams ]

And then just the title alone, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

You know, you're expecting to see massacre by chainsaw,

but you don't see it.

You know, so it's a pretty subtle film.

When I think of Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

I definitely identify with the kids in the van.

And I look at the world out there

that you're just driving cross-country,

minding your business, and there is fear of everyone else.

A genuine xenophobia that I have experienced

when I'm driving in any town where I don't know people,

but I don't know what evil lurks there.

The film was so successful because it went to dark places

that other films just weren't gritty in capturing.

There was a conspiracy of evil

so that you could walk into a spider's web

where everyone agreed that this was okay.

You know, not just Leatherface,

but ma and pa and everybody and the sheriff

and whoever you run into were part of it.

What could be more terrifying than that?

I think Leatherface is scary because he's made of flesh.

That's dried skin that he's sewn a face together to wear.

It's really terrifying.

It sort of predates Hannibal Lecter in that regard,

and we'd just never seen that before.

Leatherface is scary because he's dumb and he just...

He's told what to do and he does it.

So it's really... he's a tool for this family that

makes him do terrible things.

Clearly Leatherface is kind of a tragic character.

I mean, he's obviously mentally disabled

in some sort of capacity.

You know, he's not having fun either, you know.

Like, he's being abused just as much.

You know, like his family are the real evil ones

because they're abusing Leatherface.

And, you know, I don't think Leatherface on his own

would have necessarily been a murderer.

He's also pretty funny.

I mean, like, there's that sequence where they're

getting ready for dinner, and he changes his skin mask

to be like the mother figure.

You know, when he's putting out dinner,

he's got lipstick on and everything.

It's like there's a real sick,

hilarious sense of humor to that movie.

Internationally, the film was a success

despite being banned in more than a dozen countries,

including France, Brazil, and Australia.

Its success was a combination of fear of the killer next door

and the humor of an inside joke.

Horror films were like a relief valve

for the tensions Americans were feeling in 1974,

when the film was released as the U.S.

was winding down yet another war.

I think that wave of horror movies

with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit On Your Grave,

and The Hills Have Eyes all did follow the Vietnam War.

I don't think you could separate one from the other.

Vietnam was such an ugly, bloody, nonsensical, chaotic war

that I think all of those films

sort of lived in the undertow of it.

I mean, I think Texas Chainsaw Massacre

depicts a world where we are witnessing

what it means to lose our humanity

and to no longer see other people's humanity.

And to know that Tobe Hooper was making that movie

and probably metabolizing a lot of feelings about Vietnam,

about what it means to be an American,

a patriot, an artist, a weirdo,

all of those things end up in that movie.

The first time I watched Carrie,

my worst fears ever were displayed on screen.

You know, I think growing up as a teenage girl,

the absolute horror of trying to fit in,

of trying to belong amongst your peers is already hard enough.

But to then be sort of like an outcast or a loser

who's then horrifically tricked into feeling

like she finally belongs,

only to be cruelly pranked with pig's blood,

that was not only horrifying, like on a, you know,

horror-genre level, but also horrifying as a human being.

Carrie is just a perfect manifestation of how high school

is a horror movie in and of itself.

It taps into this very, very primal thing

of being in high school and how horrifying

that can be, how terrifying kids can be

to other kids in high school.

I was a child when I saw Carrie,

probably not when it came out,

but when I was old enough to be allowed to see it,

and I was afraid to go to high school,

and it definitely didn't calm my fears at all.

Carrie is cool 'cause that was the first book

that Stephen King ever wrote.

And I think, like, he threw it in the garbage, and his wife

took it out of the garbage.

Did you know that?

Maybe not the whole book, but like a chunk of it,

and thought it was so bad, he threw it in the garbage,

and his wife, like, took it out of the garbage

and was like, "No, no, no, dude."

Carrie was rejected by 30 publishers

before it was released in 1974, becoming a runaway bestseller

and catching the attention of director Brian De Palma.

This story has resonated with generations of women

looking for ways to harness their power

when they felt they were at their most powerless.

Carrie was quintessential to my generation,

and I loved it because, as opposed to Rosemary's Baby,

where it's about a woman who has no agency over her body,

Carrie is all about this girl who is

coming into her own power while she's getting

supernatural powers and how she's going to

take agency off her identity and take control over her body.

But in the most precarious time there is,

which is when you're going through puberty

as a teenage girl.

My favorite scene of that that I feel like encapsulates

the movie is when... you know, she's 16, she's 17,

she's in the shower, she gets her period for the first time.

