The Night (2020) is a warping and impressive directorial debut from Kourosh Ahari, director of such shorts as In Passing (2017) and Malaise (2014). While his time in the industry has been short, this promising offering displays a competence and understanding of what makes a truly chilling story, thankfully with enough talent to back up every inch of it.
An Iranian couple living in the US are lost on their way home from a night of drinks at a friend’s house. After arguing by the roadside over how to proceed, they eventually come across the majestic yet eerie Hotel Normandie, and decide to stay the night. What follows are enough spectral shenanigans and psychological trickery to satisfy Stephen King; And although it does tread similar ground to the fantastic 1408 (2007), The Night manages to hit hard in its own stylish and weighty manner.
Invoking a similar claustrophobic dread to films such as The Borderlands (2013) and perhaps to a lesser extent Grave Encounters (2011); The Night presents uswith the feeling that the characters we follow are being tortured to the full extent of their psychological threshold. To the disappointment of some, the filmfeels perhaps a little too scare-restrained to cross the border from unnerving to fully frightening. What area of the horror spectrum it does fall under, however, it owns to the fullest degree.
The domestic troubles of lead couple Babak (Shahab Hosseini)andNeda (Niousha Noor)are apparent from the opening scenes, and it’s these demons and their collective secrets they must face if they are to survive their night at Hotel Normandie. Though slow in pace, the film is pulled along with ease by Hosseini and Noor’s compelling and involving performances. Additional characters show their faces now and then to instill some terror, shoving along a plot which keeps the brain whirring up until its revelatory, mind-bending third act.
And the ending…oh, that ending.
For a story of personal demons and their manifestations, the inference of real threat is a potent one. Dread builds through long -often hypnotic- camera takes, the slightest facial twitch indicating more than a monologue could ever achieve. The mesmerising effect of this style admittedly left me forgetting my place on more than one occasion, which is brilliantly appropriate. This, along with the heaps of mystery still seemingly looming beneath the surface even as the credits roll, absolutely warrants repeated viewings. The few jumpscares that were included are delivered with impeccable timing and accented with such dreadful musical spikes that I rejoiced at their inclusion, and I haven’t enjoyed a jumpscare since The Ring (2002).
The Night takes its time and strikes when it needs to with uncanny precision. Starting slow (almost deceptively dull), this build-up should be taken as such, and immersion in the world of these brilliantly acted characters is a top priority. This exquisitely-balanced drama/horror blend is a pleasant surprise from Ahari and hopefully a promising look at a bright future in cinema. I felt lost within the Hotel Normandie, which I would say is the highest possible praise for a film with The Night’s intent.
Joe first knew he wanted to write in year six after plaguing his teacher’s dreams with a harrowing story of World War prisoners and an insidious ‘book of the dead’. Clearly infatuated with horror, and wearing his influences on his sleeve, he dabbled in some smaller pieces before starting work on his condensed sci-fi epic, System Reset in 2013.Once this was published he began work on many smaller horror stories and poems in bid to harness and connect with his own fears and passions and build on his craft. Joe is obsessed with atmosphere and aesthetic, big concepts and even bigger senses of scale, feeding on cosmic horror of the deep sea and vastness of space and the emotions these can invoke. His main fixes within the dark arts include horror films, extreme metal music and the bleakest of poetry and science fiction literature. He holds a deep respect for plot, creative flow and the context of art, and hopes to forge deeper connections between them around filmmakers dabbling in the dark and macabre.
Horror films rely on a number of factors to deliver scares, attacking as many of a viewer’s senses as possible with a carefully concocted cacophony of sight and sound. On-screen efforts are restricted to targeting our eyes and ears, though let’s be honest, if Tobe Hooper could’ve made us smell the Sawyer family home, he would. This limitation on horror’s sensory maelstrom means that sound is just as, if not more important than the visual nightmares on display. Music is as intrinsic and essential to horror as it is to a musical; each grumbling synth drone and eerie pluck of a harp can conjure dread, unease, tension and suspense from the most unlikely places. More often than not they can punctuate violence and psychological torture to the abject degree, enhancing some of the greatest standout moments in horror cinema history. Look to the stabbing staccato strings in the infamous shower scene in Psycho (1960) or the equally sudden and unnerving strings of Jaws (1975). The best horror soundtracks have inspired these new sounds for decades.
While respect must be paid to the classics, we are indeed living in a golden age of horror cinema and, as a result, an exciting and experimental time for original horror soundtracks. Recently we have seen experimental artists like Jóhann Jóhannsson and Mica Levi growing into Oscar-nominated star composers, musicians like Thom Yorke shifting into the world of movie soundtracks and even indie game composer Disasterpeace taking on the duty of decorating the brilliant It Follows (2014) with his unsettling, synth-led dreamscapes.
