Subordinate Character Image Board

This actress named Janet Leigh is from the movie psycho. She is the first woman to be killed in the movie. At that time 1960 when the movie came out she was a very big star, a desirable actress to have in your movie. Alfred Hitchcock produced some amazing cinematography here by killing her off first. The movie would of been promoted using the face of Janet Leigh. However for film watchers to watch the movie and see their start actress whom they thought to be the lead killed off first is very, very unsettling. By doing this it made viewers feel confused and left with no sense of security or direction.

Note how influential the movie Psycho actually was to the horror genre and how its codes and convention were used in this movie. This is Drew Barrymore from the movie scream. At that time she was what you could say at the prime of her acting career. So she would’ve been the face of this movie. However the movie starts off with her receiving a call from a freaky person. She is then brutally murdered slashed and stabbed. Watching your favourite actress, idol to some, being brutally murdered in the opening scenes of a movie would unsettle you. Make you feel like you have nothing to lean back to no support. It is to make you feel mentally deteriorated.

Here in the blockbuster hit movie Jaws no specifically special actor or actress is being killed off. However, notice how the convention created and mastered by Alfred Hitchcock of unsettling viewers through specific killing is used in this scene. A boy comes out of the water asking his mother if he can be in the water for longer, his mum is being very over protective and saying no your fingers will prune but then gives in and lets him go. There we feel like yes everything is so nice and safe. We are shown that the child is protected by the mother and she will keep him away from any harm. However minutes after the boy is playing about on his lido he get bitten in half by the shark. This unsettles us completely, it makes us think how can the boy get killed even after being so protected, and we then think how safe are we? Making us lose a sense of security.

Monster Image Board

The technique of using a mask is very clever. It’s very disturbing. When we watch these slasher movies for e.g. Halloween we wonder why it is he is masked. What’s wrong with his face? This makes us feel disturbed and makes us feel we have lost all sense of security. The mask disconnects us and the killer in everyway; we cannot see emotions or expressions, just a cold hearted killer.

It is safe to say Halloween, the most influential movie of the slasher genre, started this clever technique of using a mask.

This character is ‘leatherhead’ from the movie the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He is masked and in the movie he makes disturbing noises that of an animal however does not speak like a normal human. Again making us lose that sense of safety.

Research has shown that when we see a masked person many assumptions are made in our imagination to what we see behind the mask. Research shows that people who are looking at a masked character and wondering whose face is behind the mask, are actually imagining the face of someone they very much dislike or are scared of. Therefore this is a very useful convention used in slasher movies to unsettle the mind.

This is the killer from the scream movies. The mask being worn here is now a globally available item. In the slasher genre movie’s, the use of a mask is almost inevitable. If not a mask the killer is always shown to be abnormal, different from the norm.

This killer has an altered voice. He has voice that is made to sound disturbing. This is one other convention of slasher movies, because this voice is not normal. Another very commonly used convention is the killer not having a voice at all. Meaning all their cold hearted murderous actions do the speaking for them. A great example would Halloween where Mike Myers as an adult does not utter a word. This in turn makes us feel even more scared and abnormal, as we cannot make any assumptions of the killer, letting our imagination go wild.