DRAFT Catalog

Catalogue:

 

Focus Films:

• 1: A Nightmare On Elm Street (Craven, 1984)

The reason for me choosing A Nightmare On Elm Street as a focus film is due to its contribution to the 80’s slasher era. The 1980’s is said to be the ‘era’ of original slashers and so I found it extremely important to focus on this film in detail, as well as it starting off a multi-million dollar franchise which includes several sequels and remakes.

 

• 2: Scream (Craven, 1996)

Scream is rumoured to be the horror film that essentially ‘saved the genre’ after the late 1980’s poor output of these types of films and it is ironic as the films that are included in the ‘wrecking’ of the genre were multiple of the Nightmare On Elm Street sequels, the franchise started by Wes Craven, and this ‘saviour’ of horror is additionally by Craven and so there is a sense of irony in the film’s mass success in the 1990s so therefore it was highly important that this film is studied closely.

 

• 3: Saw (Wan, 2004)

When discussing US horror it is hard to ignore the change of audience interest in the early 2000’s where ‘body horror’ came into obsession with films such as Hostel (Roth, 2005). However, choosing Saw over many of the other films released in this time period was important as Saw also factored into the equation with psychological horror, which was becoming vastly popular at the time of the film’s release, and therefore the film fits two types of audiences who were essentially demanding for more films suited to their tastes.

Supporting Films:

 

• 4: The Ring (Verbinski, 2002)

I chose this film as a supporting film as the late 1990’s and early 2000’s saw a popular rise in the interest of East Asian horror, also referred to as ‘J-Horror’. Other films such as The Grudge (Shimizu, 2004) were also fitted in this time period and category however The Grudge has often been criticized for copying multiple elements from The Ring and so being one of the first successfully popular Japan to Hollywood remakes, it was important to my research to choose The Ring as a supporting film for points on J-Horror remakes in Hollywood.

 

 

Books

• Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s – Kim Newman
  This book was really useful as it talks a lot about the horror scene in the 1980’s and more so specifically with the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise, which includes one of my focus films as well as touching apon the 1990’s horrors such as Scream (again another focus film) and the early 2000’s films like Hostel.
   
• Recreational Terror: Women and The Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing – Isabel Christina Pinedo
  This book was useful in the fact that it speaks a lot of post-modern horror, which is helpful for speaking about the Saw movies as they are often classified as ‘post-modern’. It also talks about the ‘body-horror’ obsession in the early 2000’s, which could easily link to the Saw films.
   
• Rebels & Chicks: A History of the Hollywood Teen Movie by Stephen Tropiano. Published 2006.
  This book was very interesting with its comments on late 1980’s slasher films and had some interesting facts on teenage audiences in the 1990’s.
• Chapter 3: Case Study: J-Horror and the Ring Cycle, Pages 95-101,The Media Student’s Book (4^th edition) by Gill Branston and Roy Stafford, first published 2006.
  This chapter contains some vital information that needs to be researched when referring to the ‘J-horror cycle’.
   
• Gothic: The Dark Heart of Film, Pages 43, 94-95 and 126-133, by James Blackford, Jasper Sharp, David Pirie. First published 2013.
  This book contains some interesting information that touches upon the gore of the Saw movies as well as how horror has developed since the 1980’s slashers and briefly discuss’ the J-horror element to my research.
   
• Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate:Second edition, Chapter 7: ‘I was a teenage horror fan: or, ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love Linda Blair’ by Mark Kermode, Pages 126-135. First published 2001.
  This chapter held some very interesting information about what it was like to be part of the teenage audience watching all the 1980’s slashers and horror in general.

 

Magazines

• Empire, March 2003, Mark Dinning , Page 38
  This is a good review of The Ring and how it has changed since the original.
   
• Empire, March 2003, Lesley O’Toole, Pages 93-95
  Very positive review of The Ring and how the audience reacted to its release.
   
• Empire, April 2004, Kim Newman, Page 111
  Some helpful information about A Nightmare on Elm Street and VHS releases.
   
• Empire, August 2004, Kim Newman, Page 32
  Helpful review on Ju-On: The Grudge (the Japanese original), good for a comparative review of the remake of the film.
   
• Empire, August 2004, No one Credited,  Page 70
  Somewhat helpful and relevant information to J-Horror and the US remakes (specifically mentions The Grudge).
   
• Empire, October 2004, Shari Roman, Page 56
  Relevant article on the Saw release including some words from Director Wan.
   
• Empire, December 2004, Kim Newman, Page 36
  Helpful review on Saw, multiple comments made on the context of the film.
   
• Empire, December 2004, Olly Richards, Page 42
  Good article on The Grudge to compare with the review of the original film.
   