Without further ado, here are some of the best horror soundtracks from throughout the ages.
The Thing (1982) – Ennio Morricone
Kicking things off with a personal favourite of 80’s sci-fi horror, John Carpenter’s frostbitten opus The Thing stars Kurt Russel as a helicopter pilot in Antarctica, battling a shape-shifting extraterrestrial being. By this time in his career Carpenter had written original scores for every picture he released, ironically enough what is now widely known as his strongest film was actually the first to feature another composer’s music. Ennio Morricone, known for spaghetti westerns like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and his Oscar-winning music for The Hateful Eight (2015) (which included music he’d originally written for The Thing), took the helm after long conversations with Carpenter in which the director said he wanted the sound “really simple, synth-driven, effective”. The end result is just that, a sparse and minimal synth score which echoes the endless frozen desert surrounding the research base and its inhabitants’ horrific struggle. Not bad considering Morricone was shown an incomplete version of the film with little to no context on what the director wanted.
Suspiria (1977) – Goblin
For our next sonic endeavour we head to Italy for giallo/gore maestro Dario Argento’s most notable grandiose horror-mystery, Suspiria. The film follows Suzy, a ballet student who travels to Germany to attend a prestigious ballet school. Her time at the academy isn’t easy, from strange noises in the night to unexplained illnesses, but when people begin to die around her Suzy starts to uncover the terrifying history of the place.
The tinkling music-box chimes of the main theme in Suspiria are as recognisable to horror buffs as John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) theme and Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells combined. Claudio Simonetti and Goblin had collaborated with Dario Argento two years earlier, having scored his film Deep Red (1975) after Argento wanted someone in the vein of Deep Purple or Pink Floyd, and had Goblin suggested to him by his producer. After the success of Deep Red (a soundtrack which sold 4 million copies) both Argento and Goblin were free to experiment with Suspiria, meaning a truly unique pairing of aural and visual stimuli was created. Whatever your tastes, it can’t be argued that Suspiria and it’s accompanying music changed the way a lot of people thought about horror, and pioneered a style all of their own.
Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) – Sinoia Caves
Panos Cosmatos’ 2010 sci-fi/horror debut is bleak, sparse, minimal, and in a lot of senses, slow. It is an ethereal dreamscape in which a heavily sedated woman with extrasensory perception tries to escape from a commune which has her held captive. The plot is thin and, it could be argued, merely an excuse for the aural and visual feast which it amounts to. It has been joked that Cosmatos’ work is best enjoyed under the influence of psychedelics, and for his second release as Sinoia Caves, Black Mountain’s Jeremy Schmidt seemed to have taken this sentiment in stride. With sly nods to John Carpenter, Goblin, Jan Hammer and Jon McCallum, Schmidt created not a specifically referential piece of nostalgia but one that reinforces the films 80s aesthetic and contextual themes without appearing intrusive. Cosmatos creates his pieces from an almost naive love of the genre, while also retaining an originality in his art that would equally work without the inspirational ancestry to pay reference to. Thankfully, he seems to pick composers who do the same.
Mandy (2018) – Jóhann Jóhannsson
If Mandy was Panos Cosmatos’ love letter to grindhouse and the 80’s, Jóhannson’s sonic counterpart was the perfect accompaniment. A visceral and fierce arrangement, of melancholic synths, earth-rattling guitars, somber strings and erratic percussion takes viewers through as emotional a rollercoaster as the film does. In a tragic turn, one made even more significant by the emotional depth of the composition he had just released, Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson died at age 48, shortly after the film’s release. Several vinyl issues have been released of the heavy metal fever dream which includes Seattle-based experimental metal band Sunn O))) providing the moody, overdriven guitar work. In an interview, Cosmatos spoke of his planning the score with Jóhannsson: “I said, ‘I want it to feel like you’re 11 years old, and you’re in the backseat of your big brother’s Trans Am, and he’s smoking weed, and you can smell the vanilla air freshener, and the leather,” the director said. “It’s kind of scary, but it’s also exhilarating at the same time.” Cosmatos recalled that Jóhannsson paused before replying: “I know exactly what you mean.”
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) – Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell
Tobe Hooper’s 1974 debut classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre shocked audiences around the world in a single reverberative gasp with its unabashed and unfiltered violence, grimy aesthetic and wacky cast of insidious antagonists. The picture was helped along massively in its cumulative effect by Hooper and sound expert Wayne Bell’s nightmarish soundscapes which blur the same line between music and noise that many modern industrial and underground pop artists frequently emulate, as well as the French abstract ‘musique concrète’ movement. All focus was given to the scene, whether it be one of building tension, horrific release or a mix of both in something like a chase scene, all sound was specifically engineered to enhance the initial idea. Because of the strange and unique pairings of instruments used in each piece, the overall effect is one of just just as unsettling a nature as the horrific visual brutality on display.