Isn't she a bit old for her, uh...

Her first period.

And then she's mocked mercilessly.

But I don't know why that should surprise us.

I mean, knowing that mother of hers.

And I thought the sort of thematic structure

of showcasing this is the moment she becomes a woman,

only to be completely rejected by her peers

and then have them pretend to love her.

And then dump blood on her.

I was like, "Wow, this is every"

teenage nightmare brought to life."

And the fact that she has powers and then can take control

and give those motherfuckers what they had coming to them,

I was like, "This is a villain I'm rooting for now."

I want her to murder all of them."

Carrie was sort of the first time you had a movie

where your protagonist was also your antagonist, so to speak,

and you sympathized with Carrie as a young teenage girl

trying to find her way through the world.

We're all sorry about this incident, Cassie.

It's Carrie!

But then you are also terrified of her ability.

Please sit and talk to me!

And that movie is so special because it's like a female

lead character who has super powers.

Ah!

I guess someone who maybe got bullied in high school

like plays into our fantasies of like,

what if I could do that?

Carrie came along at a time when

internalized misogyny was ingrained in our culture.

The scene where Carrie's protector blames her

for not fitting in reflects

a brutal reality for too many women,

a world in which they're not just preyed upon by men,

but are pitted against each other.

The coach wants to help Carrie, and you see her say, you know,

"If you put on a little mascara"

and we get you a beautiful dress,

"you know, you're just going to be so beautiful."

And that's a pretty girl. Look at your eyes.

Little mascara to bring it out. Little.

Your lips. Try some lipstick.

You have nice, pretty lips.

And in some respects, a lot of what she's saying

is uncomfortably mirroring the world

that Carrie's in in the first place,

where it's kind of all about,

well, if you were just pretty, it would all get simpler.

And that is then met by the fact that she, too,

is, consciously or not, brutally killed in that gym.

Carrie!

Oddly enough, the film says that being a teenage girl

is really fucking hard

and that anyone who has the sort of callousness

to reject people or bully people who otherwise don't deserve it

should probably be killed.

Carrie, for instance, is a story

about a young girl with a secret,

and it's a great source of shame and guilt for her.

And she can't let anybody know.

And she lives in terror of her classmates finding out about it.

And, I mean, Stephen King even gave us a religious mother

who's trying to pray it out of her.

I mean, what better allegory for being gay?

You know, and also, I think for me as a gay man,

I always bonded with the final girl

because she's such a survivor.

But she's also the one who has to fight for her life.

And what gay man doesn't understand

the daily struggle of survival?

Certainly for me, growing up a small town,

it was all about survival.

So I truly bonded with the final girl

of all these horror movies.

That's why I think I fell in love with Jamie Lee Curtis.

I did a TV series for a year called

Operation Petticoat, and then I was fired.

I thought my life was over. It was a disaster.

I was devastated.

My manager said,

"There's this low-budget horror film being made.

I've put you up for it."

They wanted to meet me for Laurie,

the quiet, intellectual, virgin, brainiac babysitter.

I auditioned three times.

The auditions took place in John's office.

The third audition, I did the scene

where Laurie's on the phone with her friends.

Annie, was that you?

Of course.

Why didn't you say anything? You scared me to death.

And then she hangs up,

and then she looks out the window and sees Michael.

And then she talks to herself and says,

you know, "Don't be ridiculous, this is ridiculous" whatever.

And then somehow I got it.

Jamie Lee Curtis, she was perfect for the role.

She was absolutely ready to go.

She's really a fine actress. And I'm really proud of her.

All I knew was that it was a part that my name was on

every page and that I got to actually not be me.

So I got to actually create a character.

So I was thrilled about that.

What about the boogeyman?

There's no such thing.

Halloween is an iconic film,

hugely successful, both at the box office

and as an influence on horror films to follow.

The slasher movie often depicted sexualized teenagers

on the run from a faceless,

deranged killer brandishing a knife, chainsaw, or ax.

But Halloween deepened the mythology

and planted its psychosexual horrors directly in suburbia,

exactly where much of America was living.

And as with all things Hollywood,

a wave of slasher movies hoping to be

the next Halloween soon followed.

But Halloween represented something new at that point.

Think about your average horror movie, right?

Not the high concept ones were the devil's involved

or special effects and stuff like that.

Something as simple as like,

hey, this lady's babysitting and her friends are

babysitting, and a psycho has come to town.

And he's gonna peer in their windows

and then maybe go in and kill them in interesting ways.