• Empire, April 2005, RF Page 156
  Some good comments made on The Grudge remake, great to compare to comments on the original film.
   
• Empire, September, Nick De Semlyen, Page 146
  Really useful review of The Ring 2 and good comments on movie remakes.

 

Internet

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nightmare_on_Elm_Street_(franchise)
  Useful and basic information on the Nightmare franchsie.
• http://www.metacritic.com/feature/nightmare-on-elm-street-movies-ranked
  Helpful statistics on the Elm Street movies, good to use for box office stats.
   
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329101/business?ref_=tt_dt_bus
  Good statistics on opening weekend takings across the globe.
   
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087800/
  Again, more good statistics on the box office takings of the film.
• http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/aug/21/mark-kermode-red-riding-hood
  Some good information on Craven as a director and the Elm Street film as well as the Scream movies.
   
• http://io9.com/5666808/the-terrifying-failure-rate-of-us-remakes-of-foreign-horror-films
  Helpful context on the Hollywood remakes of all the Japanese horrors as well as some good comments.
   
• http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=saw.htm
  Helpful statistics on the Saw movies including its budget.
   
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387564/business?ref_=tt_dt_bus
  Again, more useful and factual statistics used including box office takings of the Saw film.
   
• http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=elmst.htm
  Factual information on the Elm Street franchise.
   
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087800/business?ref_=tt_dt_bus
  Again, really useful statistics on A Nightmare on Elm Street.
   
• http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=scream.htm
  Helpful information on the Scream movie statistics, like it’s budget etc.
   
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117571/business?ref_=tt_dt_bus
  Some additional data on the Scream box office takings.

Empire Magazine articles 2004-2006 & J-horror

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review by Kim Newman (2003 remake version)
"first of a wave of pointless genre remakes"
"When writer Scott Kosar and director Marcus Nispel play variations on the original, almost setting this up as a sequel rather than a remake"
"but somehow that buzzing saw doesn't sound as scary as it used to"



The Ring Review by Mark Dinning (Empire, March 2003, Mark Dinning , Page 38 )
"Lets cut right to the chase: if you've seen the Japanese original, you can knock a star straight off the four below"
"$11 million opening... overall gross of $123 million"
"undeniably Scream inspired" - so even though its a Japanese remake of a ghost story, they've 'pinched' ideas from an American slasher.
"Age-old mythology is, after all, more believable coming from the rich historical tapestry of The Land Of The Rising Sun and the land of peanut butter and Jell-o."



The Ring by Lesley O'Toole (Empire, March 2003, Lesley O’Toole, Pages 93-95)
"took the US box office by the throat"
"The ironic slasher movie had run out of nudge-nudge and wink-wink. The modern restyling of the olde worlde ghost story, as represented by The Blair Witch Project... the fresher came in the Far East"
"not only spawned the most successful horror film franchise in the film-mad country's history, but also a TV series and graphic novel."
"Verbinski surmising he has changed '50 per cent' of the original"
"Death is the only resolution in life, so we seem to want to put it in all our movies"



Chapter: J-Horror and The Ring Cycle from The Media Student's Book
"When Dreamworks released The Ring (2002), they managed both to extend the new ghost cycle and to draw on elements from earlier 'teen horror films'.
"cycle of 'demon children' and 'possession', dating from the 1970s"
"Ringu can be seen as responding to the long cycle of American 'teen' horror with its high school 'victims' and young female 'investigator heroes'"
"the long white dress, the long straight black hair masking the face - can be traced back to traditional Japanese stories from the seventeenth century and earlier,"
"The writer Suzuki Koji draws on Japanese ideas about water as a suitable 'medium' for ghosts and spirits to inhabit."
"$40 million to spend can afford spectacular effects" - so the remake loses the grungy, low budget feel that the original has/had.
"This alone may push the American film towards a more 'action-orientated' narrative."
"'gothic' look of European and American horror"
"Built on this return to the less 'gory', more psychological horror"
"Concepts of the 'supernatural' are different in East Asian cultures, partly because the Buddhist/Shintoist religions in Japan do not have such clear concepts of 'good' and 'evil'. In western stories the narrative often climaxes with evil, forces defeated by good (godly) heroes."
"Ghosts in Japanese culture are in one sense much more 'personal'. Dead characters often come back to tell things to their families."
"The American series often have victims who are killed because they have 'sinned' in some way.. but in Ju-On there is no 'justification' for the deaths."
"Dreamworks invited Nakata Hideo to remake his own Ring 2"
"Director Kim Ji-woon's A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) has been widely admired by critics and fans in the UK and is set for yet another American remake"
"The 'feminisation' of the stories to appeal more widely to young women in the cinema audience was first deemed a success in Japan, but was equally taken up in Hollywood. The Ring and The Ring 2 both feature Naomi Watts and Jennifer Connelly leads in Dark Water. These are two rising female stars and The Grudge helped to consolidate Sarah Michelle Gellar's career."
"In America they all received PG-13 ratings and in the UK '15'. This opened up a horror market traditionally limited to 'R' or '18' rated films seen as off-putting to some female audiences."