Psycho (1960) – Bernard Herrmann
Alfred Hitchcock is a household name in the world of horror, known best for his terrifying and suspenseful The Birds (1963), Rear Window (1954) and, of course, Psycho. Similarly, composer Bernard Herrman’s career spanned from work with Orson Welles in the Mercury Theatre writing the music for The War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane, on dozens of television programs including The Twilight Zone, and later films such as Taxi Driver (1976), whereupon shortly after he died. His work on what is perhaps Hitchcock’s best loved film has come to be one of the best known original scores in horror, particularly the staccato string attack which stabs along with our faceless killer in the infamous ‘shower scene’. Much of the score features a 7th chord that contains both major and minor intervals that film professor Royal Brown calls the ‘Hitchcock chord’. The chord is seen as allowing the films to play out a very ordinary opening scene with its major intervals, while also having the minor intervals to hint at the darkness beyond.
The Lighthouse (2019) – Mark Korven
For his 2019 slow-burning, mythology-laden period chiller The Lighthouse, director Robert Eggers reunited with composer Mark Korven, the man who scored cult sci-fi/horror hit Cube (1997) and Egger’s previous horror breakout The Witch (2015). In an age awash with samey, uninspired horror soundtracks that frequently borrow heavily from Bernard Herrmann’s earlier efforts, a pairing such as Eggers and Korven is a rare and unique treat. For The Witch, Korven took a minimalist approach, utilising his own creation ‘The Apprehension Machine’, a contraption of metal rulers and bows which has been described by some as the most terrifying instrument around. While this fit with the themes and aesthetic explored in The Witch, for The Lighthouse a different approach had to be taken. Heavy use of booming brass permeates the score, echoing the raging sea which surrounds the characters, along with glassy string sections that almost seem to pour from the mysterious light itself. The score acts almost as a third character, diving into the madness the other two end up gleefully embracing.
Under The Skin (2014) – Mica Levi
To accompany the alien, otherworldly, uncanny feeling of Jonathan Glazer‘s sci-fi/horror Under The Skin, composer Mica Levi took a rather elemental approach to her score. The lead character in Under The Skin, played by Scarlett Johansson, is a blank-eyed extraterrestrial predator with apparently no human emotion or relatability. Of course Levi would look to György Ligeti’s strikingly impersonal and unsettling work on The Shining (1980) for inspiration. The soundtrack for Under The Skin plays out much like a thought process from something far from human, as if trying to emulate other music the way Johansson’s character tries to emulate other people. “We were looking at the natural sound of an instrument to try and find something identifiably human in it, then slowing things down or changing the pitch of it to make it feel uncomfortable,” Levi said in an interview. Sounds range from swarming dry tremolo strings, insectile digital whirring and buzzing and pitch-shifted drones that seep under the skin in a truly addictive way.
Hellraiser (1987) – Christopher Young
Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, shocked audiences in 1987 with a new blend of gothic, torturous horror. Featuring a mostly amoral cast of characters being tormented by the insidious Cenobites, Barker’s gleefully cruel outlook was a lot for audiences to stomach at first. So much so that production company New World Pictures decided against the avante garde synth soundtrack that John Balance and Peter Christopherson of the underground British electronica group ‘Coil’ were creating, opting instead for a more traditional approach. Thankfully this decision was backed up by the idea to use Chistopher Young (A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), Invaders from Mars (1986), Sinister (2012)) and arguably one of the greatest traditional horror soundtracks was realized. Predominantly orchestral and with some synth textures added for good measure, the score weaves its way through a myriad of melodies, harmonies and interesting and emotional instrumentation to match Barker’s pitch-black, dissonant romanticism, treading the line between pain and pleasure.
The Beyond (1981) – Fabio Frizzi
Often referred to as the ‘Godfather of Gore’, Lucio Fulci is known for a string of gruesome giallo flicks from Zombie (1979) to The New York Ripper (1982) and A Cat in the Brain (1990). His films range from grounded murder mystery to psychedelic nightmare, all retaining a healthy splattering of his signature excessive style of blood and guts. One of the most off-the-wall endeavors the Italian director ever undertook was 1981’s The Beyond, a truly wacky horror about an old hotel in Louisiana that contains an entrance to Hell. Fabio Frizzi’s score focuses on variations on a few central themes in a tasteful combination of traditional orchestration and electric progressive rock. While tailoring pieces to fit the building of tension, dreamy atmospheres and striking intensity that run throughout, Frizzi’s score provides more bass-driven funk than one might expect to hear over a scene of tarantulas eating someone’s face.
