Bizarre Abnormalities: Metapoetic Horror in the Eighties (V)

In order to adequately round off one of the most fruitful decades when it comes to metatextual research on horror, it is necessary to provide a short list of films from the eighties in which the metapoetic dimension is not crucially emphasized, but nevertheless remains an important part of the overall design of these works. The richness of meaning of horror as a genre comes, among other things, due to the general aesthetic constellation where certain issues are elaborated and with the help of a kind of iconographic 'inertia' or semantic 'gravity'.

Dressed to Kill (Trained to Kill, 1980) is in an already established relationship Briana de Palme with the Hitchcockian legacy offered a new level of metapoetic conditioning.

The author's decision to give sexual perversion and a disturbed libidinal economy the most expressively lavish staging in his oeuvre to that point was met with enthusiasm by some critics (led by the director's otherwise persistent admirer, Pauline Kael, which is Dressed to Kill declared the first great film of the eighties) for its unrestricted mixing of pulp and artistic sensibilities, while another group, primarily composed of feminist theorists, was appalled by the amount - allegedly brought to the level of pornography - of violence directed at the heroines which, to make matters worse, was presented as a masochistic invocation of women themselves. From today's perspective, in neither respect does the film have the strength to retain so much intrigue, but a few episodes from Dressed to Kill they can still hold their own when it comes to stylistic competence and mise-en-scène effectiveness.

I Fulcia has found a solid foothold in the Master of Suspense - calculated mahnitom or frenetic - The New York Ripper (The New York Ripper, 1982). The author's most controversial film, not so much because of the violence itself, but because it is unrestrainedly directed at women in a more or less explicit sexual context, which is why The New York Ripper easily open to accusations of the director's misogyny. However, the film has a much more complex structure: after leaving the supernatural terrain, Fulci decided to present - with a clear leaning on Hitchcockian thriller procedures - a landscape of urban decay, in which nihilism and misanthropy (that's the right word!) will receive a terrifyingly visceral elaboration. The director's horror logic goes deeper: in The New York Ripper, a film full of sexual degradation and excessive violence, gradation is found not in the expected bloody riot, but in a climax of hopelessness and abandonment: in the frame of a lonely girl (Chiara Ferrari) who is dying of an incurable disease.

The real controversy in this sense would lie in the real and deeply disturbing possibility that it is The New York Ripper actually the most accurate reading of disillusioned and violent Hitchcock iz Frenzy (1972), by Hitchcock who left all romantic ideals behind, so the violent content was left without the necessary sublimation.

In the same year, Rollin continued with his special kind of metapoetic play within the framework of trash or low-budget productions with The living dead (The Girl is a Living Dead Man). Why do left-wing critics so exalt Romerovo gradual humanization of zombies, while completely ignoring Rollin, who went much further in that direction? The Grapes of Death (Grapes of Death, 1978), the director emphasizes that the zombies are innocent victims of a chemical experiment through the consumption of the French national symbol and pride - wine, and in The Living Dead Woman The border that separates humans and zombies is not an obstacle to continuing the friendship that the main characters established while they were still in the same existential status.

How long did it take Romero to get from Night of the Living Dead (1968) of Land of the Dead (2005) when it comes to some 'radical' conclusions, and Rollin did it almost in a few quick stages, so the zombie is pretty in The Living Dead Woman not only a sentimental girl who is very aware of her unenviable position (torn between memories and the insatiable thirst for blood provided by her friend), but also a handsome, well-preserved woman (although, by the way, she has been dead for two whole years). And who is to say that trash only deals in stereotypes?

It can be said with certainty that the presence Spielberg as a producer (partially also a director) in Poltergeist (1982) prevailed over Hooper's vision in his attempt to finally try and establish himself in the mainstream. But the reason why Poltergeist Whether the film is internally divided has less to do with obviously different stylistic preferences and much more to do with the underlying ideology behind both the worldview and sensibilities of the two authors: given Spielberg's escapist experience of the nuclear family and Hopper's stark, almost dystopian view of familial relations, a compromise could only have been reached at the expense of the film itself.

Later, pressured by financial failures, Hooper predictably had to return to his own beginnings: to his credit, it should be said that the self-exploitative The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2 (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, 1986) nevertheless testifies to the director's intention to rise above copying, primarily in the new distribution of accents in the general intonation. If the grotesque in the first part was a generator of existential nausea, in the sequel it is the driving force of black humor, an effective variant of bizarre abnormality: Hooper's mode of action in Part 2 it consisted in the interchangeability of the gruesome and the parodic.

Regardless of the title, Cohenov A Return to Salem's Lot (Return to Salem's Lot, 1987) is not a sequel to Hooper's television film Salem's Lot (1979) based on the novel of the same name Steven King, but the director's very specific 'reworking' in which (vampire) evil does not come from outside, from the side, but is deeply rooted in the space of frequent idealization or projected goodness in literature and film, that is, in the American province. Playing with the creation of vampire mythology and order that are parallel to real American history, Cohen in A Return to Salem's Lot It combines horror with humor, vampire infestation with modern-day plagues, suspense with wit.

On the other hand, always subtle Cronenberg's plays with literal and figurative meaning, with the intersection of flesh (metonymy) and spirit (metaphor), in Dead Ringers (The Cursed Twins, 1988) experienced another striking variation: schizophrenia, a splitting of the mind, here it also gains a physical extension in the form of identical twins Elliot and Beverly (both characters played by Jeremy Irons) who run a successful gynecological clinic. Gemini all share between themselves, but when actress Claire (Genevieve Bujold), their relationship becomes problematic. Because, a terrible thing happens schizma: it is no longer possible for one soul to exist in two bodies at the same time.

After a disastrously bad attempt to inject new vitality into Frankensteinian motive u Deadly Friend (Deadly Friend, 1986), Craven is with The Serpent and the Rainbow (The Serpent and the Rainbow, 1988) sought horror again in a narrative with the raising and reviving of the dead, now in a story describing voodoo-zombies in Haiti. The author's focus on provoking the flow boundaries that separate ontologically separate universes from each other, due to the darkest plot, got in The Serpent and the Rainbow and the most serious intonation.