Remade In The USA by ? (Empire, August 2004, No one Credited,  Page 70)


"(The Grudge) latest in a line of Eastern horror flicks that are being turned into lavish, mainstream frightfests by US studios"
"The fad for remaking Asian horror began two years with DreamWorks' retooling of Japanese hit Ringu, The Ring."
"and some executives specifically scour all output from Japan and South Korea for remake potential"
"Dreamworks' version of The Ring out-grossed the original in Japan. Bizarrely, it seems that even in Asia there's a market for US remakes"

Dare You See Saw by Shari Roman (Empire, October 2004, Shari Roman, Page 56)

"I wanted to make something really intense that people would remember" (James Wan, Director)
"genuinely disturbing, deeply freaky piece of work"



Hostel by ?
"Quentin Tarantino called it one of the best he'd ever read" (referring to the script) coming from the guy who filmed a guy 'getting his ear cut off' as part of a torture method.0
"sickest shit I could think of" (Eli Roth on his script)



Saved By VHS (side article) by Kim Newman (Empire, April 2004, Kim Newman, Page 111)


"A Nightmare on Elm Street became a franchise thanks to video"



Empire calls 2004 the 'Year of The Dead' with Shaun of the Dead in cinemas as well as 28 Days Later. Important as zombie films were making a comeback from the 50s/60s, but more gore is added.



Saw Review by Kim Newman (Empire, December 2004, Kim Newman, Page 36)

"Ingeniously scripted"
"boasts an intricate structure - complex flashbacks-within-flashbacks"
"ghastly claustrophobia"
"squirm-inducing moments"
"As good an all-out, non-camp horror movie as we've had lately"



The Grudge Review by RF (Empire, April 2005, RF Page 156)

"continuing the trend of remaking Japanese horror hits"

The Grudge by Olly Richards (Empire, December 2004, Olly Richards, Page 42)

"The initial reaction to hearing that Takashi Shimizu has remade his own Japanese cult hit for a Western audience is: why bother?"
"came off as merely a cheap imitation of Ringu"
"The terror is upped without relying on too many cliches"



Ju-On: The Grudge Review by Kim Newman (Empire, August 2004, Kim Newman, Page 32)          
"the random curse aspect echo The Ring but many other elements: a lank-haired female ghost, obviously, follow that influential cycle. Expect a Freddy vs Jason-type Sadako vs Kayako team-up sequel"
"ingenious bone-freezing scares as genuinely terrifying spooks appear under the sheets"



The Ring Two Review by Nick De Semlyen (Empire, September, Nick De Semlyen, Page 146)

"VHS now has yet another Ring film"
"Jaws 4 approach to sequel-making" - ironic as The Ring was proven to be successful and The Grudge remake was dubbed a 'copycat' of The Ring yet the sequel to it was described like this.
"Problem J-horror genius Nakata faces is the brilliant simplicity of his original concept. Back in 1998, the idea of a cursed videotape was chilling; in 2005, it's become slightly hackneyed"

American remakes of Asian horror

An article on io9, explains the differences in the American remakes of Asian original horrors, and the results aren't all that surprising.
The Ring (Verbinski, 2002)
"Gore Verbinski's remake stays pretty close to Hideo Nakata's original, but is faster paced and has more gruesome imagery, plus the cursed videotape has a lot more stuff on it."

Which accounts for the 'obsession' the Western world had suddenly picked up in the late 90s for more gorey imagery.

The Grudge (Shimizu, 2004)

"Director Takashi Shimizu directed both the Japanese and U.S. versions"

So here they used the exact same director to get the same effect as the original (Ju-On) was one of the scariest films out at the time in Japan and so for the Western audience to get the same effect, they bagged the same director. 

Mark Kermode on Scream and its 4th installment

"It's hard to remember the impact that Wes Craven's Scream had back in 1996; a postmodern horror pastiche which parodied the conventions of the genre while still scaring up enough full-blooded shocks to frighten even the most world-weary slasher fan. Ironically, the original Scream had its media-savvy roots in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, a brilliantly bizarre postscript to the long moribund Nightmare on Elm Street franchise which put an unexpected sting into the tail of a rash of increasingly flatulent sequels. There's no such creative spark to the equally late-in-the-day Scream 4 (2011, Eiv, 15), which comes a decade after the dreary Scream 3 and contains plenty of knowing references to fatuous sequels and "postmodern, self-aware meta-shit" alongside clunking updating acknowledgement of the rise of Facebook, Twitter, torture porn et al.
Despite rewrites by Ehren Kruger, the extent of which remain a subject of debate, Kevin Williamson's script – which sends survivor-turned-writer Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) back to the town of Woodsboro, where the Ghostface killer is reincarnated once again – seems peculiarly retrograde in terms of style, substance and surprises. Considering his role as producer of 2009's utterly unnecessary remake of Last House on the Left, is it not time for the once revolutionary Craven to stop recycling his back catalogue and take a stab at something new?"