The Devil’s Candy (2017) – Michael Yezerski
Sean Byrne’s second offering of violent, visceral horror after his 2009 shocker The Loved Ones features a metalhead artist who becomes obsessed with a demonic painting seemingly created by his subconscious, as well as a disturbed giant of a man whose existence threatens the family’s very lives. Featuring an almost perfect arrangement of existing metal music, from the earth-rattling soundscapes of Sunn 0))) to the groove laden riffing of Machine Head, the film also features an original score by Michael Yezerski. This is truly the heavy metal horror film of the 2010s, in fact any time there isn’t an actual metal band playing viewers are treated to Yezerski’s semi-industrial blend of brutal guitar shredding, atonal clangings and screechings and gut-wobbling drones. Subtlety isn’t the intent of either aural or visual elements here, rather a heart stopping face-slap from start to finish.
Halloween (1978) – John Carpenter
When John Carpenter made the legendary and timeless Halloween he was thirty years old, yet still running things like a college student. Everything he could possibly do himself, he would, including the chillingly minimal and infinitely recognizable score that would help propel his low-budget slasher to worldwide stardom. Drawing on Goblin’s sinister Suspiria score along with Bernard Herrman’s masterfully suspenseful music for Psycho, Carpenter (who recognizes himself as having zero chops as a musician) wrote a simple 5/4 piano rhythm that would end up being one of the most recognized pieces of music in horror. Like the theme from Jaws, the sparse and basic nature of the tune helps build suspense without being intrusive, allowing just enough space between notes for the horrors on screen to set in. The score features many simple, descending piano lines creating an acute sense of foreboding before the sharp, “cattle prod” keyboard stabs have viewers jumping from their seats. Proof that true art is born from limitations, Carpenter’s Halloween theme has been adopted by Pop and Hip-Hop artists alike, and remains to this day one of the most influential horror scores in existence.
Joe first knew he wanted to write in year six after plaguing his teacher’s dreams with a harrowing story of World War prisoners and an insidious ‘book of the dead’. Clearly infatuated with horror, and wearing his influences on his sleeve, he dabbled in some smaller pieces before starting work on his condensed sci-fi epic, System Reset in 2013.Once this was published he began work on many smaller horror stories and poems in bid to harness and connect with his own fears and passions and build on his craft. Joe is obsessed with atmosphere and aesthetic, big concepts and even bigger senses of scale, feeding on cosmic horror of the deep sea and vastness of space and the emotions these can invoke. His main fixes within the dark arts include horror films, extreme metal music and the bleakest of poetry and science fiction literature. He holds a deep respect for plot, creative flow and the context of art, and hopes to forge deeper connections between them around filmmakers dabbling in the dark and macabre.
The horror movie industry has brought us some seriously twisted creations. It is very clear, however, that some of these movies invented a whole new kind of strange. In fact, many of the newer movies have very effectively pushed back the threshold for the grotesque and bizarre. From abortion babies that survived to come back on a deformed vengeful kill-fest, to animal bones in human furniture littering the Sawyer house, there are some pretty outrageous scenes out there! So, which of these very many bizarre terrors makes the list of the strangest horror movies of all time? The latest Horror Enthusiast survey reveals the weirdest horror movies ever to grace the screen!
List of the Most Bizarre and Strangest Horror Movies
This is a list of the most bizarre and strangest horror movies ever made. They are ranked in order of weirdness!
The Human Centipede (2009)
The Human Centipede brings a whole new level of “sick and twisted” to horror. The antagonist, a crazy scientist, collects tourists to mutilate and rearrange them into a single being: a human centipede, connected by the oral and anal orifices. The movie is so gross, it is honestly a little sickening even typing about it! Body Horror at it’s worst.
Red Christmas (2016)
Ever wonder if a baby could survive an abortion? What would happen if it did and came back deformed and in a rage many years down the road with a serious chip on his shoulder? Red Christmas is about a terrifying plot for revenge that absolutely shatters one family’s holiday season!
Society (1989)
Society is a cult-favorite and all-around weird. It is part dark comedy, despite most people seeing mostly just the horror. The plot centers around a teenaged boy who finds out his parents are a part of a bizarre second life full of sadistic orgies. Society is one of the weirdest horror movies out there, though quite graphic.
Teeth (2007)
A girl who is practicing abstinence has a biological evolution and her vagina grows teeth (dantata). These teeth become a sexual nightmare for many a men who she encounters. Ultimately, this is one of the weirdest horror movies out there.
House (1986)
House is about a Vietnam veteran-turned-writer who spends some time in his aunt’s house after she passes, trying to cope with the past and the loss of his son. He winds up believing his son is still alive and that “the house” has got him. And this haunted house literally comes to life in the weirdest, most bizarre ways!
