Six Damn Fine Degrees #150: Serial killings

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

When Alfred Hitchcock made Psycho in the late 1950s, did he ever consider that his film, that most classic of slasher movies, would spawn four sequels (one of which would ignore its two predecessors to then be ignored in turn by Psycho IV), a shot-by-shot remake, and a five-season TV series focusing on the young Norman Bates? Then again, in the world of horror movies, that’s not all that impressive: there’ve been six Scream films to date, and a seventh is in the making. There’ve been three Exorcist films followed by two versions of the fourth film (one by Paul Schrader, one by Renny Harlin, obviously two directorial peas in a pod), and a new trilogy is about to launch in a week or so with The Exorcist: Believer. Everyone’s favourite homicidal doll Chucky got his murder on in eight films so far. Freddy Krueger has ruined teenagers’ dreams nine times so far. Bad, bad things have happened to vulnerable bodies ten times in the Saw franchise. Michael Myers (no, not that one!) has folded, spindled and mutilated the folks of Haddonfield and beyond in (wait for it) thirteen films. (Okay, that is not 100% correct, but that is something for another post, and probably not one written by me.)

I could go on and on, about Jasons and Cenobites and Final Destinations, because there are more horror franchises even than there are instalments in the longest-running of those franchises. You’d think that once you’ve seen Norman try to work through his Oedipal complex once, you’ve seen it. Once Michael or Freddy have slaughtered yet another generation of suburban teens, that’s all folks, right? But no: there’s so much life in those death-dealing maniacs and monsters that they can be killed over and over only to get up again, like so many knife-fingered, pin-headed, demon-possessed murderers, masked or otherwise.

Why is it that the horror genre especially has proven to be such fertile grounds for franchises, more even than caped do-gooders and Federation crews on a wagon train to the stars? Why would we want to be scared by Norman (Ed.: Norman’s mother, you surely mean.) and Freddy and Jason and Michael and Chucky and Jigsaw and Pazuzu and Pinhead and Company over and over and over again?

Is it perhaps that they don’t really scare us, and that this is the point?

Obviously we tense up when the scantily-clad Designated Next Victim finds that she’s stuck in her nightmare and something wicked her way comes, and we jump in our seats when Knifey McStabface jumps out of the shadows and puts his kitchen implement through some horny teen’s cranium. But there’s probably little that’s truly surprising, truly frightening, in the nth take on how our favourite supernatural psychopath murders his way through a disposable group of fresh-faced actors before being taken out by the latest take on the Final Girl, and before the film then delivers its particular variation on the theme of “It is over… or is it?” Obviously we want the murderous setpieces to be reasonably creative, but we know that there will be a murderous setpiece that is bigger, badder, bloodier and (hopefully) better than the ones in the previous film.

So, here’s my question: are horror franchises the ultimate cinematic comfort food? Do people return to them again and again, warranting a sixth sequel, a seventh, an eighth and so on, because it’s the world out there is truly scary – and there’s something reassuring that in this economy Freddy Krueger still keeps getting jobs as a nightmare killer?