Mark Kermode talks about Saw 3

What makes a franchise

According to metacritic, the highest grossing film in the Elm Street franchise is 'Freddy Vs. Jason' which is actually ranked as the worst film within the franchise. Freddy Vs. Jason grossed $104 million whereas the next ranking, the original Elm Street, grossed $91 million. Freddy Vs. Jason had the highest budget of the franchise (up until the 2010 remake of the original) and even still, it was only beaten by $2 million with 7 years difference between when the films were made. There must have been a lot of hype for the film as two franchises came together for a film with such a large budget and opening weekend


A Nightmare on Elm Street opening weekend box office takings :

Opening Weekend:

$1,271,000 (USA) (9 November 1984)

Freddy Vs Jason opening weekend box office takings:

$36,428,066 (USA) (17 August 2003)











"When comparing A Nightmare on Elm Street with the other top-grossing horror franchises—Child's Play, Friday the 13th, Halloween, the Hannibal Lecter series, Psycho, Saw, Scream, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—and adjusting for the 2010 inflation,^[22] A Nightmare on Elm Street is the second highest grossing horror franchise, in the United States, at approximately $583.4 million.^[3] The series is topped by Friday the 13th at $671.5 million.^[23] Closely following A Nightmare on Elm Street is the Hannibal Lecter series with $579.4 million,^[24] then Halloween with $547.8 million,^[25] Saw with $404.5 million,^[26] Scream with $398.3 million,^[27] Psycho with $370.3 million,^[28] The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with $314.6 million,^[29] and the Child's Play film series rounding out the list with approximately $199.7 million.^{[30] " (metacritic)}

Extending life of text

Scream now has TV series on MTV (director Wes Craven was very much involved in the production until his death)


Scream went on to have 3 sequels.


The Grudge went on to have 2 sequels.


A Nightmare on Elm Street grasped its own franchise with 8 follow up films/ remakes.


Saw also went on to have its own franchise with 6 sequels.


These films have also inspired many other films within the same genre; with films like Saw started an entire new subgenre of 'torture porn', however it is also argued that films like Hostel are partly responsible for this.

Focus Films

Main focus film:
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, Craven)


Other focus films:
Scream (1996, Craven)
Saw (2004, Wan)


Comparative film:
The Ring (2002, Verbinski)

Sight & Sound Review

Sight and Sound: January 1995

Review of Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Described as a "rare film"

Development

Develop on the clip of Costas explaining how he believes Saw was a hit because it was 'clever'.

Horror flicks turned from a masked villains slaughtering teenagers to masked villains slaughtering their friends (Scream). Films started having more 'twists' and shock endings rather than just the typical endings like in Halloween; the killer is dead and then at the end it is revealed oh no hang on he's still alive so we can make 5 more movies!!.

More of a threat of the killer being someone the victims knew towards the 1990s, (even shown in New Nightmare, part of the Elm Street franchise which stuck to the 'masked' villain slaughtering teenagers section of the horror genre).

This developed onto a combination of there being a mixture of masked psychos killing teenagers but along side the friend killing murderers. However films like Saw and Hostel warped this by adding a lot more gore to the picture, audiences were getting slightly bored of the same old story line coming out of the horror flicks and so with a society obsessed with violence and disgust, these types of films began a 'new wave' of 'torture porn' as it was dubbed.

Films became less of just some crazy guy hiding behind a mask, killing drunken teenagers and more twisted and warped. They began to mess with the audiences heads a lot more, just like in the ending to Saw, audiences were finding themselves more gripped into the films as film makers became more inventive. It wasn't just about seeing someone killed on screen anymore, that may have terrified the audience during 'The Exorcist' 's era but times are changing and the audiences interests were flaunting to more gruesome and gorey likings yet they don't just want to see loads of blood on screen, they want to be captivated.

But then again soon this changed as towards 2006, with a 3rd installment to the Saw series, it was clear that it wasn't going to be the last. A similar thing had happened to the Elm Street, audiences showed such a high interest in the first film, so to make more money the studio release a sequel, and then, they don't stop making them. A lot of audience members claim this ruins the films, and so films like began to lose the 'creativity' that they were created on and became more about just making money and throwing as much gore as they can at the script and hope that the audience will take to it.