The Village (2004)
The Village is seriously strange. The entire plot surrounds omnious, weird events that transpire in a secret and isolated village. While the village countryside may seem peaceful and serene, what happens there is…well, not so chill. The Village definitely makes the list of the strangest horror movies of all time.
Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
This movie is a twisted story from hell…a true nightmare that the protagonist seemingly cannot wake up from. In terms of weirdness, there is always something happening which has the audience left befuddled and wide-eyed. The plot is absolutely filled with “strange” and “confusing,” so try to keep up
The Wickerman (1973)
The Wickerman is about a detective’s search for a missing girl on a remote island. He finds the people that live there to have some pretty strange practices and the entire movie is a mental work out. The movie was remade in 2006 with Nicholas Cage, however, many people consider the remake much worse than the original (sorry Cage). To be clear here: it isn’t weird because it’s Pagan-related, it’s weird because it’s weird!
The People Under The Stairs (1991)
The People Under The Stairs is a pretty strange idea. A wealthy, affluent couple decide to try and find the perfect son by kidnapping kids, adopting them, and cutting out their tongues when they are bad. These mutilated kids are stored under the stairs, in the basement, where it is dark and filthy. The victims are kept so malnourished that they are scary as hell to encounter!
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre may seem slightly out of place on the list, just because it has had so many sequels that no one considers it weird anymore, however, making furniture out of dead people IS WEIRD! Littering animal bones all over the floors of a house IS STRANGE. And making masks and dinner out of the victims is TRULY BIZARRE; And thus Texas Chainsaw Massacre rightfully deserves a place on this list, no matter how weird things have gotten!
A Few Final Notes…
Remember, horror movie preference (and all preference in general) is both relative and subject to change. This means that what one person considers strange or bizarre, may seem quite normal to another. It also means that a horror movie we once considered weird may eventually warm up to our taste with time. This type of evolution is very common when it comes to the horror movie industry, as society as a whole tends to become more jaded as time moves forward. This is due to the fact that newer horror movies always feel the need to out-gore and out-scare their predecessors. Thus (for example) a 60-year-old man looking back at the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and admit to himself “You know, I used to think this movie was super graphic back in the day when it was originally released, but now it seems a little tame.” In fact it doesn’t even make the list of horror villains with the most kills. When it comes to bizarre and strange, taste and tolerance will most certainly very between horror fans and overtime.
Tritone’s love of horror and mystery began at a young age. Growing up in the 80’s he got to see some of the greatest horror movies play out in the best of venues, the drive-in theater. That’s when his obsession with the genre really began—but it wasn’t just the movies, it was the games, the books, the comics, and the lore behind it all that really ignited his obsession. Tritone is a published author and continues to write and write about horror whenever possible.
We’re starting off July with a bang—and honoring one of Horror’s great women writers! Although she was best known for her work in young-adult novels, she is considered a pioneering figure in the development of the genre, specializing in the sub-genres of horror, thriller, and suspense. Lois Duncan, an author that throughout her life dealt with innumerable travesties and tragic turmoil that most of us only have nightmares about was a figure to be reckoned with. Despite all of the trials that Duncan faced during her lifetime, she somehow made it through as a celebrated author of young adult fiction and horror.
The Early Years of Lois Duncan
Born Lois Duncan Steinmetz on April 28, 1934, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Lois Duncan and Joseph Janney Steinmetz—she grew up with one younger brother, and parents who were professional photographers who worked for magazines taking pictures for the Ringling Brothers and the Barnum & Bailey Circus, as well as publications such as Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Time, as well as Town & Country. Growing up with photographers for parents, found her as the focus of their work on regular occasions, including when she appeared on the cover of Collier’s magazine in 1949.
Duncan knew at an early age that she wanted to be a writer and ended up submitting her first story to a magazine at the age of ten. When she was thirteen, ger first acceptance letter came, she had finally made her first sale to a magazine called Calling All Girls; this early accomplishment for Duncan inspired and motivated the young writer to continue on with her passion. To quote Duncan herself, “[she] could hardly wait to rush home from school each day to fling [herself] at the typewriter.” After spending much of her early years in Pennsylvania, she relocated to Sarasota, Florida later in her childhood where she spent her time amongst circus performers which influenced her picture books that she would write later in her career
A self-described “shy, fat little girl,” as well as a “bookworm and dreamer,” Duncan dreamed of being a writer for a living throughout found herself at home as a child playing in the woods. It makes sense that she, like most writers, would feel some type of insignificance during childhood and end up using it to fuel her passions throughout her life. She would graduate from the Sarasota High School in 1952 then enroll at Duke University that same year before she ended up dropping out in 1953 when she started a family with, Joseph Cardozo, a fellow student at the university.
