Monday, 28 November 2011

OPENINGS EG: Trick or Treat (M. Smith, 1986)

A fun, inventive movie, as cheesy as it looks now a quarter of a century on. Fetauring Ozzy Osbourne as a televangelist. Most useful for the great example of using mise-en-scene for exposition: the tracking shots across the protagonist's bedroom tell us a great deal about him. This also delays showing us his face - that simple bit of narrative enigma is generally a good convention to follow yourselves.

We also see a classic convention of teen movies (which, furthermore, hints at the romance sub-plot [hybridity] which we see in so many horrors, as production co's are well aware of the importance of attracting a female audience; the book Blood Money centres on this): intercutting between the geek/outsider and a glamorous cheerleader type, with the outsider thinking she's looking at him ... only she sails past to greet a jock type.

We also see the diary used as a device for exposition, plus a good example of humililation of the outsider - which often appears in slasher movies as the cause of the killer's transformation into a psychpath (see Prom Night and Terror Train, both featuring Jamie Lee Curtis).

The opening contains one use of strong language 5:17 in, so I'll only provide the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqpSvOMykQU&feature=fvsr

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