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CHAPTER SIX Walking Corpses and Independent FilmmakingTechniques In 1980, James Monaco wrote an article outlining the changes to the modern horror films that had emerged in the 1970s. He argued that contemporary cinema had become more violent and horrific. While not condemningthegenreasawhole ,hedidcritiquethemannerinwhichthefilms were made, their “technique,” and suggested that modern Hollywood had been taken over by “technicians.”1 Of course, during the 1970s, Hollywood was in the throes of being taken over by a group of new filmmakers who, building upon the collapse of the studio system, were seeking to redefine the industry. Similarly, the horror genre in this period saw the emergence of a group of young, independent filmmakers including George Romero, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, and John Carpenter, described retrospectively as “the class of ’79,” who turned to the horror genre to establish themselves within the film industry as well as to express their own anxieties about modern America.2 They achieved both notoriety and acclaim by focusing upon the horror of reality through an explosion of violence and realistic gore, and as a result the horror genre “produced films more gruesome, more violent, more disgusting, and perhaps more confused, than ever before in history.”3 Tobe Hooper, the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), explains how the films they were making were focused upon “reflecting man’s inhumanity toward man, and realizing that the ultimate monster is man.”4 This fundamental change to the genre, accompanied by an almost guerrilla form of independent, lowbudget filmmaking, would have a widespread influence upon horror and the vampire film in particular. In his critique of contemporary horror Monaco claimed that, historically, horror films were set in human, humane contexts. They always provided a catharsis of sorts. Now we have learned to make them 108 CelluloidVampires more effective. They work mechanically as thrill machines, like the rack, and provide as little psychological release as possible since, after all, the human context would detract from the “visceral” clout of the movie.5 My emphasis in this passage demonstrates how Monaco’s choice of words suggests a physical quality to the effect of these films. The films seem to ignore spiritual or psychological themes explored in classic horror films, which is, according to Monaco, a result of their being made by technicians rather than artists. These films are effective, mechanical, and have “visceral clout,” and their effects are achieved through the use of bladders , animatronics, and hydraulics; the words themselves evoke physicality and industrialisation. Monaco’s comments are, however, symptomatic of much criticism of the genre in the 1970s and 1980s that saw contemporary horror as being overreliant on state-of-the-art special effects, a dependence that seemed to, in their eyes, rob the genre of any substance or meaning. For instance, Morris Dickstein described “the new wave of horror film” as “hard core pornography of violence made possible by the virtual elimination of censorship.”6 Monaco, however, saw the spate of Dracula films that came out of the 1970s as an opposition to the graphic horror films of this period, offering a glimmer of hope for the future of horror. He suggests that the political integrity and allegorical potential of the vampire myth could rescue the genre from the grips of graphic body horror.7 What this type of response does not recognize is that perhaps rather than simply being empty and mechanical, this new wave of horror films is a product of a culture confronted by very real horrors and violence on a day-to-day basis. For instance, special makeup effects artist Tom Savini, known throughout the 1980s as the Splatter King, began working in the 1970s with such films as Deathdream, Martin, and Dawn of the Dead, and claims that one of the reasons for his commitment to realism in makeup and monstrous body horror effects was his experience in Vietnam. In Vietnam, as a photographer documenting wartime atrocities, he was able to see firsthand violence and destruction of flesh and bone. He was confronted daily with the inner workings of the body, which he subsequently recreated for the cinema. As he explains, I was actually able to look at bone, blood, placement, geography. When I was a kid watching Frankenstein and The Wolf Man, I would go home and try to recreate those guys, so I would study them. The shape of the brow. Where the nose started. What the colors were. So here I was looking at [3.143.23.176] Project...

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