A Full Career
Magazine Publications
After getting her first magazine publication at the age of thirteen, and dropping out of Duke University during the early, she continued to write and publish articles in magazines—eventually publishing over three hundred such articles in a variety of different magazines. In 1958, she ended up writing an incredibly successful short story in Seventeen magazine, titled Love Song for Joyce under the pen name of Lois Kerry—she nearly didn’t win the contest it was meant for because an underage boy was drinking a beer and it was considered inappropriate. When Seventeen asked her to change it to a Coke, she obliged and took home a thousand dollar prize. This helped her to secure her first young adult writing contract, from which she produced Debutante Hill in 1959.
After divorcing her first husband, Duncan moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1962 with her children and supported herself and her children by writing greeting cards and fictional confessionals for pulp magazines. Four years after relocating she published the novel Ransom, for which she earned herself the Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination, which also marked her transition from romance fiction to more suspense-oriented works.
Teaching Work
During the early 1970s, Duncan was hired to teach journalism at the University of New Mexico, which she later confessed was a mistake on the part of the person who hired her—having been a friend—having overlooked the fact that she did not have a degree when she was chosen as a replacement, due to her extensive experience writing for magazines. To remedy the situation, Duncan earned her B.A. degree in English in 1977 while simultaneously teaching journalism.
Suspense and Horror Novels
Duncan had a personal interest in supernatural and speculative fiction, which inspired her to write a variety of suspense and horror novels that were aimed for teenagers, some of which were adapted for the big screen. In 1978, her novel Summer of Fear was adapted to film by Wes Craven, but her most famous example, by far, was the 1997 film I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was adapted from her 1973 novel of the same name. It’s possible that much of the slasher horror craze was derived from Duncan’s novels, wherein she broke major ground by creating novels that didn’t capitalize on sex, drugs, and the bad-boy image of its characters, but more so on the ability of teenagers to be nasty and twist anything to justify their own means.
After the death of her youngest daughter in 1989 Duncan only wrote one more horror novel, titled Gallows Hill in 1997—since her daughter’s death marked a complete shift in her writing. In 1992 she penned a non-fiction account that detailed her daughter’s unsolved murder titled Who Killed My Daughter? but otherwise stuck to less dark material. Due to the own impact it had on her life, Duncan also founded a research center that was designed to help investigated cold cases, it would eventually evolve into a nonprofit Resource Center for Victims of Violent Deaths—this was in an effort to help anyone who had to deal with the trauma that she herself went through.
The Death of Her Daughter
July 16, 1989 marked a terrible day in the life of Lois Duncan—her eighteen-year-old daughter Kaitlyn Arquette was driving her car in Albuquerque, New Mexico was shot twice in the head. She was the victim of a drive-by shooting and she died the next day without ever waking up. The police investigation that ensued concluded that the death of Kaitlyn was the result of her being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Three men ended up being charged in the case of her death, but the charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence. Duncan was never satisfied with the result of her daughter’s case—she ended up investigating on her own and discovered that her daughter’s boyfriend was involved in an insurance scam. She believed that her daughter had somehow uncovered the scam and ended up being the target of someone who had been involved—not necessarily by her daughter’s boyfriend, but by one of his associates—with someone who didn’t want her daughter to blow the whistle on their organized criminal activity.
The police stopped investigating the death of Kaitlyn and the crime was never solved, but in 1992 she finally published Who Killed My Daughter?She confessed that it was the most difficult book that she ever had to write, but being that it was a non-fiction book and about her own daughter’s murder, it’s no mystery as to why it would have been. Kaitlyn’s family continued to pursue the investigation of her death and new information continued to surface long after the case was closed. The case and subsequent book were regularly featured, with the hopes that it would help improve the situation, on shows like Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Unsolved Mysteries, Inside Edition, and Sally Jessy Raphael. Lois and her husband Don Arquette created an maintained the Real Crimes website in order to help other families who were experiencing similar situations. Lois would interview families of homicide victims whose cases were believed to have been improperly handled by law enforcement and Don would back any allegations to actual documentation that was released to the public, such as police reports, autopsy records, as well as crime scene photographs.
At the End…
Duncan passed away on June 15, 2016, as the result of a stroke and left behind a small army of devastated fans and people whose lives she had touched. Lois was survived by her husband Don Arquette, her four remaining children and six grandchildren.
Georgia-based author and artist, Mary has been a horror aficionado since the mid-2000s. Originally a hobby artist and writer, she found her niche in the horror industry in late 2019 and hasn’t looked back since. Mary’s evolution into a horror expert allowed her to express herself truly for the first time in her life. Now, she prides herself on indulging in the stuff of nightmares.