That don't fucking cost anything.

We didn't have any money for Halloween.

We didn't have anything.

So we had to decide what to do about this mask.

It was written as a Halloween mask,

but it was written as a blank face.

So Tommy Lee Wallace, the art director,

went up to Bert Wheeler's Magic Shop

on Hollywood Boulevard and bought a mask.

It was a Captain Kirk mask.

Looked nothing like Captain Kirk, okay?

But spray painted it white and fooled around with the hair,

and that's the mask.

Let's put him in a white mask,

which is human, but it has zero human features

so that it becomes the thing you project your own fear on to.

You've been told about him.

He is the essence of evil. He's pure evil.

And now we know that, and let's collide

Laurie Strode and Michael Myers.

And I think that's why it was so good.

It's an absence of humanity in a human.

That's the whole essence of evil.

You strip the humanity away in the human being,

and that's what you get, is evil.

John and Debra sat there together and went,

Okay, what's the most ubiquitous image of Americana

of a smalltown life but a high school girl

who's a virgin, who's smart, who's a babysitter,

and let's collide her with the most evil creature

we can come up with.

Michael!

A child who murdered his sister.

Michael?

It's even more terrifying if the movie you're shooting

looks like the real world.

You know, when you looked at the movies of the '50s,

they were shot on back lots and stuff.

So there's a separation from the material for the audience.

When you're looking at Halloween, you're like,

"That looks like my neighborhood.

That looks like a house that's down the street from me."

So the more you can reflect the real world,

the more terrifying I think you can make it for people.

And I think that's what Carpenter

did best with Halloween.

- Bye. - Bye.

There's a very simple effect on Halloween

where the camera will linger in the distance and watch somebody.

Fucking scary.

And it's also like, well, what's going to happen?

Like, well, who is that? What are they doing?

Are they going to move in there soon?

You know?

All of it is unnerving.

Silence is very important in horror.

Be quiet before the horror strikes you,

and it will be frightening.

The music... well, the theme came from something my father

taught me when I was younger, when I was 13,

this 5/4 time on a pair of bongos.

And I just picked up the time and played around the piano.

When you hear "a low-budget film,"

you don't have any money for an orchestra or a composer.

I had three days, so I did the score for Halloween.

John was very clear what he wanted.

He kept saying, "I want her to be really vulnerable."

Now, I was 19 and uneducated,

so I actually thought the word "vulnerable" meant "weak."

I just like associated the word "vulnerable" with "weak."

And I was kind of like, "I don't really want to be weak, John."

When I saw the movie for the first time in a theater

after the movie had come out...

Hello?

When Laurie gets the call from her friend,

she's being strangled, she thinks she's playing a joke,

she goes up and checks on the kids,

and then she leaves the house.

And it's that wonderful Steadicam shot going

back and forth, either the P.O.V. of Laurie

or the shot on her as she's walking across the windy street

with the prop guy throwing the only dry leaves

we had kind of next to the camera,

you know, that beautiful sequence.

It really builds the tension because you,

the audience knows what's happened in the house.

Laurie doesn't.

And in the middle of that walk,

a woman in a crowded theater in Hollywood

stood up and screamed, "Girl, don't go in there!

There's a killer in there!"

And the audience was screaming.

And I realized in that moment that's what John meant,

that you cared about her and you didn't want her to go in there.

And that's all that he wanted to create.

Jamie Lee Curtis is the ultimate final girl

'cause she was the final girl in a handful of

Halloween movies and Prom Night

and fucking Terror Train.

You know, that was her genre.

She was our first horror movie star of our generation.

You know, I guess if you consider

the black-and-white era, Fay Wray in King Kong

to be the genre's star.

And then later on, Jamie Lee Curtis' mother,

Janet Leigh, in Psycho, as the lady in the shower.

I think final girls are unwitting heroines.

They started out that day being something else,

and they end up a final girl.

All I know is that Laurie Strode woke up that morning

worrying about her chem final,

worrying about the fact that a boy didn't ask her to prom,

worrying about, like, teenage girl stuff.

And by the end of that night, she became a warrior.

She didn't intend to be a warrior.

She didn't want to be a warrior.

She ended up a warrior.

They personified evil with this omniscient force

that could not be fucking stopped.

You can throw bullets at these fuckers,

man, throw off roofs and shit, like, they can't be stopped.

Like death. They're relentless.

Once you get into shit like that,

you can start doing slasher movies.

Was that the boogeyman?

As a matter of fact, it was.