Mary also moonlights as a content creator across multiple social media platforms—breaking down horror tropes on YouTube, as well as playing horror games and broadcasting live digital art sessions on Twitch.
Horror movies have given us some of the most menacing and violent on-screen villains since the dawn of cinema, though these masked maniacs are nothing without a trusty weapon with which to do their dirty work. The chainsaw is one of the most iconic weapons in horror next to Michael Myers’ kitchen knife, Jason Voorhees’ machete and Freddy Krueger’s knifed glove, and one particular Ed Gein inspired psychopath is the first to come to mind when this grisly, tree-felling tool is mentioned: Leatherface. Aside from Leatherface, there are probably more chainsaw horror movies than you might think out there.
The chainsaw has no particular style or grace, it is the choice of weapon for when your target must absolutely come to the utmost harm you can possibly befall them. It won’t just cut, it’ll carve, grind and mangle. Think you can hide indoors? Those doors better not be made of wood, or whoever’s wielding that snarling, toothed engine won’t be held back for long. Even the most hyperviolent video games aren’t complete without allowing their players to wield the chainsaw, with titles such as DOOM, Gears of War, Manhunt, Left 4 Dead and a good amount of other zombie games on the market including the weapon. That being said, the first exposure most audiences had to the flesh-ripping nature of the chainsaw was through film, so please enjoy the most heinous, violent and barbaric depictions of on-screen chainsaw violence in history.
The Wizard of Gore (1970)
Herschell Gordon Lewis’ The Wizard of Gore is arguably one of the first horror movies to bring a chainsaw to proceedings, and this early 70s forerunner to post-9/11 torture porn does so with gusto. Deranged magician Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sager) invites women onto his stage show where he performs grisly illusions upon them, usually by dismembering them in some way, before having them return to their seats magically unharmed. Later, when the women begin dying for real in ways identical to their ‘deaths’ on stage, people begin to suspect there is more to Montag than simple magician’s tricks. Featuring plenty of over the top gore and an ending likely to confuse as much as it does enthral, fans of classic cult horrors should take note.
The Last House on The Left (1972)
Wes Craven, who would later carve his own legacy in the annals of American Horror, first directed a harrowing and highly sexualised revenge horror in 1972. Other than a previous adult film, this was Craven’s directorial debut and it is clear he was out to shock from the start. Later re-releases dub The Last House on The Left as “The Original Chainsaw Massacre”, though the weapon is not actually featured until the film’s final act. Rather than wince when the snarling saw is finally brandished, however, audiences will shout encouragement at its wielder as he sets it upon the man who raped and killed his daughter. This shock revenge flick has as satisfying an ending as any that came after it, and the loud, intense edge of the chainsaw is partly to thank for that.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
This is the big one, folks. Directed by Tobe Hooper and unleashed to shock unsuspecting audiences around the globe in 1974, Texas Chainsaw is not only the ultimate exercise in chainsaw-based carnage, but still remains one of the most unsettling and intense horror movies to this day. Advertised and being based on a true story it was all too real for some audience members. With a whole family of antagonists including the instantly recognizable, Ed Gein-inspired Leatherface, Hooper’s classic brings a specific flavor of nastiness that is often imitated, though never quite perfected.
Motel Hell (1980)
Kevin Connor’s 80s black comedy/horror centers around siblings Vincent and Ida Smith (Rory Calhoun & Nancy Parsons) who run a motel along with a food stand selling their world famous sausages. After some investigation it is revealed that the origin of their meat surplus has a gruesome connection to the disappearance of a few guests, and farmer Vincent must do everything he can to protect their secret. Featuring darkly comical gore, lively performances all round and the pig-masked Vincent brandishing a huge chainsaw, this early 80’s cult classic is perfect for those who want a good laugh with their gore.
The Evil Dead (1981)
The Evil Dead might not have been the first use of the chainsaw in horror history, though it is easily one of the most recognizable. It is used by protagonist Ash Williams to cut off his own possessed hand in Evil Dead 2 (1987), before he fits the tool to his dismembered stump as a gruesome prosthetic, making it all the easier to hack through the forces of darkness. It was also used to great effect in reboot Evil Dead (2013) where it is shoved down the antichrist’s throat mid-blood rain in one of the most insane climax shots ever. While the chainsaw would later become Ash’s signature in the later films, it was first introduced in the original The Evil Dead (1981) when Ash tries to slice his beloved Linda in half and can’t bring himself to, opting to bury her instead, which goes as well as one would expect.
Pieces (1982)
Pieces is about as campy and scattershot an affair as one would expect from an early 80’s slasher. A group of college co-eds in Boston are stalked by a mysterious killer wielding a chainsaw, who steals body parts from each victim for a bloody jigsaw puzzle. Like many of its era, Pieces displays gratuitous gore, even more gratuitous nudity and a knowing edge that stops it from taking itself too seriously. What it also includes, however, are many absurd and almost random scenes that seemingly have no purpose other than to divert from an otherwise very standard and conventional plot. It is an absolute mess of a movie, but maybe that’s just your kind of thing.
American Psycho (2000)
Directed by Mary Harron and adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel of the same name, American Psycho is a humorous, horrifying and intriguing look at the life of Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale). Bateman, a wealthy investment banker from New York, is also a serial killer who moves from departing the homeless, to colleagues who annoy him, and then to random members of the public, seemingly unable to contain his psychotic urges. The film employs plenty of good humor alongside its visceral brutality, playing with the fragile ego of the unreliable narrator Bateman on such subjects as music, sex and even the business cards of his fellow bankers. One particularly harrowing scene shows Bateman chasing a prostitute around his apartment complex, completely naked and brandishing a chainsaw. As his victim descends the spiral staircase to escape, Bateman smugly allows the chainsaw to fall towards her rather than chasing her himself. The energy and menace Bale brings to his role is enough to make any lumberjack look twice at his trusted power saw.
Tokyo Gore Police (2008)
Next up is a fantastic Japanese splatter action directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura which features, true to its name, buckets of blood and guts along with some truly bizarre weapons and mutations. Think Power Rangers but with more cybernetic body modification and gore-soaked mayhem than you can shake a severed tendon at. Rather than anyone running the the woodshed for their trusty tree-feller, the creatures that vengeful police officer Ruka (Eihi Shiina) must fight have the things coming from every orifice of their mutated bodies! Like some overblown cyberpunk nightmare, TGP comes through with some of the weirdest gore-based spectacle on offer. With raving critical and audience reviews, this serves as a perfect introduction to Japan’s infinitely obscure splatter scene, and gore movies in general, keeping things funny, interesting and completely unexpected until the final frame.
Dead Snow (2009)
If there’s one thing more morally fogiveable than killing Nazis, it’s killing zombies. This 2009 Norwegian horror/comedy combines the two, along with a healthy splattering of references to the greats (Evil Dead mainly), for an end result which is as hilarious as it is gruesome. Naturally, a homage to Raimi’s classic would have been nothing without that famous buzzing blade being used to dismember a few fascist undead, and director Tommy Wirkola took great pleasure in crafting an epic battle scene between our chainsaw-wielding heroes and a horde of the rotting horrors on a snowy mountain plane. The scene in question could be placed with the likes of the famous lawnmower scene in Peter Jackson’s Braindead (1992) as one of the most fun pieces of brutal mass-killing to watch on screen. Be sure to also check out the sequel.
Mandy (2018)
In terms of 80’s soaked grindhouse violence, Mandy has everything. A revenge plot from the deepest fever dream of the cinema obsessed Panos Cosmatos, Mandy serves to scratch an itch for all lovers of overblown gore and gut-wrenching storytelling. And if these fanatics are anything like me, then near the top of their list of hopeful scenes is the conceptually legendary, yet criminally underused, chainsaw fight. Cosmatos didn’t only decide to craft one of the greatest face-offs in recent memory, but was so proud of it that he included it on the film’s cover art. This kind of boldness and confidence is what draws me to projects such as these, and I for one am waiting with bated breath for whatever darkness Cosmatos casts over us next.
Chainsaws in Horror Movies
Well that’s a wrap on some must see chainsaw wielding maniacs. If you need more you can always dig into the iconic Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, makes for a nice binge weekend if you can stomach it. With that said we are promised a new film from the franchise in 2022. Will you be there with proper ear and eye protection as we witness the revival of Leatherface?
Joe first knew he wanted to write in year six after plaguing his teacher’s dreams with a harrowing story of World War prisoners and an insidious ‘book of the dead’. Clearly infatuated with horror, and wearing his influences on his sleeve, he dabbled in some smaller pieces before starting work on his condensed sci-fi epic, System Reset in 2013.Once this was published he began work on many smaller horror stories and poems in bid to harness and connect with his own fears and passions and build on his craft. Joe is obsessed with atmosphere and aesthetic, big concepts and even bigger senses of scale, feeding on cosmic horror of the deep sea and vastness of space and the emotions these can invoke. His main fixes within the dark arts include horror films, extreme metal music and the bleakest of poetry and science fiction literature. He holds a deep respect for plot, creative flow and the context of art, and hopes to forge deeper connections between them around filmmakers dabbling in the dark and macabre.
Join "The Horror List" for Weekly Horror in your inbox
Recent Posts
Join The Horror List
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
